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Estimate: $ 1,000 - $ 1,500
ELAINE DE KOONING Untitled (Basketball Game).
Pen and ink on paper, 1953. 400x245 mm; 15 3/4x9 3/4 inches. Signed, titled and dedicated in ink, lower margin recto.
Born Elaine Marie Fried (1918-89) in Brooklyn, she married Willem de Kooning, one of the most heralded Abstract Expressionists, in 1943. Prior to her marriage she showed great interest in the arts, touring many museums as a child and learning how to draw from her mother. She attended the Leonardo da Vinci Art School in New Jersey and later, in 1938, the American Artists School in New York. Adhering to Abstract Expressionists ideals, Elaine de Kooning opined: "A painting to me is primarily a verb, not a noun, an event first and only secondarily an image"; this is nowhere more clear than in the present drawing where the subject appears and disappears amidst pools and scribbles of ink.
