14 female artists offered in our First Open September season

A selection of works which span Post-War & Contemporary Art, Design and Photography — with estimates that range from $1,500 to $500,000

Shirin Neshat

Shirin Neshat (b. 1957), Faezeh, 2008. Ink on chromogenic print. 16 x 13 in (40.7 x 33 cm). This work is number 1 from the edition of 15. Estimate: $8,000-12,000. This work is offered in First Open | Home on 27 September at Christie’s in New York

Iranian artist-in-exile Shirin Neshat explores issues such as gender politics, cultural self-definition and religious authority in her work. Largely using female imagery, she examines political and societal change in Iran. For Neshat, Iranian women embody this political transformation, so that ‘by studying a woman, you can read the structure and the ideology of the country’.

Math Bass

Math Bass (b. 1981), Newz!, 2014. Gouache on canvas. 30 x 28 in (76.2 x 71.1 cm). Estimate: £15,000-18,000. This work is offered in First Open | Post-War and Contemporary Art | LDN on 29 September at Christie’s South Kensington

With the deployment of geometric shapes and identifiable symbols, Math Bass produces ambiguous compositions offering myriad interpretations. This work is part of her well-known painting series ‘Newz!’, in which Bass addresses the tension between containment and mobility while creating her own unique visual lexicon.

Tauba Auerbach

Tauba Auerbach (b. 1981), Embossment Painting #8, 2011. Acrylic on embossed paper. Image: 24¼ x 17¾ in (61.5 x 45 cm). Sheet: 29¾ x 21½ in (75.5 x 54.6 cm). Estimate: $60,000-80,000. This work is offered in First Open | Post-war & Contemporary Art | NY on 28 September at Christie’s in New York

Tauba Auerbach — born in 1980 — is one of the most exciting young artists of her generation. Exploring the traditional distinctions between image and content, Auerbach’s cerebral compositions challenge our perceptions. By emphatically avoiding narrative and making the surface the subject of the work, Auerbach draws attention to the illusory nature of painting itself.

Colleen Plumb

Colleen Plumb (b. 1970), New Orleans Elephant, 2010. Archival pigment print. 40 x 40 in (106 x 106 cm). This work is number 3 from the edition of 4. Estimate: $2,500–3,500. This work is offered in First Open | Home on 27 September at Christie’s in New York

In her photographs, Colleen Plumb looks at the interaction between humans and animals through the contrast between the ‘real’ and the ‘simulated’. Her body of works mostly portrays animals, showing how people have affected them and integrated them into their lifestyles. 

Dorothy Dehner

Dorothy Dehner (1901-1994), Untitled, 1957. Bronze. 4 x 6 x 3½ in (10.1 x 15.2 x 8.9 cm). Estimate: $6,000-8,000. This work is offered in First Open | Post-War and Contemporary Art | NY on 28 September at Christie’s in New York

Painter, sculptor, art writer and poet Dorothy Dehner explored Abstraction, Cubism, Realism and Surrealism during her artistic journey.  Early in her career she was known for painting and drawing, but in the 1950s and 1960s she turned to sculptures in bronze, wood and Corten steel, which were often huge in scale.

Lucie Rie

Born in Vienna in 1902, Lucie Rie trained in ceramics at the Wiener Werstätte, working with Josef Hoffmann and Michael Powolny. Most Viennese ceramics at this period were colourful, and enhanced with surface decoration. In contrast, Rie embraced a more refined and minimal aesthetic in keeping with the emerging Modernist movement. She moved to England in 1938 as a refugee, and lived in London for the rest of her life. One of the first studio potters (along with her close friend and artistic partner, Hans Coper) to deviate from the traditionalism that characterised pre-war British ceramics, Rie’s lack of ornament, focus on form and intuitive style of throwing set her apart from her contemporaries. 

Alice Neel

Alice Neel (1900-1984), Martha Mitchell, 1970. Oil on canvas. 30 x 22 in (76.2 x 55.8 cm). Estimate: $120,000-180,000. This work is offered in First Open | Post-War and Contemporary Art | NY on 28 September at Christie’s in New York

One of the foremost figure painters of the post-war period, Alice Neel was persistent in the pursuit of her chosen genre when it was widely deemed to be unfashionable. The originality and quiet power of her work ultimately came to be recognised in the wake of her first retrospective at the Whitney in 1974, and since then her reputation has grown. Neel's paintings grew out of the Social Realist concerns of American Art of the 1920s and 1930s, during which time she formed her highly personal brand of figuration.

Sarah Morris

Sarah Morris (b. 1967), Metro Center (Capital), 2001. Gloss household paint on canvas. 84¼ x 84¼ in (214 x 214 cm). Estimate: $50,000-70,000. This work is offered in First Open | Post-War and Contemporary Art | NY on 28 September at Christie’s in New York

American Painter and filmmaker Sarah Morris was born in 1967. Her body of work is characterised by brightly decorative, geometric grids executed in gloss house paint. Morris often uses perspective convergence to create an illusion of tiled room interiors or angular building facades.

Helena Almeida

Helena Almeida (b. 1934), Pintura habitada (Inhabited Painting), Executed 1977-2007. This work is number 21 from an edition of 25. Silkscreen print and graphite on paper. Image: 15¾ x 19⅞ in (40 x 50.4cm). Sheet: 19⅞ x 27 in (50.4 x 70cm). Estimate: £3,000-5,000. This work is offered in First Open | Post-War and Contemporary Art | LDN on 29 September at Christie’s South Kensington 

Helena Almeida’s oeuvre is a captivating amalgamation of performance art, photography, painting and drawing. This work stands among her most widely known series of ‘inhabited paintings’, which address the limits of pictorial and narrative space, and have defined her groundbreaking interdisciplinary artistic practice. As Almeida states, ‘My painting is my body, my work is my body.’ 

Tomma Abts

Tomma Abts (1940-1994), Untitled, 1999. Watercolour on paper. 8¾ x 8⅛ in (29.7 x 20.7 cm). Estimate: £2,000-3,000. This work is offered in First Open | Post-War and Contemporary Art | LDN on 29 September at Christie’s South Kensington

The Turner Prize-winning artist Tomma Abts creates complex and arresting abstract structures in two dimensions. Working in an experimental manner, yet still comforming to precise parameters, Abts’ pieces reveal themselves as the process of their creation.

Anja Niemi

Anja Niemi’s mises-en-scène invite us to consider the construction of the female in both society and film. Placing herself as both the subject and photographer, in this work she appears in character twice. The elaborate theatricality is reminiscent of Cindy Sherman’s seminal Untitled Film Stills, disturbing the viewer with a frame that is both familiar and unsettling.

Helen Chadwick

Helen Chadwick (1953-1996), Meat Abstract No.6: Cutlery. Numbered No.6 AP 2 (on the reverse), 1989. Polaroid and silk mat. 31⅞ x 28 in (81 x 71 cm). This work is artist’s proof number 2 from an edition of 4 plus two artist’s proofs. Estimate: £3,000-5,000. This work is offered in First Open | Post-War and Contemporary Art | LDN on 29 September at Christie’s South Kensington

Helen Chadwick’s body of work is an investigation of lust, identity and humanity, suggesting an air of opulent theatricality. The Meat Abstracts, from which this work derives, reveals how Chadwick’s use of silk materials and shiny cutlery juxtaposed with flesh and organs negotiates the conflicts of attraction and repulsion. What makes these pictures particularly seductive is the detail offered by a large-format Polaroid camera, coupled with the lavishness of the print surface.

Helen Frankenthaler

Helen Frankenthaler (1928-2011), Pirouette, 1987. Acrylic on canvas. 83 x 70¼ in (210.8 x 178.4 cm). Estimate: $500,000-700,000. This work is offered in First Open | Post-War and Contemporary Art | NY on 28 September at Christie’s in New York

Ethereal washes of delicate colour, which Helen Frankenthaler orchestrates across the surface of this canvas, reflect her desire to pursue her own artistic path within the male-dominated realm of Abstract Expressionism. Unlike the forceful brushwork of her male counterparts, Frankenthaler’s motifs are much more fluid and harmonious, lending her work a rich and poetic quality. 

Lynda Benglis

Lynda Benglis (b. 1941), Tukki, 1982. Wire mesh, sprayed copper, aluminum and acrylic lacquer coating, 38½ x 16 x 11½ in. (97.8 x 40.6 x 29.2 cm.) Estimate: $30,000-40,000. This work is offered First Open | Post-War and Contemporary Art | NY on 28 September at Christie’s in New York

Lynda Benglis's work is noted for its unusual blend of organic imagery and confrontation with newer media, incorporating influences such as Barnett Newman and Andy Warhol. Her early work used materials such as beeswax before she moved on to large polyurethane pieces in the 1970s, and later to gold leaf, zinc and aluminum. 

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