The work’s provenance is brief. The current owner acquired it in 2004 from Mitchell-Innes & Nash gallery in New York, which got it from the de Kooning estate it represented for several years after the artist’s death in 1997, according to David Nash, a co-owner. The gallery sold about 100 of the artist’s works with prices ranging from $500,000 to $3 million, Nash said.
“This was one of the best from that period,” Nash said about “Untitled XXII," declining to comment on the identity of the buyer. “Now, 15 years later, they are extremely rare. They’ve been dispersed to private collections and museums.”
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.