Clyfford Still

1904-1980 · American · Abstract Expressionism, Color Field painting

Auction record: $61.68M

1949-A-No. 1, 1949 · Sotheby's, New York · Nov 9, 2011

Biography

Clyfford Still, raised in Washington State and Alberta, was among the first painters of the New York School to abandon figuration completely, in the mid 1940s. His canvases are vast fields of thickly troweled colour torn by jagged, flame-like edges, often black, red or yellow. Fiercely independent, he broke with dealers, sold very little and withdrew to rural Maryland. His will left nearly his entire estate, about 95 percent of his output, to an American city willing to build a museum for it, which became the Clyfford Still Museum in Denver in 2011. This makes his market one of the thinnest among the blue chips: only a few paintings come up, often deaccessions, and each is an event.

Market

Liquidity: Low

Museums

Clyfford Still Museum, Denver
Buffalo AKG Art Museum, Buffalo
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Museum of Modern Art, New York

Sources

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