A seminal collection of post-war American art, carefully curated within Paul Rudolph’s architectural masterpiece in Fort Worth, will be highlighted in Christie’s spring marquee sales. Nine works from Anne and Sid Bass’s legendary residence—including a transcendent Rothko colour field painting estimated at $35 million—offer a rare glimpse into one of modern collecting’s most visionary partnerships.
The Bass House is a monument to Rudolph’s brutalist genius and the couple’s discerning eye. Commissioned in the early 1970s after Sid was infatuated with Rudolph’s Yale Art & Architecture Building, the residence became a carefully calibrated environment where cantilevered concrete planes created ideal sightlines for their growing collection.
The living room’s dramatic installation paired Frank Stella’s vibrant Firuzabad III (1970) with Morris Louis’s lyrical Gamma Upsilon (1960), creating a dynamic dialogue between hard-edge and colour-field abstraction. Nearby, Ellsworth Kelly’s 15-foot Blue Black Red (1964) demonstrated the couple’s prescient support of emerging minimalism.
The piano room housed perhaps the collection’s most poetic juxtaposition: Agnes Martin’s paired 1975 Untitled works facing Stella’s assertive Itata (1964). This thoughtful installation revealed the Basses’ understanding of the conceptual throughlines of postwar art.
The crown jewel, Rothko’s No. 4 (Two Dominants) (1950-51), exemplifies the artist’s breakthrough into mature abstraction. Its pulsating plum and black forms demonstrate why the Basses considered visual art a near-spiritual experience. Top Photo
As these works prepare for their first public showing in decades, their significance extends beyond market value. The Bass collection represents a vanished era of patronage—when collectors lived intimately with avant-garde art.
Top Photo: Mark Rothko, No. 4 (Two Dominants) (Orange Plum Black) (1950-51) The Bass House. Photo: Martien Mulder, courtesy Christie’s.
Viewing dates: May 12-16 at Christie’s Rockefeller Centre. Sale: May 17, 2025, as part of the 20th Century Evening Sale
