Christie’s Spring Prints & Multiples sale features a wide selection of fine art prints by many of the greatest artists of the 20^th and 21^st centuries. The sale is led by an important woodcut by Edvard Munch, Melancholy III, which depicts a man, his head resting on one hand, seated on a rocky shore in the Nordic twilight. Recalling Dürer’s famous engraving Melencolia I of 1514, the woodcut was inspired by the breakup of a friend’s relationship and is a profound meditation on heartbreak and loss. While Munch explored the darker side of the human experience, a collection of prints by Henri Matisse from the Estate of Jacquelyn Miller Matisse reflects a very different sensibility. Executed with the artist’s characteristic economy and sensuous line, these lithographs and linocuts of reclining nudes, portraits and dancers celebrate feminine beauty in its many guises.

Pop Art - from both sides of the Atlantic - is well represented. The artistic dialogue between Britain and the US in the 1960’s is reflected in the collection of the late Michael Abrams, the son of the New York publisher Harry N. Abrams, with prints by Patrick Caulfield and Eduardo Paolozzi, James Rosenquist, Robert Rauschenberg and Roy Lichtenstein. Prints by Andy Warhol are the highlights of the Pop Art selection, with two vivid impressions of Sunset, each a unique variant, two variations of Queen Elizabeth II in different colour combinations, a complete set of Queen Margarethe of Denmark, and a diamond dust Shoes leading this group. The sale also features a group of original lithographs by L. S. Lowry from the Estates of L.S. Lowry and Carol Ann Lowry; and property from the archive of the 107 Workshop, including prints by Howard Hodgkin and William Kentridge.

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