Five International Highlights from Our Major Spring Auction

Our upcoming Major Spring Auction of Canadian and International Art, held online from May 14 – 28, 2026, brings together an exceptional selection of works spanning post-war abstraction, European modernism, and international avant-garde movements.

We’ve selected five standout lots that exemplify the depth and quality of this season’s offering, from richly textured Color Field painting to rare works on paper and iconic examples of 20th-century expressionism.

Jules Olitski, PARADISE FLOOD, 1989

The Color Field movement, which emerged in the 1940s and 1950s, was a major development within Abstract Expressionism, emphasizing large, flat areas of colour as the primary means of artistic expression. Artists associated with Color Field, such as Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman, and Helen Frankenthaler, sought to evoke emotion and transcendence through the pure use of colour, often creating monumental canvases that invited deep contemplation. Prominent art critic Clement Greenberg played a pivotal role in the movement’s rise, championing these artists, as well as Olitski, in his writings. Qualified by Greenberg as the greatest painter alive[1], Olitski investigated light, surface and colours in their relationship to the canvas across his whole career, making him one of Color Field painting’s most rigorous practitioners. His monochrome canvas from the 70s, with colours spread with a cloth or scraper or laid on with a roller to create thickly structured surfaces, led the artist to another major achievement: the Mitt paintings.

Created between 1988 and 1993, Olitski’s Mitt paintings were not often exhibited during the artist’s lifetime. The first large-scale exhibitions focusing on this era were held in 2024 by the Templon Galerie, Paris, and Yares Gallery, New York. Art historian Alex Grimley describes these works as “opulent and luxurious”. “[…] the Mitt paintings (so named for the housepainter’s mittens used to create them) are works of baroque exuberance, with inches-thick acrylic crests and troughs that belie their unique illusionistic effects. Olitski finished many of the paintings with fine mists of sprayed color applied at an oblique angle so that his scalloping gesture appears to materialize from within the surface. […] The play of light and shade is fundamental to these paintings. The interference pigments Olitski employed in the works, translucent when viewed head-on, capture light and reflect color when viewed at different angles. Color quite literally invisible from one perspective appears radiant from another.”[2]

The 80s were indeed an era of experimentation with new media, with many of their discoveries pertaining to the artistic world, such as newly developed media, like the iridescent acrylic paint invented by Golden Artists Colors Inc., used by Olitski in this artwork. Paradise Flood, 1989, is part of this first wave of Mitt creations. After applying a large amount of material to the canvas, Olitski manipulated the paint using a rippling movement guided by the mitt’s gesture. He finished Paradise Flood with a dark enamel spray, creating an additional layer of movement and shine atop the jewel tones which lay beneath. The light lingers upon the surface from the crest to the hollow parts of the composition, revealing new colours on some parts while welcoming shadows in others.

[1] Roberta Smith, The Great Beginning of Jules Olitski (Published 2021), New York Times, January 28, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/28/arts/design/jules-olitski-color-field-painter-yares-art.html
[2] Alex Grimley, Jules Olitski: The Mitt Paintings 1988–1993, Brooklyn Rail, October 24, 2024, https://www.yaresart.com/news/jules-olitski-the-mitt-paintings-1988-1993

Hans Hofmann, UNTITLED, 1941

In Search for The Real, published in conjunction with the Addison Gallery exhibition of drawings from 1927 to 1930, Sara T. Weeks and Bartlett H. Hayes emphasize that Hofmann’s intensive drawing practice during these years was driven by a desire to simplify form. “When he arrived in California in 1930, the industrial activity and the vast expanse of the country made an overwhelming impression on Hofmann. To be realized and fully absorbed, these fresh experiences had to be drawn directly. Having finally become familiar with the new environment, he was free to simplify and select; once again the organization of space and form dominated his interest.”[1]

Barbara Rose extends this analysis by focusing on the years 1932 to 1935, highlighting a marked absence of colour in Hofmann’s work. After 1932, he did not paint in colour for approximately three years: “Ironically, in order to achieve an unprecedented style of colorful painting at the end of his life, Hofmann apparently had to go through a phase of renouncing color. During his early years in the United States, Hofmann did not paint in oil. So far as we know, between 1932, when he settled permanently in America, and 1935 when his student Mercedes Matter (…) persuaded him to work from a still life she was painting, Hofmann eschewed color.”[2]

From 1930 to the early 1940s, Hofmann immersed himself in crayon studies as a way of resolving compositional challenges. These works played a crucial role in paving the way toward his full embrace of abstraction by 1945: “From 1941 to 1943 innumerable landscape studies, executed with children’s crayons, enabled Hofmann to resolve formal and spatial problems with those of color. In these drawings he frequently visualizes color as free standing, yet related, planes which define spatial intervals.”[3] This practice, combined with his renewed engagement with colour, “became the agent which impelled him to experiment further with abstract composition for, not as closely associated as form with the description of recognizable objects, it allowed him greater freedom of invention.”[4] Untitled, 1941, is part of this broader movement toward increasing abstraction, which became the central trajectory of Hofmann’s work between 1935 and 1950.

[1] Hans Hofmann, Search For The Real, published by Sara T. Weeks and Batlett H. Hayes, Jr, M.I.T Press, 1973, 16.
[2] Barbara Rose, Hans Hofmann, Drawings 1930-1944 in, Hans Hofmann, Drawings 1930-1944, André Emmerich Gallery, Dec 10 – Jan 11, 1977, 7.
[3] Hofmann, 7.
[4] Ibid, 22.

Floris Arntzenius, SPUISTRAAT, DEN HAAG

Floris Arntzenius is best known for his serialized depictions of the bustling streets of Holland’s administrative capital, Den Haag. Born in 1864 in the then-Dutch colony of Java (present-day Indonesia), he came to epitomize the younger generation of the Hague School. Studying at the Rijksacademies and exhibiting alongside Isaac Israels, George Hendrik Breitner, and Willem Witsen, the School mastered the atmospheric melancholy of the seemingly constant grey of the lowlands.

Anchoring his scenes in the main thoroughfares of the city, Arntzenius captures the familiar dynamism and anonymity of urban life in an impressionistic fashion. Like his other depictions of The Hague, in Spuistraat, Den Haag, figures meld into their setting, contributing to the familiar armature of the metropolis. Spuistraat, one of the main pedestrianized shopping areas in the city centre, offered the artist a constant flux of activity. Arnntzenius renders his figures in a fairly democratic fashion, as various walks of society are portrayed in muted tones and in similar stature. Depicted mid-step, with one foot hovering above the pavement, with indistinguishable facial features, the figures’ only discernible class signifier is their style of clothing. Arntzenius credited these minute pops of colour in the clothing and signage as adding a sense of whimsy to an otherwise monotone environment.[1]

[1] The Spuistraat, Haags Historisch Museum, December 11, 2025, https://haagshistorischmuseum.nl/en/collectie/masterpieces/the-spuistraat/.

Natalia Sergeevna Goncharova, 2 DESIGNS FOR DIE MÄR VON DER HEERFAHRT IGORS, CA. 1923

These two drawings by Natalia Sergeevna Goncharova were made to illustrate the famous book Die Mär Von Der Heerfahrt Igors, published in 1923. They feature the work by Arthur Lüther from the epic poem “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign” (Slovo o plŭku Igorievě), considered the oldest literary work of the Eastern Slavs, written at the end of the 12th century. It recounts the failed military campaign led in 1185 by Prince Igor Sviatoslavich against the Cumans of Khan Konchak.

2 Designs were part of the exhibition The Russian Avant-Garde Art from the Schreiber Collection exhibition held in 1986 at The William Benton Museum of Art in Connecticut. These two works are made in the typical Goncharova fashion: gouache highlighted with silver paint, and pen and ink.

Jillian Suarez mentions the following about the artist and her relationship to the Russian avant-garde: “Goncharova, like her partner Mikhail Larionov, was closely associated with the literary avant-garde. She illustrated several Russian Futurist and poetry books. Gorod: Stikhi, an illustrated octavo of poems published in 1920, contains lithographs by her, including numerous vignettes and nine full-page illustrations. Goncharova also provided the celebrated Futurist designs for the front and back covers (in Russian and French, respectively).

Another example of Goncharova’s illustrations is Die Mar von der Heerfahrt Igors, an artist’s book with hand-colored pochoir prints on ivory wove paper published in 1923. The pochoir process, characterized by its crisp lines and brilliant colors, produces images that have a freshly printed appearance.”[1]

[1] Jillian Suarez, Artists’ Books Illustrated by Natalia Goncharova, The Guggenheim Museums and Foundation, accessed April 8 2026, https://www.guggenheim.org/articles/findings/artist-books-illustrated-by-natalia-goncharova

Karel Appel, UNTITLED (HEAD), 1973

Karel Appel’s works are widely considered to embody the spirit of post-war European art, characterised by bold use of colour, expressive brushwork and a style inspired by folk art, outsider art, and children’s drawings. Appel’s involvement with CoBrA, an avant-garde movement he founded in 1948 along with Asger Jorn, Constant, and Corneille, brought attention to the young artist’s work in both Europe and North America.

Though CoBrA disbanded in 1951, its spontaneous and colourful aesthetic has been credited with reinvigorating Dutch modern art and inspiring subsequent generations of artists. The playful spirit it promoted has also characterised Appel’s subsequent career, emblematized by thick impasto, energetic spontaneity, saturated colour and human or animal subjects. Appel recalls how formative the group was for him: “The CoBrA group started new, and first of all we threw away all these things we had known and started afresh, like a child – fresh and new. Sometimes my works look very childish, or childlike, schizophrenic or stupid, you know. But that was the good thing for me. Because, for me, the material is the paint itself. The paint expresses itself. In the mass of paint, I find my imagination and go on to paint it.”[1]

The 1960s marked a period of decline and tragedy for Appel, when painting went out of fashion and his second wife, Machteld, passed away. But Appel and his irrepressible style could not be kept down long – he remarried his third and last wife, began working again, and signed on with art dealer Annina Nosei, who also represented Jean-Michel Basquiat. Appel would find fresh inspiration in the flattened aesthetics of Pop Art, which he reinterpreted using his signature style.

Untitled (Head), 1973 recalls Appel’s early, playful interpretations of the wounded, human psyche while reviving interest in the two-dimensional medium of painting. The large swaths of mostly primary colours emphasize Appel’s childlike aesthetics, which are further heightened by the flat application of the acrylic paint on paper.

[1] Margalit Fox. “Karel Appel, Dutch Expressionist Painter, Dies at 85.” The New York Times, May 9, 2006. Accessed April 2, 2024. https://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/09/arts/design/karel-appel-dutch-expressionist-painter-dies-at-85.html

About the auction

Showcasing a curated selection of outstanding Canadian and international artworks, our Major Spring Auction of Canadian and International Art features important pieces by Emily Carr, Lawren Harris, David Milne, Alfred Joseph Casson, Walter Joseph Phillips, Jack Bush, and E.J. Hughes. Highlights from the international selection include works by Jules Olitski, Karel Appel, Rudolf Ernst, and Edward Seago.

Please contact us for more information.

Browse the digital catalogue.

Browse the online preview gallery.

Bidding is available May 14 – May 28, 2026.

On view at our Toronto gallery:

 Wednesday, May 20 from 10:00 am to 5:00 pm
 Thursday, May 21 from 10:00 am to 7:00 pm
 Friday, May 22 from 10:00 am to 5:00 pm
 Saturday, May 23 from 12:00 pm to 4:00 pm
 Sunday, May 24 from 12:00 pm to 4:00 pm
 Monday, May 25 from 10:00 am to 5:00 pm
 Tuesday, May 26 from 10:00 am to 5:00 pm
 Wednesday, May 27 from 10:00 am to 5:00 pm

Or by appointment.