Dan Flavin

pink and yellow fluorescent light
61 by 122cm.
Executed in 1966, this work is accompanied by a certificate signed by the artist and from an edition of 5, of which 2 examples were fabricated.

Kornblee Gallery, New York
Galerie Konrad Fischer, Cologne
Onnasch Collection, Berlin (acquired from the above in 1977)
Sotheby's, New York, May 12, 2004, Lot 50
Philips de Pury & Company, London, June 22, 2007, Lot 39A 
Acquired by the present owner from the above

New York, Kornblee Gallery, Evans, Flavin, Frazier, Levinson, February 1966 (edition no. unknown)
Berlin, Reinhard Onnasch Galerie, Dan Flavin, March - April 1985 (the present example)
Barcelona, Museu d'Art Contemporani; Serralves, Museu d'Arte Contemporânea, The Onnasch Collection: Aspects of Contemporary Art, November 2001 - February 2002, p. 163, illustrated in color (the present example)

Anne Hoene, "In the Galleries: Group Show," Arts Magazine 40, no. 6, April 1966, p. 55 (text) (edition no. unknown)
Lucy Lippard, "New York Letter: Off Color," Art International 10, no. 4, April 1966, p. 74 (text) (edition no. unknown)
Mel Bochner, "Less is Less (for Dan Flavin)," Art and Artists 1, no. 9, December 1966, p. 24, illustrated (in installation at Kornblee Gallery, New York, 1966) (edition no. unknown)
Mel Bochner, "Serial Art, Systems: Solipsism," Arts Magazine 41, no. 8, Summer 1967, p. 41, illustrated in color (in installation at Kornblee Gallery, New York, 1966) (edition no. unknown)
Exh. Cat., Ottawa, National Gallery of Canada (and travelling), fluorescent light, etc. from Dan Flavin/lumière fluorescente, etc. par Dan Flavin, 1969, p. 249, illustrated (in installation at Kornblee Gallery, New York, 1966) (edition no. unknown)
Exh. Cat., St. Louis, St. Louis Art Museum, drawings and diagrams from Dan Flavin 1963-1972, 1973, p. 48 (edition no. unknown)
Rosalind Krauss, "Sense and Sensibility: Reflection on Post-60's Sculpture," Artforum 12, no. 3, November 1973, p. 51, illustrated (in installation at Kornblee Gallery, New York, 1966) (as Frank's Pink Before Gold Across a Corner, 1964-66, edition no. unknown) 
Exh. Cat., Berlin, Neue Nationalgalerie, Aspekte der 60er Jahre: aus der Sammlung Reinhard Onnasch, 1978, p. 120, illustrated (certificate for the present work)
Bernhard Kerber, Bestände Onnasch, Bremen, 1992, p. 149, illustrated in color (the present example)
Exh. Cat., Porto, Fundação de Serralves, Onnasch: Aspects of Contemporary Art/Aspectos da Arte Contemporânea, 2001, p. 163, illustrated in color
Exh. Cat., Washington, D. C., National Gallery of Art (and travelling), Dan Flavin: A Retrospective, 2004, p. 154, illustrated in color (in installation at Kornblee Gallery, New York, 1966) (edition no. unknown)
Michael Govan and Tiffany Bell, Dan Flavin: the Complete Lights, 1961-1996, New Haven and London, 2004, cat. no. 104, p. 249, illustrated in color (artist's diagram) and p. 154, illustrated in color (in installation at Kornblee Gallery, New York, 1966) (edition no. unknown)

This work is in excellent condition. The metal fixtures all appear stable and intact. The white enamel is very slightly corroded with scratches to the left and right edges of the horizontal metal element consistent with the age of the piece. Original labels, including labels for Konrad Fischer and the Onnasch Collection, are adhered to the back of the metal fixtures. This sculpture is currently wired for US electrical current.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

At the heart of Untitled (to Frank Stella)’s exterior cool is an elegiac monument of the relationship between two friends who together quietly sparked a revolution. Dan Flavin and Frank Stella inspired each other’s collective aesthetic interest in achieving complex articulations of thought through radically reductive forms, yet their respective bodies of work each retain wholly individual approaches that are both iconic in their own right. Frank Stella's formal correspondence and friendship with minimalists like Flavin, Carl Andre, and Don Judd is particularly evident in their mutual visual concerns and common regard for fixed-format constructions, geometric purity, clarity of line, and serial repetition. Certainly, Flavin's diagonal versus right-angled patterns of his earliest fluorescent bulbs like Untitled (to Frank Stella) offer a close parallel to Stella's shaped canvases, such as his celebrated Notched V paintings. In accordance with Stella's early groundbreaking and seminal Black Paintings of 1958-1959, the ostensible simplicity of Flavin’s Untitled (to Frank Stella) maintains the purest essence of Minimalist art. Deeply occupied by the properties of the picture plane, according to Stella's lectures at the Pratt Institute in January 1960, flatness is achieved through symmetry and the use of the monochrome, a solution which forces illusionistic space out of the painting at constant intervals by using a regulated pattern. Like Stella, Flavin reveled in the potential for endless variation inherent in fixed systems of color and line, exemplified by the atmospheric rigor and sophisticated configuration of the present work. Flavin and Stella both mined industrial materials for their inherently sensitive expressions of light and space; as Stella used house paints to paint his expansive surfaces, Flavin also looked to the seductive industrial fabrications available in the hardware store. Michael Govan noted, “In the late 1950s and early 1960s…Stella’s efforts to banish illusion entirely from painting in favor of the factual presentation of materials on a surface provided clues for the new direction that Flavin took in simplifying the form of his work. Unlike [Stella], however, he chose to work with distinctly non-art materials—store-bought light fixtures.” (Exh. Cat., Washington, D. C., National Gallery of Art (and travelling), Dan Flavin: A Retrospective, 2005, p. 53)