Iconic, playful and strikingly forthright examples by America’s leading contemporary artists lead the selection. ‘Humour and meaning were the touchstones of their collection. They wanted to live with works that helped them understand the underbelly of society but were also joyful, whether Ed Ruscha’s How Do You Do? (2003), an iconoclastic Urs Fischer sculpture or a Diego Giacometti console,’ says Sara Friedlander, Christie’s Deputy Chairman of Post-War and Contemporary Art. In addition to artworks by Ruscha and Fischer are pieces by George Condo, John Currin, Marlene Dumas, Jeff Koons, Claes Oldenburg and Cindy Sherman. Also featured are works of avant-garde and Art Deco design by Giacometti, Emile-Jacques Ruhlmann and Jean Dunand, amongst others.
Resilience reflected through collecting
Born in Vienna in 1925 and raised Jewish, Edlis fled Nazi-occupied Austria for the United States in 1941 with his mother and two siblings. He then served in the US Navy during World War II, after which he made moulds for a toolmaker. By 1954 Edlis was running the company, and 11 years later he set up on his own, establishing what became the Apollo Plastics Corporation. During a ski trip to Wisconsin in 1974, Edlis met Neeson, a medical technician living in Europe. The couple soon returned to America and, under the guidance of notable Chicago collector Gerald Elliot, set about on a lifelong journey devoted to the arts. An early recommendation by Elliot, Larry Rivers’s Four Mollys (1957), will be offered at Christie’s in 2026.
The couple’s first major acquisition came in 1977 when they bought Piet Mondrian’s Large Composition with Red, Blue, and Yellow for $675,000 at Christie’s newly opened saleroom in New York. While most collectors at the time were focused on Abstract Expressionism, Edlis and Neeson gravitated towards radical modern European art and Pop art. ‘We discovered you could buy art that had just been painted, not just work out of a book. And that was even more exciting,’ Edlis once commented.