DOWNTOWN — The art world was abuzz Wednesday over reports that the Art Institute of Chicago is the hard-fought winner of a donation of some $400 million in works given by a local couple.
The donation by Stefan Edlis and Gael Neeson includes three paintings by Jasper Johns, a pair of Roy Lichtenstein works and a painting by Cy Twombly.
But one of the most striking paintings, an Andy Warhol of the late actress Elizabeth Taylor won't be part of the permanent display right away at the museum at 111 S. Michigan Ave., reports the Wall Street Journal.
The couple, who made a fortune in plastics, bought Warhol's 1963 Liz #3 [Early Colored Liz] last November at auction for $31.5 million. But unlike the rest of the donation, the "Liz" is the only partial gift in the set given the Art Institute. Gael Neeson said she "wants to live with the work for a few years before turning it over for good," the Journal reported.
Liz #3 was one of Warhol's earliest of the movie star and, according to a Bloomberg News story from last October, it has been on public view only once since 1972. Before being put up at auction, it had been owned by a private collector who purchased it in 1972 in Turin, Italy.
The Sotheby's catalogue description said that at the time it was made, Taylor was 31 years old, had been nominated for a Best Actress Oscar four times, had been married four times and was the highest paid actress in the world.
Warhol was 35 and "obsessed with themes of fame, celebrity and death." His work "epitomized the tide of change that swept through the 1960s," according to Sotheby's.
Warhol's depictions of Taylor "display not so much his ambition to record the prose of physical likeness but more his love affair with the drama and glamour of celebrity," said the catalogue.
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