Untitled
1986
This abstracted equine sculpture presents a horse rendered in rough, gestural bronze forms that suggest the animal's essential structure while maintaining an expressive, almost skeletal quality. The work captures the creature in profile, with its characteristic arched neck and four legged stance clearly recognizable despite the artist's reductive approach. Composed of irregular, organic bronze elements that create a sense of movement and vitality, the sculpture demonstrates a masterful balance between figuration and abstraction. The piece exemplifies contemporary approaches to animal representation that prioritize conceptual and emotional resonance over naturalistic detail.
- Medium
- bronze
- Overall
- Location
- Sotheby's, New York, NY
- Spotted At
- Auction House · Sotheby'sView on map
Notes
Contemporary Day Auction, Sotheby's, sale on 2026-05-15.
🔨 Auction Lot
Contemporary Day Auction
May 15, 2026
Estimate: $50,000 to $70,000
Spotted works by Deborah Butterfield
Artists in conversation
Barry Flanagan
British · b. 1941
Flanagan created expressive bronze animal sculptures with a gestural, abstracted quality that captures essential animal energy rather than literal representation, closely mirroring Butterfield's approach to rendering living creatures through rough organic bronze forms.
Mimmo Paladino
Italian · b. 1948
Paladino sculpts horses and animals in bronze with an expressionist, almost skeletal abstraction that emphasizes gestural form over anatomical precision, sharing Butterfield's reductive yet vitally expressive treatment of equine subjects in three dimensional bronze work.
Marino Marini
Italian · b. 1901
Marini devoted his sculptural career to abstracted bronze horse forms rendered with rough textured surfaces and expressive gestural modeling, producing large scale equine works that balance recognizable animal structure with modernist formal reduction much like this Butterfield piece.
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