Jackson Pollock's Number 5 (Elegant Lady) is to auction at Christie's New York on May 13 with a $15m-20m estimate.
Pollock traded the painting for a green Oldsmobile in 1954, the same car he crashed on Long Island two years later - killing himself and Edith Metzger, a friend of his lover Ruth Kligman.
 Pollock traded the painting for the car he died in |
The painting is executed in black enamel and differs from the artist's earlier work in terms of its composition, which explores space and form in a more restrained manner than his more famous pieces.
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