Christie's Impressionist and Modern Art Evening Sale will be followed by The Art of the Surreal Evening Sale, together launching '20th Century at Christie's' on 5 February 2020. Tamara de Lempicka's Portrait de Marjorie Ferry (1932, estimate: £8,000,000-12,000,000) and Alberto Giacometti's Trois hommes qui marchent (Grand plateau) (1948,
estimate: £8,000,000-12,0000,000) will both lead the Impressionist and
Modern Art Evening Sale. Further highlights include George Grosz's
politically charged Gefährliche Straße (1918,
estimate: £4,500,000-6,500,000), which has remained in a private
collection for 50 years and will appear at auction for the first time. A
group of three still lifes by Pablo Picasso demonstrate his career-long
dedication to evolving the genre with exceptional examples from the
1940s, 50s and 60s: La cafetière (1943, estimate; £1,000,000-1,500,000); Intérieur au pot de fleurs (1953, estimate: £7,000,000-10,000,000) and Nature morte au chien (1962,
estimate: £4,000,000-6,000,000). Works on paper by Gino Severini, Egon
Schiele Paul Klee, Picasso and Max Ernst provide intimate insight into
key artists of the 20th century.
Tamara de Lempicka, Portrait de Marjorie Ferry 39 x 25 in. (100 x 65 cm.) (1932) £8,000,000-12,000,000 (US$10.4-15.7m)
TAMARA DE LEMPICKA Portrait de Marjorie Ferry was
commissioned in 1932 by the husband of the British-born cabaret star
Marjorie Ferry at the height of Lempicka's fame in Paris where she was
the most sought-after and celebrated female modernist painter. By 1930
Lempicka had become the première portraitist
in demand among both wealthy Europeans and Americans, specifically with
those who had an eye for classicised modernism.
A major highlight of this series of
auctions will be George Grosz’s highly politicised depiction of Germany
at the close of the First World War, Gefährliche Straße, which will be
offered at auction for the first time. The painting will be presented
100 years after it was first exhibited in Grosz’s solo exhibition at the
Galerie Neue Kunst in Munich. The painting has remained in the same
private collection since 1970 and was last seen in public over twenty
years ago in the Haus der Kunst, in Munich, in an exhibition titled ‘Die
Nacht’ in 1999.
Olivier Camu, Deputy Chairman, Impressionist and Modern Art,
Christie’s: “We are honoured to present at auction this masterpiece from
the rare and celebrated First World War series of city paintings by
George Grosz. It has remained in the same collection for half a
century. Only three of the original 20 or so cityscapes (ten in museums,
seven lost or destroyed) remain in private hands and this is arguably
the best and most complex of those. Grosz with all his corrosive wit and
a mastery of colour here combines futurist dynamism and expressionist
fervour to convey his hatred of Germany and contempt for its
establishment. He has added an angry self-portrait in the lower right
corner of the composition.”
Ten paintings from the series can be seen in leading museums including
the Nationalgalerie, Berlin; Kunsthalle, Hamburg; Staatsgalerie
Stuttgart; Tate, London; Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum, Madrid and
the Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Gefährliche Straße (Dangerous Street) is a picture of the First
World War as it was played out on the streets of Berlin, painted during
the last months of the War in July 1918. This series of often
nightmarelike pictures of the city are the finest of all Grosz’s
achievements. They are works of art that have come to fix the image of
Berlin in the popular imagination and to define the traumatic era within
which they were made. Gefährliche Straße is one of the last and most
accomplished of this famous series of apocalyptic paintings. Unlike some
of Grosz’s earlier, more deliberately crude and sketchily-executed
works in this series, there is a cooler and more measured sense of
assuredness and stability about the way in which this deliberately
disorientating and fragmented vision of a dark and dangerous street has
been depicted. Employing a style that is reflective of both the complete
command of the oil medium that Grosz had by this time acquired and also
of the more focused, moralising sense of political purpose that his
work had begun to pursue, the forms, figures and rich colour
combinations of this painting are all rendered with a new-found clarity
and precision.
The painting will be on view in the King Street galleries in London from 30 January to 5 February 2020
.
PABLO PICASSO STILL LIFES
Picasso is credited with transforming
the still-life genre into an art form of endless symbolic, allegorical
or stylistic possibility.
La cafetière (1943,
estimate; £1,000,000-1,500,000) is constructed with angular lines and
saturated colour and was given as a gift from Picasso to his lover of
the time Marie-Thérèse Walter.
Intérieur au pot de fleurs (1953,
estimate: £7,000,000-10,000,000) is filled with the formal influence of
his friend Henri Matisse, while this intriguing interior scene can also
be seen to allude to the inner turmoil that characterised the artist's
life at this time. Nature morte au chien (1962,
estimate: £4,000,000-6,000,000) is a large and playful still-life that
not only offers a glimpse into the private world of Pablo Picasso and
his idyllic final home, Notre-Dame-de-Vie in Mougins, but encapsulates
the abiding themes and stylistic qualities of the artist's work in what
has become known as his late, great period.
WORKS ON PAPER Conjuring a sense of light, movement, sound and people, La Ferrovia Nord-Sud dates
from 1913 (estimate: £700,000-1,000,000), the peak of Gino Severini's
Futurist period. Here, Severini transports the viewer into the bustling
realm of the underground railway. Executed in 1929, Der Ballon im Fenster (estimate:
£200,000-300,000) by Paul Klee takes as its focus a multicoloured
balloon which the artist has glimpsed through a gap in the curtains, its
bright form floating across the sky above a landscape bathed in the
glow of a setting sun.
Diego
Velázquez (1599-1660), Camilo Astalli, known as Cardinal Pamphili,
Rome, Italy, 1650-1651, oil on canvas, H 61 x W 48 cm., Hispanic Society
Museum & Library, New York.
The Winter Show's 2020 loan exhibition will feature masterworks from
the renowned collection of the Hispanic Society Museum & Library,
spanning 4,000 years of Hispanic history, art, and culture.
On view
January 24–February 2, 2020, the exhibition is co-curated by esteemed
art historian and curator Philippe de Montebello, Chairman of the Board
of the Hispanic Society Museum & Library, and acclaimed architect
Peter Marino.
The Winter Show’s annual loan exhibition offers visitors a focused
look at exceptional collections of art, antiques, and design from
leading historic institutions, reflecting the quality, range, and
expertise of the Fair’s exhibitors.
Hispanic Society Museum & Library collection’s significance and
breadth consists of more than 18,000 works of art from the Paleolithic
Age to the 20th century, and an extraordinary research library that
holds 250,000 manuscripts and 35,000 rare books. The institution is the
only in the world to offer such a complete vision of Hispanic history,
art, and culture.
The exhibition will display masterworks from throughout the Iberian
Peninsula, Latin America, and the Philippines by artists including Diego
Velázquez, El Greco, and Francisco de Goya, alongside such works as a
mid-18th-century painting by the Cuzco School in Peru and an exceptional
17th-century ceramic aquamanile from Portugal. Additional highlights
will include a painting by John Singer Sargent created during his
extended travels in Spain circa 1879–80, and a work by Valencian painter
Joaquín Sorolla from the early 1900s, among many others.
Sotheby’s
Impressionist & Modern Art Evening Sale on 4 February will include
three works recently restituted to the heirs of Gaston Lévy, one of the
most notable patrons and art collectors living in Paris in the 1920s and
1930s. A highly successful businessman and property developer, Lévy and
his family lived in a magnificent apartment on the Avenue de Friedland,
which he filled with books, paintings and works of art, many of which
he bought from the great dealers of his day, including BernheimJeune,
Paul Durand-Ruel and Ambroise Vollard.
Lévy’s art collection was dispersed under the Nazi occupation, and
two of the works to be offered in February were lost to the ‘Einsatztab
Reichsleiter Rosenberg’ (an organisation dedicated to receiving looted
cultural property) in October 1940. After the war, the works were
repatriated to the French state, and have recently been restituted by
the French Government to Lévy’s heirs from the Musée d’Orsay in Paris.
Signac’s Quai de Clichy. Temps gris – had been stored in the Lévy’s
country home, the Château des Bouffards, but later found its way into
the collection of the dealer Hildebrand Gurlitt, whose illicit hoard was
discovered by the authorities in 2012.
The jewel of the group is a Pointillist masterpiece by Camille
Pissarro. Painted with enormous thought and dedication over a period of
some six months, Gelée blanche, jeune paysanne faisant du feu depicts a
young woman and child building a fire on a cold winter’s morning, where
every brushstroke works to bring to life the movement of smoke in the
wind.
Through his patronage of the Pointillists, Lévy also formed a
lifelong friendship with Signac, holidaying with the artist as well as
sponsoring his project to paint 107 ports in France – securing his first
pick from every batch of watercolours. Over the arc of his collecting
career, Lévy owned forty-four oils by the artist. The auction will offer
two paintings from different points in Signac’s oeuvre – transporting
the viewer from a brisk morning in a Parisian port to the exotic
delights of Istanbul’s waterside.
Camille
Pissarro, Gelée blanche, jeune paysanne faisant du feu, 1888, oil on
canvas, 92.8 by 92.5cm. (est. £8,000,000 – 12,000,000). Courtesy
Sotheby's.
CAMILLE PISSARRO
Gelée blanche, jeune paysanne faisant du feu, 1888, oil on canvas, 92.8 by 92.5cm. (est. £8,000,000 – 12,000,000) One of Pissarro’s greatest achievements, this tour-de-force of light
and colour also ranks among greatest examples of Pointillism ever
created. The creation of this extraordinary work was – as Pissarro’s
letters from the time attest – a labour of love. Some six months in the
making, Gelée blanche, jeune paysanne faisant du feu stands apart from
the main body of his work, wherein the artist’s deep understanding of
the new, scientific colour theory was harnessed to extraordinary
artistic effect. Pissarro completed the work in time for the 6th
exhibition of the Cercle des XX in Brussels, where it was heralded as a
tour de force in Neo-Impressionism.
Conceived on a grand scale, the painting captures the effects of
both heat and cold in a brilliant rendering of the complexities of light
and atmosphere. Against the backdrop of the low sun casting shadows on
the meadows and the lingering night frost, smoke rises with a shimmering
heat, resulting in a remarkable and uniquely nuanced representation of
fire, smoke and cold air that is yet to be matched.
The subject of the burning fire – and the challenge of representing
it – was something that clearly intrigued Pissarro throughout his
career. He returned to this particular subject no fewer than six times –
twice in oil, and four times on paper (an example of which can now be
seen in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford).
In addition to the brilliance with which the effects of light, fire
and wind are rendered, Gelée blanche, jeune paysanne faisant du feu is
also testimony to Pissarro’s empathetic approach to the human condition.
In many ways, his interest in painting the working classes is what
distinguishes him from so many of his contemporaries. In making humans
the subject of his works – figures with landscapes, rather than figures
within landscapes – he stands out as the great humanist among the
Impressionist and Neo-Impressionist painters, marking out his
independence from them.
This painting has previously been exhibited at many institutions
internationally including Paris’ Musée de l’Orangerie and Musée d’Orsay,
Tokyo’s The Bunkamura Museum of Art and São Paulo’s Centro Cultural
Banco do Brasil, to name a few.
PAUL SIGNAC La Corne d’Or. Matin, 1907, oil on canvas, 73 by 92cm. (est. £5,000,000 – 7,000,000) Paul Signac’s two great passions in life were painting and sailing,
and when the artist first travelled to Istanbul in the spring of 1907 –
an adventurous endeavour to pastures new – he was immediately struck by
the unique quality of light and colour that filled the ancient city.
The historic location inspired twelve paintings, all of which take
as their subject the Golden Horn, a busy waterway teeming with life near
the port of Istanbul, that was one of the key entrances to the Ottoman
capital at the time. In this ethereal work, the skyline of the city is
easily recognisable in the background, with the famous minarets of the
Hagia Sophia an unmistakable silhouette on the horizon.
Paul Signac, LA CORNE D'OR (CONSTANTINOPLE), 1907. Sold for $16,210,000.
In November 2019
another view of Constantinople was sold at Sotheby’s in New York for
$16,210,000. The brilliant luminosity of the composition, bathed in the
morning light, is typical of Signac’s late style – showing the influence
of Fauvism – and is wonderfully effective here in paying homage to the
historical legacy and richness of the city, whilst rendering it in a
completely fresh and modern way. Paul Signac, Quai de Clichy. Temps Gris, 1887, oil on canvas, 46 by 65.5cm. (est. £600,000 – 800,000). Courtesy Sotheby's.
Quai de Clichy. Temps Gris, 1887, oil on canvas, 46 by 65.5cm. (est. £600,000 – 800,000) This elegant, pointillist observation of the Quai de Clichy is a
classic example of Signac’s Opus pictures, paintings he considered
‘complete compositions’ which are now seen as his earliest and greatest
contributions to Neo-Impressionism.
Signac’s family moved to the northwest of Paris in 1880, to a suburb
running along the river Seine. The varied landscape of the region –
comprising both the river and factory chimneys – provided a great source
of inspiration to the young artist, fulfilling his interests in
sailing, science and innovation. In the year this was painted, Signac
was joined in his painting expeditions around Clichy by Vincent van
Gogh, who depicts the bridges just further up from this composition.
The work was discovered in the possession of Cornelius Gurlitt, a
reclusive art hoarder who died in 2014, and having been identified as
looted by the Nazis, was restituted by the estate to the heirs of Gaston
Lévy in July 2019. The sister composition of Quai de Clichy. Soleil is
now in the Baltimore Museum of Art.
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The Seattle Art Museum presents Flesh and Blood: Italian Masterpieces from the Capodimonte Museum(October
17, 2019–January 26, 2020), featuring 40 Renaissance and Baroque works
of art (39 paintings and one sculpture) drawn from the collection of one
of the largest museums in Italy. Traveling from the Museo e Real Bosco
di Capodimonte in Naples, the exhibition offers a rare opportunity to
see works by significant Italian, French, and Spanish artists who worked
in Italy including Artemisia Gentileschi, El Greco, Parmigianino,
Raphael, Guido Reni, Jusepe de Ribera Titian, and more.
The Capodimonte Museum is a royal palace built in 1738 by Charles of
Bourbon, King of Naples and Sicily (later King Charles III of Spain).
The core of the collection is the illustrious Farnese collection of
antiquities, painting, and sculpture, formed in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries and inherited by Charles of Bourbon. Italian and
Spanish masterpieces of the Baroque period, grounded in realism and
produced in Naples, build on this foundation. The Farnese collection
traces a century of creativity, inspiration, and a constant search for
beauty, followed by masterpieces of the Baroque era characterized by
grandeur, dramatic realism, and theatricality.
This exhibition marks the first time that this many works from
the Capodimonte Museum will travel together at the same time. The New
York Times called the museum an “under-visited treasure trove” with a
“staggering collection of art” and Conde Nast Traveler called it “the
most underrated museum in Italy.”
seattle art museum
Parmigianino, Antea, ca. 1535. Oil on canvas. Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte.
The paintings in Flesh and Blood center
on the human figure, whether featured in portraits or mythological and
religious scenes. They explore the intersection of physical and
spiritual existence, with an emphasis on the human body as a vehicle to
express love and devotion, physical labor, and tragic suffering.
“I am thrilled that we have the rare opportunity to see these
incredible works in Seattle,” says Chiyo Ishikawa, SAM’s Susan Brotman
Deputy Director for Art and Curator of European Painting and Sculpture.
“Epic and intimate, divine and brutally realistic, these paintings speak
to the complexity of human experiences in a timeless way that will
resonate with our visitors.”
La Corne d’Or. Matin, 1907, oil on canvas, 73 by 92cm. (est. £5,000,000 – 7,000,000)
