Friday, January 30, 2015

Piero di Cosimo: The Poetry of Painting in Renaissance Florence

Once-in-a-Lifetime Piero di Cosimo Retrospective Premieres at National Gallery of Art, Washington, February 1–May 3, 2015;

Travels to Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence, June 23–September 27, 2015

Piero di Cosimo
The Visitation with Saint Nicholas and Saint Anthony Abbot, c. 1489/1490
oil on panel, 184.2 x 188.6 cm (72 1/2 x 74 1/4 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Samuel H. Kress Collection

The first major retrospective exhibition ever presented of paintings by the imaginative Italian Renaissance master Piero di Cosimo (1462–1522) will premiere at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, from February 1 through May 3, 2015. Piero di Cosimo: The Poetry of Painting in Renaissance Florence will showcase some 44 of the artist's most compelling works. With themes ranging from the pagan to the divine, the works include loans from churches in Italy and one of his greatest masterpieces, Madonna and Child Enthroned with Saints Elizabeth of Hungary, Catherine of Alexandria, Peter, and John the Evangelist with Angels (completed by 1493), from the Museo degli Innocenti, Florence. Several important paintings will undergo conservation treatment before the exhibition, including the Gallery's Visitation with Saints Nicholas of Bari and Anthony Abbot (c. 1489–1490)—one of the artist's largest surviving works.

Exhibition Highlights

Showcased throughout six galleries in the West Building, the paintings on view will include altarpieces, images for private devotion, portraits, and mythological and allegorical scenes—some produced as a series and reunited for the exhibition.

Several religious works influenced by Leonardo, such as the

Madonna and Child with Two Musician Angels (c. 1504–1507, Cini Collection),

will be on view alongside Piero's fanciful mythological inventions, including the renowned

Liberation of Andromeda (c. 1510–1513, Uffizi).

For many prominent families in Renaissance Florence, from the Capponi to the Strozzi, Piero created elaborate fables and singular mythological fantasies, the meanings of which continue to puzzle scholars. A strange and whimsical painting,

The Discovery of Honey (c. 1500, Worcester Art Museum),

will be reunited with

The Misfortunes of Silenus (c. 1500, Harvard Art Museums).

The Hunt

and The Return from the Hunt (both c. 1485–1500, The Metropolitan Museum of Art)

illustrate a struggle for survival between man, satyrs, and wild beasts, with the distinctions not altogether clear among them.

Another of Piero's best-known spalliera panels (paintings set into the wall as wainscoting at about shoulder height, or on large pieces of furniture)—

Construction of a Palace (c. 1514–1518, Ringling Museum of Art)—

will be on view, along with compelling portraits, including likenesses of the famed architect Giuliano da Sangallo and his father Francesco Giamberti (both c. 1482/1483, Rijksmuseum).

Four paintings will be on view only in Washington:

Vulcan and Aeolus (c. 1490, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa),

Madonna and Child with Saints Dominic, Nicholas of Bari, Peter, and John the Baptist (Pala del Pugliese) (c. 1481–1485, Saint Louis Art Museum),

Madonna and Child with Saints John the Baptist, Margaret, Martin, and Angels (c. 1515–1518, Philbrook Museum of Art, Tulsa),

and one intimately scaled work attributed to Piero,

Saint Veronica (c. 1510, private collection).

Piero di Cosimo (1462–1522)

As a pupil of Cosimo Rosselli, Piero di Cosimo began his career around 1480. A painter of the Florentine School and a contemporary of Botticelli, Leonardo, and Michelangelo, Piero was known in his day for his versatility as a painter of many different subjects, from the sacred to the profane, the latter often of beguiling meaning.

"His fantastic inventions rivaled the verses of the ancient poets whose myths and allegories he set out to transform in a wonderfully strange language all his own," said Gretchen Hirschauer, associate curator of Italian and Spanish paintings, National Gallery of Art.

The first and only exhibition on Piero di Cosimo in the United States was held in 1938 at the Schaeffer Galleries, New York, and included seven paintings attributed to the artist.

Curators and Catalogue

The curators of the exhibition in Washington are Gretchen Hirschauer, associate curator of Italian and Spanish paintings, National Gallery of Art; and Dennis Geronimus, associate professor of Italian Renaissance art history, New York University; assisted by Virginia Brilliant, The Ulla R. Searing Curator of Collections at The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota, Florida; and Elizabeth Walmsley, painting conservator, National Gallery of Art. At the Uffizi, the curators include Daniela Parenti, head of the department of medieval to quattrocento art, Uffizi; Serena Padovani, former director, Galleria Palatina, Palazzo Pitti; and independent scholar Elena Capretti, under the guidance of Uffizi director Antonio Natali.

A fully illustrated scholarly catalogue in English will accompany the exhibition in Washington. Essays and catalogue entries on each exhibition object have been written by Brilliant, Geronimus, Hirschauer, Padovani, and Walmsley, in addition to David Franklin, independent scholar; Alison Luchs, curator of early European sculpture, National Gallery of Art; Duncan Bull, curator of international paintings at the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam; and Federica Zalabra, art historian, Galleria Nazionale dell'Umbria, Perugia. Relying on close formal, technical, and textual analysis, the authors not only argue for specific interpretations and cases of authorship but also address the social and religious functions of image making in the period.

THE FRICK COLLECTION: COYPEL’S DON QUIXOTE TAPESTRIES,PAINTINGS,PRINTS,AND BOOKS

February 25 through May 17, 2015

Cervantes’s Don Quixote is considered by many to be among the greatest works of fiction ever written. From the publication in 1605 of the first of two volumes (the second followed ten years later, exactly 400 years ago), the novel enjoyed immense popularity. Reprints and translations spread across Europe, with the adventures of the knight Don Quixote and his companion, Sancho Panza, captivating the continental imagination and influencing both the performing and visual arts.

Coypel’s Don Quixote Tapestries: Illustrating a Spanish Novel in Eighteenth-Century France is devoted to a series of tapestries by Charles Coypel (1694−1752), painter to Louis XV, which illustrates twenty-eight of the novel’s most celebrated episodes and woven at the Gobelins Manufactory in Paris.

The exhibition includes three Gobelins tapestry panels from the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles and two Flemish tapestries inspired by Coypel from The Frick Collection, which have not been on view in more than ten years.

These are joined by five of Coypel’s original paintings (never before seen in New York), called cartoons (from the Italian cartone), that were used as full-scale preparatory designs for the tapestries, on loan from the Palais Impérial de Compiègne and the Musée Jacquemart-André, Paris.

The series is completed by eighteen prints and books from the Hispanic Society of America, New York.

An accompanying catalogue explores Coypel’s role in illustrating Don Quixoteand the circumstances that made his designsthe most renowned pictorial interpretations of the novel.

A rich program of lectures, seminars, and salon evenings explores the history of the novel and its 2influence on print, tapestry, film, ballet, and opera from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries.

The exhibition is organized by Charlotte Vignon, Curator of Decorative Arts, The Frick Collection, and is made possible by The Florence Gould Foundation with additional support from the Grand Marnier Foundation.

CHARLES COYPEL,ROYAL PAINTER TO LOUIS XV

Charles Coypel was born into a family of distinguished French painters. Both his grandfather, Noël Coypel (1628−1707), and his father, Antoine Coypel (1661−1722), were directors of the prestigious Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture, and, on several occasions, also produced paintings to be reproduced as tapestries at the Gobelins Manufactory. In 1715, Antoine was appointed First Painter to the King, a title Charles would inherit in 1747.

In 1714, the young Charles Coypel was asked to collaborate with the Gobelins Manufactory in what would become one of its most celebrated series of tapestries: The Story of Don Quixote. Between 1714 and 1734, he delivered twenty-seven paintings, and a last one in 1751, just before his death.

Coypel is believed to have selected the scenes and also determined the order in which he would paint them. Eight cartoons illustrate episodes from the first part of the novel—in which Don Quixote and Sancho Panza embark on foolish, often comical adventures—while the remaining twenty paintings illustrate scenes from the second part, in which the two protagonists evolve from buffoons to heroes.

For the selection of scenes and compositions, Coypel was influenced by contemporary French theater. By the early eighteenth century, numerous plays, ballets, and operas had retold and interpreted the adventures of Don Quixote for both the court and the popular audience. Coypel himself was a playwright, whose first two plays were inspired by Cervantes’s novel. Though not a success, Don Quichotte—written when Coypelwas only eighteen—demonstrates his familiarity with the tale. In 1720, when Coypel was painting the cartoons for the Gobelins, he wrote a second interpretation. Titled Les Folies de Cardenio, it was performed five times before the court, with the young Louis XV participating in the ballet. For the tapestry designs, Coypel created images of Don Quixote that would be familiar to theatrical audiences. His characters use gestures and postures seen on stage, and on several occasions, Coypel included a theater-like curtain(,

)THE STORY OF DON QUIXOTEAT THE GOBELINS ROYAL MANUFACTORY

Founded in 1663, the Gobelins Royal Manufactory produced sumptuous furnishings for the French king’s residences and lavish diplomatic gifts that spread his glory to foreign courts.

Woven nine times between 1717 and 1794, The Story of Don Quixoteis one of the Gobelins’s most celebrated tapestry series. The number of panels and the selection of Coypel’s scenes varied with each weaving. The first weaving (1717−19), for example, included the first fifteen scenes painted by Coypel while the eight weaving (1763−87) had sixty-seven panels, including three that are in the exhibition.

At least six panels of the fifth weaving were hung in the 1750s in Louis XV’s apartments in the Château de Marly. Others were presented as diplomatic gifts—like the three Getty panels in the exhibition—or purchased by distinguished clients. A total of about two hundred panels from The Story of Don Quixote were woven during the eighteenth century. Each panel presents a central scene by Coypel framed by a trompe-l’oeil carved and gilded wooden frame that appears to be hung on a wall covered in yellow or red fabric. The scenes are surrounded by a decorative border of flowers, animals, and other motifs related to the adventures of Don Quixote. This border, known as an alentour, was originally designed by Jean-Baptiste Belin de Fontenay père (1653−1717) and Claude Audran III (1658−1734).

Unlike Coypel’s scenes, which remained unchanged throughout the eighteenth century, the alentour was modified on six occasions to adapt to new tastes and fashions. All the versions, however, retain the initial idea of creating a highly decorative border that could be shortened in length, as this allowed the tapestries to be slightly adjustable in size, according to the taste or need of the owner.

Tapestries consist of warps—fixed threads, usually of undyed wool—and colored wefts that are interwoven with the base warp to create the image. The Don Quixote tapestries were woven on high-warp looms, with the exception of the seventh weaving, which was produced on low-warp looms. On high-warp looms, the warp threads were stretched vertically. In order to weave an exact reproduction of the painted scene, the cartoon was hung on a wall behind the weaver, who looked at the reflection in a mirror placed on the wall in front of him. Only a few cartoons have survived today, and most are in poor condition. Coypel’s Don Quixote scenes are no exception. Because of their enduring success, the paintings needed to be restored several times during the eighteenth century. Coypel’s hand is no longer visible on the cartoons used for multiple weavings, but those woven only once or twice—such as the examples presented in the exhibition—show most of their original surface.

THE ENDURING SUCCESS OF CHARLES COYPEL’S STORY OF DON QUIXOTE“

I’ll wager that before long there won’t be a tavern, an inn, a hostelry, or a barbershop where the history of our deeds isn’t painted.”

Uttered by Sancho Panza, these boastful words would prove prophetic. Charles Coypel’s paintings gained wide exposure and additional fame from a series of twenty-five black-and-white engravings made between 1723 and 1734 under his personal direction.(Fourteen arei ncluded in the exhibition.)

Printmakers worked from preparatory drawings made by Coypel after his own paintings, which explains the inscription Coypel invenit, (designed by Coypel) rather thanCoypel pinxit (painted by Coypel) at the lower left of each plate. Accessible to only a few wealthy patrons, the tapestries remained luxury items throughout the centuries while the engravings were affordable to a larger public. Thousands of sheets were printed and sold individually or in folios. Reproduced and reduced in size, the prints also illustrated other editions of Cervantes’s novel, not only in French but in English and Dutch as well. In 1746, the engravings after Coypel even became a substitute for Cervantes’s words in the lavish book of the Dutch publisher Pieter de Hondt, who cut part of the novel to accommodate the large plates. Four of these early editions are on view.

With this series of engravings, Coypel became the most influential eighteenth-century illustrator of Cervantes’s novel. Throughout the eighteenth century, Coypel’s designs continued to influence tapestry production in France and abroad. Around 1730−45, the Brussels workshop of Peter van den Hecke produced a series of eight tapestries illustrating Don Quixote, with six of them inspired by engravings after Coypel, two of which belong to The Frick Collection.

Visually different from the Gobelins Don Quixote tapestries, the scenes cover the entire surface of the tapestry panel and are surrounded by a simple border that simulates a carved and gilded frame. The designer of the cartoons, Philippe de Hondt, created the new compositions by adapting, or combining, elements from engravings after Coypel. Working within a Flemish tradition, de Hondt transposed Coypel’s figures to a village scene recalling pictures by David Teniers the Younger rather than setting his figures on an eighteenth-century French stage. Appreciated abroad, seven Van den Hecke panels, including the two Frick tapestries, were acquired by the French court in 1748, when the same court was sponsoring the production of the Gobelins Don Quixote tapestries. A year later, the Flemish tapestries were displayed at the Château de Compiègne in the study of Louis, Dauphin of France, son of Louis XV.With these two Flemish tapestries, the exhibition brings Coypel’s designs full circle—from the original cartoons to the woven Gobelins tapestries to reproductions in prints and books and later tapestries from the workshop of Peter van den Hecke.

PUBLICATION

The exhibition is accompanied by an illustrated catalogue written by Charlotte Vignon, the Frick’s Curator of Decorative Arts, with a forward by acclaimedliterarytranslator Edith Grossman.

Images

1.Workshop of Peter van den Hecke (Flemish, 1680−1752)after Philippe de Hondt(Flemish, 1683−1741)Arrival of the Shepherdesses at the Wedding of Camacho,1730−45 (before 1748)Wool and silk10 feet 3 inches x 18 feet 3 inches The Frick Collection, New York (1965.10.20)Photo: Michael Bodycomb

1a.Workshop of Peter van den Hecke (Flemish, 1680−1752)after Philippe de Hondt (Flemish, 1683−1741)Arrival of the Shepherdesses at the Wedding of Camacho (detail),1730−45 (before 1748)Wool and silk10 feet 3 inches x 18 feet 3 inches The Frick Collection, New York (1965.10.20)Photo: Michael Bodycomb

1b.Workshop of Peter van den Hecke (Flemish, 1680−1752)after Philippe de Hondt (Flemish, 1683−1741)Arrival of the Shepherdesses at the Wedding of Camacho (detail),1730−45 (before 1748)Wool and silk10 feet 3 inches x 18 feet 3 inches The Frick Collection, New York (1965.10.20)Photo: Michael Bodycomb

1c. Workshop of Peter van den Hecke (Flemish, 1680−1752)after Philippe de Hondt (Flemish, 1683−1741)Arrival of the Shepherdesses at the Wedding of Camacho (detail),1730−45 (before 1748)Wool and silk10 feet 3 inches x 18 feet 3 inches The Frick Collection, New York (1965.10.20)Photo: Michael Bodycomb

2.Workshop of Peter van den Hecke(Flemish, 1680−1752)after Philippe de Hondt (Flemish, 1683−1741)Sancho Departs for the Island of Barataria, 1730−45 (before 1748)Wool and silk10 feet 4 inches x 19 feet 5 inches The Frick Collection, New York (1965.10.21)Photo: Michael Bodycomb

2a. Workshop of Peter van den Hecke (Flemish, 1680−1752)after Philippe de Hondt (Flemish, 1683−1741)Sancho Departs for the Island of Barataria (detail), 1730−45 (before 1748)Wool and silk10 feet 4 inches x 19 feet 5 inches The Frick Collection,New York (1965.10.21)Photo: Michael Bodycomb

2b.Workshop of Peter van den Hecke (Flemish, 1680−1752)after Philippe de Hondt (Flemish, 1683−1741)Sancho Departs for the Island of Barataria (detail), 1730−45 (before 1748)Wool and silk10feet 4 inches x 19 feet 5 inchesThe Frick Collection, New York (1965.10.21)Photo: Michael Bodycomb

2c.Workshop of Peter van den Hecke (Flemish, 1680−1752)after Philippe de Hondt (Flemish, 1683−1741)Sancho Departs for the Island of Barataria (detail), 1730−45 (before 1748)Wool and silk10 feet 4 inches x 19 feet 5 inches The Frick Collection, New York (1965.10.21)Photo: Michael Bodycomb

3.Gobelins Tapestry Manufactory (French) under the direction of Michel Audran (French, 1701−1771) and his son Jean Audran fils(French, d. 1794)Main scene after Charles Coypel (French, 1694−1752); alentours after Claude Audran III (French, 1658−1734), Jean-Baptiste Belin de Fontenay fils(French, 1668−1730), and Alexandre-François Desportes (French, 1661−1743)The Cowardice of Sancho at the Hunt, 1772 Wool and silk; modern cotton support straps and lining12 feet 1 inch x 13 feet 4 inches The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles (82.DD.69)

4.Gobelins Tapestry Manufactory (French) under the direction of Michel Audran (French, 1701−1771) and his son Jean Audran fils(French, d. 1794)Main scene after Charles Coypel (French, 1694−1752); alentoursafter Claude Audran III (French, 1658−1734), Jean-Baptiste Belin de Fontenay fils(French, 1668−1730), and Alexandre-François Desportes (French, 1661−1743)Sancho Arrives on the Island of Barataria, 1772 Wool and silk; modern cotton support straps and lining12 feet 1 inch x 13 feet 7 inchesThe J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles (82.DD.68)

5.Gobelins Tapestry Manufactory (French) under the direction of Michel Audran (French, 1701−1771) and his son Jean Audran fils(French, d. 1794)Main scene after Charles Coypel (French, 1694−1752); alentours after Claude Audran III (French, 1658−1734), Jean-Baptiste Belin de Fontenay fils(French, 1668−1730), and Alexandre-François Desportes (French, 1661−1743)Don Quixote Delivered from Folly by Wisdom, 1773Wool and silk; modern cotton support straps and lining12 feet 2 inches x 12 feet 8 inches The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles (82.DD.66)

6.Charles Coypel (French, 1694−1752)Asleep, Don Quixote Fights the Wineskins, 1716Oil on canvas48 x 50 3/8 inches Palais Impérial de Compiègne; long-term loan from the Musée du Louvre, Paris (3560)Photo:©RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY

7.Charles Coypel (French, 1694−1752)The Distressed Countess Trifaldi, Afflicted by Her Beard, Implores Don Quixote toAvenge Her, probably 1716Oil on canvas48 3/8 x 51 inchesPalais Impérial de Compiègne; long-term loan from the Musée du Louvre, Paris (3575)Photo: ©RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY

8.Charles Coypel (French, 1694−1752)Don Quixote at Don Antonio Moreno's Ball, 1731Oil on canvas65 3/8 x 105 1/8 inches Palais Impérial de Compiègne; long-term loan from the Musée du Louvre, Paris (3566)Photo: ©RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY

9.Charles Coypel(French, 1694−1752)Don Quixote Consults the Enchanted Head at the House of Don Antonio Moreno, 1732 Oil on canvas621/4x 71 7/8 inchesPalais Impérial de Compiègne; long-term loan from the Musée du Louvre, Paris (3584)Photo: ©RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY

10.Charles Coypel (French, 1694−1752)Don Quixote Served by the Girls of the Inn, 1751Oil on canvas22 7/8 x 28 3/8 inches Musée Jacquemart-André, Paris —Institut de France (MJAP-P 2379)Photo: © Studio Sébert Photographes

Sotheby’s Surrealist Art Evening Sale 3rd February 2015

On 3 February 2015, Sotheby’s London will present masterworks of Surrealist Art in a dedicated Evening sale which will stand alongside the Impressionist & Modern Art Evening Sale.

The market for Surrealist Art has continued to grow from strength to strength in recent years, with new benchmarks set in the field at Sotheby’s each season, including the highest price at auction for any work by Salvador Dalí, Joan Miró, René Magritte and Francis Picabia.

James Mackie, Sotheby’s Senior Director, Impressionist & Modern Art, said: “This year’s dedicated Surrealist sale offers an extremely rich and broad range of works by the key names of the Surrealist art movement. The outstanding works, many of which are fresh to the market having remained in private collections for decades, have each been selected to represent the artists at their best.”

René Magritte
L’explication
oil on canvas 80 by 60cm, 31 1/2 by 23 5/8in. Painted in 1952 Estimate: £4 - 6 million

Important highlights of the forthcoming February sale include René Magritte’s L’explication, which comes to the market from a private collection for the first time in 35 years, Yves Tanguy’s extremely fine painting Deux fois du noir, and the finest group of Picabia's celebrated ‘Transparence’ paintings ever to come to the market.

Painted in 1952, Magritte’s L’explication is among his most compelling in engagements with the Surrealist interrogation and transformation of the object. The foreground of the composition is dominated by a striking amalgamation of bottle and carrot that sits on a solid wooden table surrounded by examples of its constituent parts, through which Magritte explores the idea that the combination of two related objects could create a poetic dynamic just as intense as the combination of two completely incongruous objects.

Yves Tanguy
Deux fois du noir
Oil on canvas
53.5 by 74cm, 21 by 291⁄8in.
ainted in 1941
Estimate: £2 - 3 million

Deux fois du noir exemplifies the refined and personal language with which Tanguy transformed the boundaries of Modernist painting. Tanguy was invited by André Breton to become a member of the Surrealist group in 1925 and two years laterhe was a highly accomplished painter in complete command of a new and personal Surrealist language. Tanguy's pictorial forms are unique in the canon of Surrealist art, amorphous yet somehow recognisable to the viewer. With a great sense of mystery, Tanguy presents in Deux fois du noir a brilliant hyper-reality that embodies the aims of the Surrealist movement.

Paul Delvaux
Le Train Bleu or La Rue Aux Tramways
Oil on board 122 by 244cm; 48 by 96in.
Painted in November 1946 Est. £2.5 - 3.5 million

Painted in November 1946, Paul Delvaux’s monumental work Le train bleu, alternatively known as La rue aux tramways, is one of the most important and remarkable paintings from the peak of his career. Although the artist was acquainted with the leading figures of the Surrealist group, including André Breton and Paul Eluard, his form of Surrealism remained unique. Capturing the modernity of the urban landscape juxtaposed with the sensuality of the nude form, this monumental work is an exceptional example of the paintings he was producing at this critical time in his oeuvre.

Óscar Domínguez
Toro y Torero (Composition au Taureau)
oil on canvas 106.8 by 77.5cm, 42 by 30 1/2in. Painted circa 1934-35 Estimate: £1.3-2 million

Toro y Torero is one of Óscar Domínguez’s most important compositions from the peak of the artist’s career, and works of such calibre rarely come to the market. Domínguez’s works from this period shares its magical, dreamlike aesthetic with other Surrealist painters such as Ernst and Dalí, but as with many of his Spanish compatriots, the subject of his production retained a strong nationalistic streak.

Toro y Torero is an especially important work in the artist’s œuvre because of its references to Spanish culture, religion and corrida (central to many Iberian artists’ depiction of conflict). The first owner
of Toro y Torero was the leader of the Surrealist group André Breton who possessed an outstanding collection of important works by avant-garde artists of the post-war period. Much of Breton’s collection has found its way into museums across the world, including the Musée National d’Art Moderne in Paris and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The present work remained in in his family until 2003, when his collection was sold at auction in Paris.

Francis Picabia
Lunaris
Oil, brush and ink and black crayon on panel 120 by 94.5cm; 471⁄4 by 371⁄4in.
Painted circa 1929
Est. £800,000 – 1.2 million

Painted circa 1929, Lunaris is an exceptional example of Picabia's celebrated ‘Transparence’ paintings that Picabia executed in the late 1920s and early 1930s. This series of works, which was a marked departure from the artist’s Dadist experiments of the previous decades, derived its name from the multiple layers of overlapping imagery that Picabia employed and is characterised by figurative images underpinned by a Classical beauty.

The first owner of the present work was the influential French art dealer Léonce Rosenberg (1879-1947) who greatly admired Picabia’s work and commissioned several paintings for his home.

As the Museum of Modern Art, New York announced a major Picabia retrospective, scheduled for November 2016, the sale will present two other ‘Transparence’ paintings, including

Lunis, also from circa 1929, (est. £800,000- 1,200,000)

and Espagnole et Agneau de l'Apocalypse, from circa 1927-1928 (est. £160,000-200,000).

René Magritte
Les belles réalités
Gouache on paper 34.5 by 26cm.; 131⁄2 by 101⁄4in Executed in 1962 Est. £700,000-1,000,000

Executed in 1962, Les belles réalités will now be offered at auction for the very first time. A witty and compelling example of Magritte’s preoccupation with the unexpected juxtaposition of objects, the painting features the most iconic element to appear in his work - that of the apple. Both the apple and table are closely associated with the tradition of still life painting, which make them the ideal subjects for a Surrealist work. The present work is remarkable for its bright tones and intricate brushwork which reveals the brilliant talent of the painter and the importance of gouache in his oeuvre.

Salvador Dali
Cinq personnages surréalistes: femmes à tête de fleurs, femme à tiroirs (évocation du jugement de paris)
Gouache, brush and ink on pink paper
48.9 by 63.8cm; 191⁄4 by 251⁄8in.
Executed in 1937
Est. £400,000 - 600,000

Executed in 1937 as a present for the renowned fashion designer Elsa Schiaparelli, this exquisite drawing exemplifies the blend of hyperrealism and surreal metamorphosis that was a hallmark of Dalí’s mature style. The work also brilliantly combines some of the artist’s most iconic transformations of the female figure. Dalí and Schiaparelli met in the 1930s and subsequently collaborated on a number of projects. The fashion designer owned a number of works by the artist, including both the present work – for which she apparently specified the use of pink paper – and the earlier oil Printemps nécrophilique.