PANORAMA: A NEW PERSPECTIVE Picasso-Sotheby’s Impressionist, Modern and Contemporary ar

Sotheby’s  Hong  Kong
9th March to  3rd April

Panorama: A New Perspective – a selling exhibition featuring over  40 paintings and sculptures by the  foremost  names  in  Impressionist,  Modern  and  Contemporary  art  – will  open  to  the  public  from 29th March to  3rd April , alongside Sotheby’s Spring  2018  Hong  Kong  Sale  Series.  

The  show  will  be  led  by  four  powerful works by Pablo Picasso, spanning 50 years of the artist’s extraordinary career and all  coming  direct  from  the  collection  of  the  artist’s  grand - daughter,  Marina  Picasso.  These  will  be  presented  in  tandem  with other  major  works  by  established  m asters  such  a s  Salvador  Dalí ,  Marc  Chagall,  Pierre  Bonnard ,  Willem  de  Kooning, Alexander  Calder and  Gerhard  Richter.  Together,  the  group of works to be exhibited carries a total value in excess of HK$ 1.6 billion / US$ 200 million.

Helena  Newman,  Co - Head  of  Impressionist  &  Modern  Art  Worldwide,  said: “ Current demand  for  Picasso’s work is extraordinarily strong,  as seen most recently in London  when our sale of

 

Pablo Picasso’s Femme au béret et à la robe quadrillée (Marie-Thérèse Walter)

a fabulous 1937 painting of Marie - Thérèse Walter dominated a hugely successful fortnight for the artist."


Marina Picasso commented: “ I’m very excited to be showing a select group of works from my collection in Asia, an area of the world with which I’m passionately engaged, both at a personal level 3 and via my charitable activities. My grand - father’s work has enjoyed a global appreciation for many years now, and I ’m sure he would have been delighted by the idea that his legacy is currently the subject of such particular interest in Asia .”


FOUR WORKS FROM THE COLLECTION OF MARINA PICASSO




Pablo Picasso Homme à la pipe assis et amour signed Picasso upper left; dated 17 - 2 - 1969 on the reverse oil on canvas 195.5 by 96.5 cm. 


Conceived on a grand scale and painted with extraordinary energy, Homme à la pipe assis et amour is a superb example of the creative force which characterised Picasso’s late years. This work stands as a defiant tribute to the heroic figure of the matador, a life - long obsession of Picasso’s and one of the most important themes throughout his career. The matador was one of a cast of characters deployed by the artist as a means of projecting different aspects of his own identity. By including the figure of Cupid, Picasso emphasises the matador’s potency, at a time in his life when he had begun to contemp late his own mortalilty . Large - scale late paintings by the artist, featuring matadors, rarely come to the market and are highly sought after. The last work of comparable scale and quality to be offered at auction was 


Mousquetaire à la pipe, sold by Sotheby’s in New York for $30.1 million in 2013.

 



Pablo Picasso Enfant jouant, Claude, 1952 dated 15.4.52. on the reverse oil on canvas 65 by 54 cm.


 
An extraordinary work that has ne ver been seen in public before and is totally fresh to the market, this painting of Picasso’s son, Claude, remained in the artist’s collection until his death in 1973 and then passed into the collection of his granddaughter, Marina Picasso. Born in 1947 to Picasso and his then lover, Françoise Gilot, Claude would have bee n five years old when this monochrome painting was produced. Picasso often drew or painted Claude and his younger sister Paloma, playing or reading together at home in Vallauris in the South of France. These tender, intimate portraits of his children are s ome of the most expressively powerful works that Picasso made during the 1950s. A painting of Paloma, dated 1954, was recently offered at auction, where it double d its pre - sale low estimate.




Pablo Picasso Femme à la robe verte (Femme Fleur) , 1946 o il on panel 101 by 81.5 cm. 


Painted in 1946, Femme à la robe (Femme Fleur) belongs to a period of Picasso’s work characterised by an increasing energy and artistic freedom after the war years. The work depicts Françoise Gilot who Picasso met in 1943, during his tumultuous relationship with Dora Maar. They settled in the south of France in the year this painting was produced, and the period that followed was marked by great personal fulfilment, during which Picasso was devoted to his family, including the couple’s two children, Claude and Paloma.

 


Pablo Picasso Tête (Nature morte à la guitare) , 1927 - 28 oil on canvas 60 by 73 cm.


Picasso was an enormously rich and varied artist, experimenting, over the course of his long career, with a host of different painterly styles, and quickly absorbing the artistic influences of those around him. While many of his ‘styles’ were unique entirely to him, others – such as cubism, classicism and surrealism - were more obviously connected to artistic and literary movements of the moment.

First fully articulated in French writer and poet André Breton’s Surrealist manifesto of 1924, the concept of Surrealism evolves ar ound irrational connections, chaos, surprise, and the heightened reality of dreams. Although Picasso never officially joined the Surrealist movement, Tête , painted between 1927 and 1928, dates from that first moment when his work begins to show signs of th e influence of the French surrealist thinkers around him. Here, a fluid surrealist line and strong concentrated imagery are set against a schematic background that harks back to Cubism. Major oils from Picasso’s Surrealist period are exceedingly rare and much sought - after on the market, as witnessed by the strong price achieved in London this season when

 Figure ,  of  1930,  made  $11m  against an estimate of $4 - 7m.

FURTHER HIGHLIGHTS



Salvador Dalí Las Llamas, llaman  signed, dated and dedicated pour Monsieur et Madame Audrey Leray W. Berdeau  affectueusement 

 Willem de Kooning Untitled oil on canvas 137.1 by 152.4 cm. Executed in 1977.




Marc Chagall Le cirque  - l'écuyère  signed  Marc Chagall and dated  1957 lower right oil on canvas 150.8 by 99.7 cm.




Gerhard Richter Karmin signed,  dated  1994 and numbered  810 - 1 on the reverse oil on canvas 200 by 200  cm.





Pierre Bonnard Marthe et son chien assise devant une table signed  oil on canvas 43.3 by 44.2 cm Executed  circa 1930.




Josef Albers Study for Homage to the Square signed  with  the  artist’s  monogram  and  dated  72 ; stamped, titled   and  variously   inscribed   on   the  reverse oil on Masonite 60.9 by 60.9 cm.