SOTHEBY’S SPRING EVENING SALE OF IMPRESSIONIST & MODERN ART TO FEATURE: Works by Picasso Spanning 7 Decades, Led by Tête de Marie-Thérèse (Estimate $15/20 Million) ** Iconic Sculpture by Giacometti, Featuring His Legendary La Place (Estimate $12/18 Million) ** Classic Impressionist Canvases by Monet From Giverny, Normandy and Rouen ** Previously Unrecorded Works by Miró Emerging from a Vault for the First Time in Half a Century ** Bold Paintings by Matisse, Picasso and Léger From a Private American Collection NEW YORK, 7 MAY 2014 Our Coverage Sponsored by Stribling and Associates
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Sotheby’s spring Evening Sale of Impressionist & Modern Art will be held in New York on 7 May 2014. A significant selection of highlights from the sale will be on view in Sotheby’s London galleries beginning tomorrow through 15 April, before returning to New York for exhibition in Sotheby’s York Avenue galleries beginning 2 May.
ALBERTO GIACOMETTI: ICONS OF 20TH CENTURY ART
Following Sotheby’s sale of Alberto Giacometti’s Grande tête mince (Grande tête de Diego) for $50 million in November 2013 – the highest price for a work of art in any Impressionist & Modern Art auction last year worldwide – the May sale will offer four sculptures and one oil by the artist. The selection is led by La Place, Giacometti’s first multi-figural sculpture, which stands as one of his most powerful representations of psychological isolation and vulnerability (est. $12/18 million*). Reconciling the quiet life of the mind with the cacophony of urban existence was of central concern to the Existentialist movement in post-war France, and Giacometti was at the forefront in his investigation of this dilemma. La Place, which he conceived and cast in 1948, is the most provocative of his sculptural interpretations of this concept.
SEVEN DECADES OF WORK BY PABLO PICASSO
The May auction will offer an impressive selection of 14 works by Pablo Picasso, with examples reaching across his remarkable career – from an early drawing dated to 1900, through a late oil painting from 1969. The group features Tête de Marie-Thérèse from 1932, a radiant example of his paintings depicting his beloved mistress of the early 1930s (est. $15/20 million). The present example may be counted among the most painterly and expressive of these pictures, created when Marie-Thérèse was firmly at the center of Picasso's artistic universe. Tête de Marie-Thérèse was part of Jacqueline Picasso’s private collection of paintings, drawings and sculptures that her late husband had bequeathed her. Jacqueline generously gifted this work to William Rubin, director of prestigious department of painting and sculpture at New York’s Museum of Modern Art.
CLAUDE MONET IN THE GARDEN, BY THE SEA AND IN THE CITY
The Evening Sale will offer three impressive canvases by Impressionist master Claude Monet, including Le pont japonais which he painted at Giverny from 1918–24 (est. $12/18 million). Monet’s spectacular images of the Japanese bridge spanning the lily pond of his lush garden are among the most recognizable images of 20thcentury art. These pictures capture the mystique of the meticulously-landscaped environment that served as Monet’s inspiration during his later career. The present picture, which is one of the most richly painted in the series, can be seen in a photograph of the artist’s Giverny studio, where it hangs in completion among other notable examples of the artist’s late production.
Monet’s Sur la falaise à Pourville – on offer from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, sold to benefit its acquisitions fund – was one of the first major Impressionist landscapes to arrive in the United States (est. $5/7 million). The picture was purchased shortly after its completion in 1882 by the artist’s Parisian dealer Durand-Ruel, who was instrumental in establishing Monet’s reputation throughout Europe and abroad. In 1886, the work was acquired by William H. Fuller, the director of the National Wallpaper Company and a devoted early collector of Monet’s art, who organized the first American exhibition of the artist’s paintings at the Union Club in New York in 1891. This show effectively introduced Monet to an American audience which would include some of his most important patrons.
In addition to works by Monet, classic Impressionist canvases include a number of female portraits emerging from a Japanese Private Collection, with canvases by Auguste Renoir, Edward Degas and Pierre Bonnard among others.
REDISCOVERED WORKS BY JOAN MIRÓ
Three previously-undocumented works by Joan Miró that have been hidden in a vault for half a century will emerge for the first time in Sotheby’s Impressionist & Modern Art sale this May. The collection features an extraordinary oil composition painted by Miró specifically for the acclaimed filmmaker and photographer Thomas Bouchard and his daughter Diane. Thomas’s undistributed documentary Around and About Joan Miró captures the artist at work on Sans titre (est. $4/6 million), which he then gave directly to the Bouchards along with two other works to be offer in the Day Sale on 8 May. The film offers a fascinating look at Miró’s artistic process.
PROPERTY FROM THE ESTATE OF JAN KRUGIER
Following the success of works from the private collection of legendary dealer Jan Krugier at Sotheby’s London this February – all lots sold for a remarkable $122 million – the May Evening Sale will offer 12 additional works from the collection spanning from a 1892 oil by Claude Monet to a panel by Balthus from 1983. The group is led by Alberto Giacometti’s Femme de Venise V (est. $6/8 million), number five in the artist’s celebrated series of nine standing figures of a female nude, collectively known as the Femmes de Venise. These standing women are perhaps Giacometti’s best known works, regarded by many as the artist’s most significant contribution to art of the 20th century. The Femmes de Venise are direct descendants of the elongated female figures which Giacometti had been working on in the 1940s, and precursors of the larger female figures that he would execute in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
A PRIVATE AMERICAN COLLECTION
David Norman, Co-Chairman of Sotheby’s Impressionist & Modern Art Department Worldwide, commented: “We are thrilled to offer works by three of the greatest masters of 20th century art, each of which exemplifies the artist’s output at a critical moment in their career. Matisse, Picasso and Léger in their unique manner so distinctively catapulted the representation of the figure in to the Modern Age. These paintings, resplendent in color and bold in design, which were respectively executed in successive decades from the 1920s to 40s, resonate with today’s global audience of collectors and connoisseurs.”
Henri Matisse’s La Séance du matin (est. $20/30 million) depicts the artist’s studio assistant Henriette Darricarrère, whose own interest in painting he encouraged by offering her lessons during their working time together. In another version of this same subject, now in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, Matisse depicts a nude model alongside the studious painter. The present composition instead features Henriette alone, completely absorbed in her own work. The canvas boasts all of the elements of the artist's most desirable Nice-period paintings, with its colorful patterning and gleaming white highlights, and has gone on to become one of Matisse's most beloved canvases from this period. Outside of the American Collection, important works by Matisse on offer in May include La Femme en jaune, another exceptional portrait from the artist’s early Nice-period (est. $9/15 million).
Le Sauvetage represents the largest and most highly developed treatment of a theme which emerged from Pablo Picasso’s memories of the summer spent at the beach with his young mistress, Marie-Thérèse Walter, at Dinard in 1928 (est. $14/18 million). The dramatic scene depicts a drowned woman being rescued, inspired perhaps by an event in which Marie Thérèse participated or reported to Picasso, while figures swim and play on the beach. The exuberant and dream-like quality of the composition is heightened by the saturated pigments, independent planes of color and the fantastical cavorting bathers that swirl around the center of the canvas. Le Sauvetage last appeared at auction at Sotheby’s New York in 2004, when it was acquired by the present owners – prior to that sale, it had remained in another European private collection for 40 years.
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*Estimates do not include buyer’s premium and prices achieved include the hammer price plus buyer’s premium.
