Exhibited in the 1966 Venice Biennale, Untitled (Relief no. 21/52) (1964, estimate: £1,000,000-1,500,000) is an important early example of the white reliefs that brought Sergio Camargo to global prominence during this period…reports Asian Lite News
Launching the 20/21 Marquee Sale Weeks in 2022, Christies March season will establish a dialogue between the cities of London and Shanghai. The 20/21 Shanghai to London series of sales will also be live and live-streamed to our salerooms in Hong Kong and New York. This unique platform showcases the finest examples of art that span the dynamic art movements and artists of the 20th and 21st centuries.
Franz Marc’s 1913 masterpiece ‘The Foxes’, will be offered for sale at Christie’s on 1 March 2022 with a pre-sale estimate on request (in the region of £35,000,000). Filled with a vivid play of vibrant colour and prismatic form, ‘The Foxes’ is a masterpiece of Modernism, which has graced several great collections over the course of its life, most recently the Kunstpalast Museum in Dusseldorf, before its restitution to the heirs of Kurt and Else Grawi.
Masterpieces By Bacon And Freud: The School Of London
An extraordinary meditation on the passage of time, and a rhapsody on the solitude of the human condition, Triptych 1986-7 (1986-87, estimate: £35,000,000-55,000,000, illustrated page one) stands among Francis Bacon’s last great paintings. Across three monumental canvases, his most rare and celebrated format, he entwines imagery drawn from the annals of twentieth-century history with a poignant, retrospective view of his own life and art. In the year that marks the centenary of the artist’s birth, Lucian Freud’s masterpiece of frank, tender observation, ‘Girl with Closed Eyes’ (1986-87, £10,000,000-15,000,000,) will also make its auction debut.
The painting is among the most exquisite of Lucian Freud’s triumphant 1980s portraits. Reclined on a bed in the artist’s Holland Park studio, the sitter, Janey Longman, is caught as if in a reverie. In addition, a rare work on paper held in the same family collection for more than half a century, Lobster (1944, estimate: £1,300,000-1,800,000) is an exquisite showcase of Lucian Freud’s early practice.
“We are thrilled to launch the 20/21 Marquee Weeks this year. The 20th / 21st Century: London Evening Sale provides Christie’s London with a unique global platform, connecting our clients worldwide and offering them the opportunity to acquire exquisite masterpieces in a dialogue, which spans 150 years of pioneering artistic vision from Lucian Freud to Flora Yukhnovich and from Franz Marc to Jadé Fadojutimi. We look forward to welcoming clients in person and virtually from across the globe to our London galleries and saleroom,” say Keith Gill And Tessa Lord, Heads Of Sale, Christie’s 20th / 21st Century: London Evening Sale.
British Art: Riley, Hirst, Banksy And Brown
Offered from the Neumann Family Collection, Bridget Riley’s Reverse’ (1963, estimate: £3,000,000- ,000,000) alternates triangles of black and white across a hypnotic expanse. The painting was acquired in 1965 and has been unseen in public since then. Acquired from the artist in 1993, and held in the same private collection since, ‘Swimming Form in Endless Motion’ (1993, estimate: £1,400,000-1,800,000) is an early example from Damien Hirst’s ‘Science for All’ series, restaging the artist’s iconic use of the shark, first seen in ‘The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living’ (1991). Created in 1995, the year that Hirst won the Turner Prize, ‘Ashtray Head/Fallen Empire’ (estimate: £800,000-1,200,000) is a work which confronts mortality, combining elements to create a surreal and striking vanitas.
Executed in 2006, Happy Choppers (estimate: £3,000,000-5,000,000, illustrated below, right) is a rare painterly iteration of one of Banksy’s most iconic motifs. One of only three variations, it depicts a squadron of Apache Attack helicopters, or ‘choppers’. Originally part of the Saatchi Collection, Cecily Brown’s ‘The Girl Who Had Everything’ (1998, estimate: £3,500,000-5,500,000) captures the euphoric flourishing of the carnal, gestural abstraction that would come to define her oeuvre.
Portraiture: From Schiele To Boafo
Egon Schiele’s Stehender männlicher Akt mit verschränkten Armen (Selbstportrat) (1912, estimate: £1,500,000-2,500,000) is one of a spectacular group of nude self-portrait watercolours that explore the expressive potential of the lone, contorted figure as an entirely new means of portraiture and self-expression.
In Amoako Boafo’s’ Yellow Blanket’ (2018, estimate: £400,000-600,000) the artist depicts himself in elegant repose, absorbed in a book: reclined on the title’s yellow blanket, his lithe, supple figure has the grace of a neoclassical nude. Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s Jeune femme en costume oriental devant une table à thé (1909-10, estimate: £4,500,000-6,500,000) depicts a curvaceous young sitter, whose figure dominates the composition, assuming a relaxed pose and tranquil expression.
Charitable Collaborations
Exquisite works by Marc Chagall and Sergio Camargo are being sold to benefit the new Museu Vila de Vassouras, Rio de Janeiro, which will open in 2023 after four years of restoration and reconstruction of the old Hospital da Santa Casa de Vassouras. In L’esprit des roses (Au-dessus des fleurs) (1926, £2,200,000-3,200,000), Chagall enlarges the bouquet to enormous proportions, allowing it to fill the canvas with its vibrant play of pigment and thick, gestural brushstrokes.
Exhibited in the 1966 Venice Biennale, Untitled (Relief no. 21/52) (1964, estimate: £1,000,000-1,500,000) is an important early example of the white reliefs that brought Sergio Camargo to global prominence during this period. Painted in 1920, Composition (estimate: £5,000,000-7,000,000) encapsulates Fernand Léger’s renowned ‘mechanical period’, which served as a potent visual manifesto of the artist’s post-war beliefs and aims as an artist.
The painting is being offered by the Volkart Foundation, Switzerland to raise funds for their cultural programmes. The Berggruen Family Collection are offering Pablo Picasso’s Jeune homme de profil (1944, estimate: £100,000-150,000) to secure funding for New York’s Carnegie Hall. Following the sale of Cecily Brown’s There’ll be bluebirds in October 2021, Root (2016, estimate: £350,000-550,000) has been generously donated by Antony Gormley and White Cube as the part of the ongoing sale series Artists for ClientEarth. This landmark new collaborative initiative is designed to propel the art world in the fight against climate change and has raised more than £4,000,000 to date.
Contemporary Painting
Sparkling with supernatural mystery, D with Raven (2015, estimate: £20,000-30,000) is a compelling, jewel-like work by the Romanian painter Victor Man. The composition of Flora Yukhnovich’s Tu vas me faire rougir (You’re going to make me blush) (2017, estimate: £250,000-350,000) is derived from Jean-Honore Fragonard’s The Swing (c. 1767) (Wallace Collection, London). You Spell Me (2010, estimate: £150,000-200,000) is an early dreamscape by Shara Hughes demonstrating the complex, playful interior scenes which occupied her between 2006 and 2014, and which ultimately propelled her to international acclaim.
World Of Women
Woman #5672 (2021, estimate: £300,000-500,000) is one of the rarest in the World of Women’s 10k-piece collection, and the only NFT to be offered in the sale. The ethereal skin tone, combined with her crisp formal attire imbues her with the mystique of a Rene Magritte portrait, magnifying her powerful, otherworldly energy against a backdrop of swirling red and turquoise curves.
The Art Of The Surreal Evening Sale Pablo Picasso’s La Fenastre Ouverte
Presented at auction for the first time, La Fenãštre ouverte (1929, estimate: £14,000,000-24,000,000) is a large, seminal work from Pablo Picasso’s Surrealist period. Towering in the foreground of this painting are two highly abstracted figures. On the right stands a plaster bust of the artist’s great lover and muse of this time, Marie-Therese Walter. The object on the left is an abstracted, symbolic representation of Picasso himself forming the letter ‘E’, as in Espanol, and aiming the arrow of Cupid at his muse. Two spires of the church of Sainte-Clotilde are identifiable in the background. John Richardson, the artist’s biographer, has suggested that this work, therefore, depicts the recently discovered secret Left Bank apartment that Picasso and Marie-Therese shared as one of their hideaways during their clandestine relationship.
Olivier Camu, Deputy Chairman, impressionist and modern art, Christie’s, “Held in the same European collection for half a century, this powerful and explosively coloured painting from the highpoint of Picasso’s Surrealist period and two years into his clandestine love affair with Marie-Therese, represents a brilliant fusion of the different passions and inspirations that defined the artist’s life at the end of the 1920s. We are thrilled to present this powerful painting by Picasso to the market for the first time as a major highlight of the 21st edition of The Art of the Surreal Evening Sale. Having built the international appetite for Magritte paintings in this market-defining sale, dedicated to the art of the surreal, for more than two decades, we are delighted to offer five paintings that showcase the breadth of his exceptional vision. The group is led by the magical and mysterious La Lumiere du pole. The sale also includes masterpieces by Salvador Dali, Paul Delvaux, Max Ernst, Joan Miro, Francis Picabia, and Yves Tanguy, amongst others.”
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