1910
Except otherwise stated, all results include the premium.
See also : Kandinsky Russia Eastern Europe Brancusi Picasso 1907-31 US painting < 1940 Sculpture Bust Sculpture by painters Alps Sport in art Horse
See also : Kandinsky Russia Eastern Europe Brancusi Picasso 1907-31 US painting < 1940 Sculpture Bust Sculpture by painters Alps Sport in art Horse
masterpiece
1910 La Danse II by Matisse
Hermitage
La Danse I, painted in 1909, is a study for La Danse II.
hoax
1910 Coucher de Soleil sur l'Adriatique
Milly la Forêt
Le Lapin Agile is perfectly located in the heart of Montmartre, rue des Saules. Before 1900 its reputation had been sordid. Its name is a pun on the sign created by the cartoonist André Gill showing a happy rabbit jumping out of a pan.
Picasso arrives in Paris at the time when a new steward nicknamed Frédé organizes evenings in this cabaret during which poets, comedians and artists from Montmartre play music, sing, recite poems, chat with conviviality. Frédé plays guitar and cello.
In 1910 on the cabaret terrace, the writer Roland Dorgelès accompanied by an accomplice attaches brushes to the tail of Lolo, Frédé's donkey. In the presence of a bailiff, they dip the brushes in pots of orange, yellow, red and blue paint and offer the animal a carrot. The frantic movement of the tail creates on a 54 x 81 cm canvas the masterpiece titled Et le Soleil s'endormit sur l'Adriatique, signed J.R. Boronali, an anagram of Buridan's famous donkey, Aliboron. The image is shared by Wikimedia.
They exhibit this Sunset at the Salon des Indépendants as a manifesto of the Excessivisme. The fruitful debates that the hoax has aroused about the meaning of art are thus a direct consequence of the artists' meetings at the Lapin Agile. Painted in 1905, Picasso's Au Lapin Agile, a self portrait beside Germaine and Frédé, is a rare rendering of this environment. It was sold for $ 41M by Sotheby's on November 27, 1989.
Picasso arrives in Paris at the time when a new steward nicknamed Frédé organizes evenings in this cabaret during which poets, comedians and artists from Montmartre play music, sing, recite poems, chat with conviviality. Frédé plays guitar and cello.
In 1910 on the cabaret terrace, the writer Roland Dorgelès accompanied by an accomplice attaches brushes to the tail of Lolo, Frédé's donkey. In the presence of a bailiff, they dip the brushes in pots of orange, yellow, red and blue paint and offer the animal a carrot. The frantic movement of the tail creates on a 54 x 81 cm canvas the masterpiece titled Et le Soleil s'endormit sur l'Adriatique, signed J.R. Boronali, an anagram of Buridan's famous donkey, Aliboron. The image is shared by Wikimedia.
They exhibit this Sunset at the Salon des Indépendants as a manifesto of the Excessivisme. The fruitful debates that the hoax has aroused about the meaning of art are thus a direct consequence of the artists' meetings at the Lapin Agile. Painted in 1905, Picasso's Au Lapin Agile, a self portrait beside Germaine and Frédé, is a rare rendering of this environment. It was sold for $ 41M by Sotheby's on November 27, 1989.
1910 La Muse Endormie by Brancusi
2017 SOLD for $ 57M by Christie's
The art of Brancusi is too fundamental, too seminal and too personal to be associated with any artistic movement. Very gifted in his hands since his childhood, this son of poor Carpathian peasants arrived in Paris on foot in 1904. The period is exceptional : the artistic Parisian bubbling opens the way to his creativity.
He learns with Rodin that the human figure can be reduced to a single element. A head lying on a ground symbolizes the serenity. He appreciates from Gauguin that Oceanic tribal art can influence the modern universal art through its extreme simplification of forms. The skilled bearded strongman chooses the direct cut contrary to the practice of his time. He will influence Modigliani.
Brancusi began in 1907 to conceive his series of masterpieces. In Le Baiser he is the first artist who suggests a development of Cubism in sculpture.
In 1909 he creates the prototype of La Muse endormie in white marble. The lying head is an egg in which the facial features and the hair are only lightly incised. The nape of the neck is used as a support. Despite the stylization it is unquestionably a portrait of his model the baronne Frachon. The artist succeeded in the impossible synthesis between geometry and portraiture.
In 1910 Brancusi produces three plasters and six bronzes from his first Muse endormie. The bronzes are cast by Valsuani but the patina different in each of the bronzes is executed by the artist himself with a painstaking care.
On May 15, 2017, Christie's sold for $ 57M from a lower estimate if $ 20M one of the six bronzes, 27 cm long, lot 32 A. This specimen has an exceptional matte and warm patina enhanced in places with gold leaf which is perfectly suited to the illusion of serenity desired by the artist. Please watch the video shared by Christie's.
He learns with Rodin that the human figure can be reduced to a single element. A head lying on a ground symbolizes the serenity. He appreciates from Gauguin that Oceanic tribal art can influence the modern universal art through its extreme simplification of forms. The skilled bearded strongman chooses the direct cut contrary to the practice of his time. He will influence Modigliani.
Brancusi began in 1907 to conceive his series of masterpieces. In Le Baiser he is the first artist who suggests a development of Cubism in sculpture.
In 1909 he creates the prototype of La Muse endormie in white marble. The lying head is an egg in which the facial features and the hair are only lightly incised. The nape of the neck is used as a support. Despite the stylization it is unquestionably a portrait of his model the baronne Frachon. The artist succeeded in the impossible synthesis between geometry and portraiture.
In 1910 Brancusi produces three plasters and six bronzes from his first Muse endormie. The bronzes are cast by Valsuani but the patina different in each of the bronzes is executed by the artist himself with a painstaking care.
On May 15, 2017, Christie's sold for $ 57M from a lower estimate if $ 20M one of the six bronzes, 27 cm long, lot 32 A. This specimen has an exceptional matte and warm patina enhanced in places with gold leaf which is perfectly suited to the illusion of serenity desired by the artist. Please watch the video shared by Christie's.
1910-1939 Tête de Femme (Fernande) by Picasso
2022 SOLD for $ 48M by Christie's
During his summer of 1909 at Horta, Picasso made eight paintings and several drawings of his accompanying muse Fernande. In his search for a new artistic language that would supersede the reality by the emotion, he bored the 28 year old model.
Back in Paris and ever desiring to experiment techniques, he conceives a Cubist form of bust sculpture based on Fernande's features including her styled hair over the head. The clay is modeled so that the figure is going abstract from some angles of view.
Vollard acquires that clay in 1910 and creates a plaster from which he will have bronzes cast on request from customers up to his death in 1939 for an overall total of about 20 units. The foundry is rarely identified. The exhibition of that Tête de Femme by Vollard in his gallery certainly influenced the development of modern sculpture by Boccioni and Brancusi.
One of these 42 cm bronzes of the Tête de Femme (Fernande) is de-accessioned by the Met Museum which had another example gifted in 2021 by Leonard Lauder. It was sold for $ 48M by Christie's on May 12, 2022, lot 16C.
Back in Paris and ever desiring to experiment techniques, he conceives a Cubist form of bust sculpture based on Fernande's features including her styled hair over the head. The clay is modeled so that the figure is going abstract from some angles of view.
Vollard acquires that clay in 1910 and creates a plaster from which he will have bronzes cast on request from customers up to his death in 1939 for an overall total of about 20 units. The foundry is rarely identified. The exhibition of that Tête de Femme by Vollard in his gallery certainly influenced the development of modern sculpture by Boccioni and Brancusi.
One of these 42 cm bronzes of the Tête de Femme (Fernande) is de-accessioned by the Met Museum which had another example gifted in 2021 by Leonard Lauder. It was sold for $ 48M by Christie's on May 12, 2022, lot 16C.
1910 Murnau mit Kirche by KANDINSKY
1
II
2023 SOLD for £ 37M by Sotheby's
Wassily Kandinsky is back in 1910 in Murnau where his companion Gabriele Münter had bought a summer home in the previous year. Kandinsky is completing his quest for the new art, divided into elaborate compositions and spontaneous improvisations, soon afterward released as On the Spiritual in Art.
At that stage Kandinsky is still a landscape painter, but colors and forms supersede the realism. Murnau's dazzling colors are the beloved lab of his researches, including the dark violet woods and the saturated green of the foliage.
He makes a further step forward by considering that the verticals, while required to recognize a landscape, may be tilted. A church steeple or a factory chimney can play this role. A consequence is the canceling of the perspective, supporting his desired domination of color over representational and going closer to his end goal to mingle painting with poetry and music as a new harmonic art.
Murnau mit Kirche I, oil on board 67 x 50 cm, is anchored by the tilted steeple, but the real verticals are re-established in the foreground fence and absent in the background.
Murnau mit Kirche II, oil on canvas 96 x 105 cm, achieves that new trend by tilting the village and the mountains in a unique angle all around the same steeple.
This groundbreaking picture comes to the market as a restitution from a Nazi spoliation after seven decades spent in a museum in Eindhoven. It was sold for £ 37M by Sotheby's on March 1, 2023, lot 115. The image is shared by Wikimedia. Please watch the video shared by the auction house.
At that stage Kandinsky is still a landscape painter, but colors and forms supersede the realism. Murnau's dazzling colors are the beloved lab of his researches, including the dark violet woods and the saturated green of the foliage.
He makes a further step forward by considering that the verticals, while required to recognize a landscape, may be tilted. A church steeple or a factory chimney can play this role. A consequence is the canceling of the perspective, supporting his desired domination of color over representational and going closer to his end goal to mingle painting with poetry and music as a new harmonic art.
Murnau mit Kirche I, oil on board 67 x 50 cm, is anchored by the tilted steeple, but the real verticals are re-established in the foreground fence and absent in the background.
Murnau mit Kirche II, oil on canvas 96 x 105 cm, achieves that new trend by tilting the village and the mountains in a unique angle all around the same steeple.
This groundbreaking picture comes to the market as a restitution from a Nazi spoliation after seven decades spent in a museum in Eindhoven. It was sold for £ 37M by Sotheby's on March 1, 2023, lot 115. The image is shared by Wikimedia. Please watch the video shared by the auction house.
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for reference
I
Lanbachhaus München
The image is shared by Wikimedia.
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1910 Polo Crowd by Bellows
1999 SOLD for $ 27.5 M by Sotheby's
Crowds in New York are one of the favorite themes with which Georges Bellows shows enthusiasm, movement, play. In 1909 he adds sport. His boxing paintings show the action in progress, in a close-up snapshot that photography was only just beginning to be able to provide. The expressive style of the young artist marks his refusal of classicism.
Polo Crowd, oil on canvas 115 x 160 cm painted in 1910, confronts sport and its spectators. The game is on, including a prancing horse. The crowd, barely contained by light barriers, is made up of well-differentiated characters, as in real life. In a very dynamic contrast, peoples and horses appear bright against a very dark sky.
Bequeathed in 1998 by the Whitney estate to the Museum of Modern Art, Polo Crowd was sold by Sotheby's on December 1, 1999 for $ 27.5M from a lower estimate of $ 10M. It was purchased at that sale by Bill Gates who was to hang it in the lobby of his personal library. The image is shared by Artnet.
Polo Crowd, oil on canvas 115 x 160 cm painted in 1910, confronts sport and its spectators. The game is on, including a prancing horse. The crowd, barely contained by light barriers, is made up of well-differentiated characters, as in real life. In a very dynamic contrast, peoples and horses appear bright against a very dark sky.
Bequeathed in 1998 by the Whitney estate to the Museum of Modern Art, Polo Crowd was sold by Sotheby's on December 1, 1999 for $ 27.5M from a lower estimate of $ 10M. It was purchased at that sale by Bill Gates who was to hang it in the lobby of his personal library. The image is shared by Artnet.
1910 Portrait by Kokoschka
2018 SOLD for $ 20.4M by Sotheby's
From the beginning of his career as a playwright and artist in 1909, Oskar Kokoschka positions himself as a nonconformist and as a troublemaker. He is 23 years old and is called the chief of the savages by the Viennese press. His influence is decisive on Egon Schiele, four years younger than him.
The modernist architect Adolf Loos is another fighter of preconceived ideas. His girlfriend is tuberculous. He placed her in Switzerland in one of the most luxurious sanatoriums, used by the European aristocracy. In January 1910 Loos makes a long stay with his girlfriend. He is accompanied by Kokoschka.
This microcosm of characters weakened by the disease and their visitors who are hardly more beautiful inspires Kokoschka who paints a series of spontaneous portraits, without preparatory drawings. The models are not clients : the young artist is uncompromising and pitiless.
Psychology dominates over the technique, and it does not matter if impastos interplay with zones of very thin layers on the canvas. The result is the angular line, giving the impression of great nervousness, which will characterize the art of Kokoschka in all his themes throughout his career. In 1937 he was classified as a degenerate artist.
On November 12, 2018, Sotheby's sold for $ 20.4M from a lower estimate of $ 15M the portrait of Joseph de Montesquiou-Fezensac, oil on canvas 80 x 63 cm, lot 21. The quiet and sad aristocrat, aged 35, had come to the sanatorium for helping his wife Victoire whose portrait Kokoschka also made. The painting for sale has just been returned to the heirs of a Jewish art dealer to whom it had been confiscated in 1934.
The modernist architect Adolf Loos is another fighter of preconceived ideas. His girlfriend is tuberculous. He placed her in Switzerland in one of the most luxurious sanatoriums, used by the European aristocracy. In January 1910 Loos makes a long stay with his girlfriend. He is accompanied by Kokoschka.
This microcosm of characters weakened by the disease and their visitors who are hardly more beautiful inspires Kokoschka who paints a series of spontaneous portraits, without preparatory drawings. The models are not clients : the young artist is uncompromising and pitiless.
Psychology dominates over the technique, and it does not matter if impastos interplay with zones of very thin layers on the canvas. The result is the angular line, giving the impression of great nervousness, which will characterize the art of Kokoschka in all his themes throughout his career. In 1937 he was classified as a degenerate artist.
On November 12, 2018, Sotheby's sold for $ 20.4M from a lower estimate of $ 15M the portrait of Joseph de Montesquiou-Fezensac, oil on canvas 80 x 63 cm, lot 21. The quiet and sad aristocrat, aged 35, had come to the sanatorium for helping his wife Victoire whose portrait Kokoschka also made. The painting for sale has just been returned to the heirs of a Jewish art dealer to whom it had been confiscated in 1934.
1910 Weidende Pferde by Marc
2008 SOLD for £ 12.3M by Sotheby's
Franz Marc was convinced that beauty is not a characteristic of man but of nature. Illustrator of animals and landscapes, he was then influenced by the expressive lines of van Gogh and by the pure colors of Gauguin. Marc attributes to his animals symbolic colors devoid of any realism unlike his own landscapes and the Fauvist practice of excessive color.
Grosse Landschaft I (large landscape I) shows a group of mares. This oil on canvas 110 x 212 cm painted in 1909 passed at Sotheby's on February 3, 2016 with a lower estimate of £ 4M, lot 6. The main theme of this artwork is not indeed the landscape, a very ordinary meadow, but the group of four horses in attentive attitudes, all in the same color between orange and light red.
The meeting of Kandinsky and Marc in September 1910 is highly important for modern art. The quest for a new symbolism by Marc influenced the hermetic researches of Kandinsky.
Marc tries in his turn to codify his own colors for exacerbating the feelings. He uses Fauvist colors with a symbolist code of his invention : blue for the authoritarian male and yellow for the sweet female when they are peaceful, and dark red to express an antithesis that breaks the harmony of nature, for example revolt and violence.
Their movement is identified from late 1911 as the Blaue Reiter, a striking image that symbolizes in two words the new art better than the complex theories of Kandinsky could have done.
Franz Marc rejects the modern life which is dominated by the machine. He seeks truth in Nature. His work displays a great diversity of animals, whose symbiosis with nature is a support for a harmony of forms.
The horse occupies the best place in Marc's art. The natural attitude of this animal is varied but always elegant. A group of horses is the pretext for building a perfect balance. With an image brought by Kandinsky, the horse becomes a powerful symbol of modern art when the two artists create the Der Blaue Reiter movement in 1911.
Weidende Pferde III (grazing horses III) stages four fiery males, each one in another attitude. The coats are red but manes and tails are blue. This oil on canvas 61 x 92 cm painted in 1910 was sold for £ 12.3M by Sotheby's on February 5, 2008 from a lower estimate of £ 6M, lot 13.
Grosse Landschaft I (large landscape I) shows a group of mares. This oil on canvas 110 x 212 cm painted in 1909 passed at Sotheby's on February 3, 2016 with a lower estimate of £ 4M, lot 6. The main theme of this artwork is not indeed the landscape, a very ordinary meadow, but the group of four horses in attentive attitudes, all in the same color between orange and light red.
The meeting of Kandinsky and Marc in September 1910 is highly important for modern art. The quest for a new symbolism by Marc influenced the hermetic researches of Kandinsky.
Marc tries in his turn to codify his own colors for exacerbating the feelings. He uses Fauvist colors with a symbolist code of his invention : blue for the authoritarian male and yellow for the sweet female when they are peaceful, and dark red to express an antithesis that breaks the harmony of nature, for example revolt and violence.
Their movement is identified from late 1911 as the Blaue Reiter, a striking image that symbolizes in two words the new art better than the complex theories of Kandinsky could have done.
Franz Marc rejects the modern life which is dominated by the machine. He seeks truth in Nature. His work displays a great diversity of animals, whose symbiosis with nature is a support for a harmony of forms.
The horse occupies the best place in Marc's art. The natural attitude of this animal is varied but always elegant. A group of horses is the pretext for building a perfect balance. With an image brought by Kandinsky, the horse becomes a powerful symbol of modern art when the two artists create the Der Blaue Reiter movement in 1911.
Weidende Pferde III (grazing horses III) stages four fiery males, each one in another attitude. The coats are red but manes and tails are blue. This oil on canvas 61 x 92 cm painted in 1910 was sold for £ 12.3M by Sotheby's on February 5, 2008 from a lower estimate of £ 6M, lot 13.
VAN DONGEN
Intro
Kees van Dongen is the painter of the pleasures of life, with humor and eroticism. Coming from the harbor of Rotterdam, he settles in Paris in 1899 and paints scenes and portraits of cabaret. He uncovers the breasts of enticing women at the border of vulgarity.
The Fauvistes were naturally appealed by the bold colors of exoticism. Matisse made a fortnight stay in Algeria in 1906. In his Parisian studio, van Dongen dreams of semi-nude women in Orientalist attire.
Anita en Almée, oil on canvas 195 x 114 cm featuring a gypsy belly dancer in 1908, was sold for £ 4.1M by Christie's on June 23, 2015, lot 21. Lailla, oil on canvas 130 x 97 cm executed in the same year, was sold for £ 3.7M by Sotheby's on June 19, 2012, lot 14. That fancy name is derived from a traditional Moroccan song.
The Fauvistes were naturally appealed by the bold colors of exoticism. Matisse made a fortnight stay in Algeria in 1906. In his Parisian studio, van Dongen dreams of semi-nude women in Orientalist attire.
Anita en Almée, oil on canvas 195 x 114 cm featuring a gypsy belly dancer in 1908, was sold for £ 4.1M by Christie's on June 23, 2015, lot 21. Lailla, oil on canvas 130 x 97 cm executed in the same year, was sold for £ 3.7M by Sotheby's on June 19, 2012, lot 14. That fancy name is derived from a traditional Moroccan song.
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1910 Gitane
2010 SOLD for £ 7.1M by Christie's
In 1910 Van Dongen travels to see the Southern women on the spot in Spain and North Africa.
Gitane, oil on canvas 100 x 81 cm, , dates from this period. features a beautiful and rather unfriendly Spanish gypsy woman in traditional dress, brown, proud.
It was sold for £ 7.1M from a lower estimate of £ 5.5M by Christie's on February 2, 2010. It is shown in the release shared by AuctionPublicity.
Gitane, oil on canvas 100 x 81 cm, , dates from this period. features a beautiful and rather unfriendly Spanish gypsy woman in traditional dress, brown, proud.
It was sold for £ 7.1M from a lower estimate of £ 5.5M by Christie's on February 2, 2010. It is shown in the release shared by AuctionPublicity.
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1910 Ouled Nail
2008 SOLD for £ 5.6M by Christie's
A Tunisian Ouled Naid, oil on canvas 100 x 82 cm painted painted by Van Dongen in 1910, was sold for £ 5.6M by Christie's on February 4, 2008, lot 5.
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1910-1911 Jeune Arabe by Van Dongen
2009 SOLD for $ 13.8M by Sotheby's
Painted in 1910-1911 by Van Dongen from the same Southern trip, Jeune Arabe, a bare chested portrait of a teenager boy, is a come back to the earlier days of Fauvisme with a stylized line and an extravagant cadmium red skin.
This oil on canvas 102 x 65 cm was sold for $ 13.8M from a lower estimate of $ 7M by Sotheby's on November 4, 2009, lot 7.
This oil on canvas 102 x 65 cm was sold for $ 13.8M from a lower estimate of $ 7M by Sotheby's on November 4, 2009, lot 7.
1910 Schokko by Jawlensky
2008 SOLD for £ 9.4M by Sotheby's
Fauvism, better than Impressionism, can be applied to all pictorial themes. The pioneers for the portrait are Kees van Dongen and Alexej von Jawlensky. Attentive to new theories, Jawlensky spent two summers in Murnau with Kandinsky and their respective companions, Marianne and Gabriele, in 1908 and 1909. Thick lines delimit zones of wild colors, through which expression prevails over the transcription of nature.
Jawlensky takes as a model a very young woman from a Bavarian village. The workshop is cold and she asks for a cup of hot chocolate. The artist nicknames her Schokko. He likes to dress her with extravagant hats which are pretexts for new color studies. He paints Schokko in the Red Hat in 1909.
Schokko with Wide Hat, oil on cardboard 75 x 65 cm stretched on canvas painted in 1910, was sold by Sotheby's for $ 8.3M on November 5, 2003, lot 20, and for £ 9.4M on February 5, 2008, lot 8. The image is shared by Wikimedia.
The portrait of Helene with a Green Fan, oil on panel 65 x 54 cm painted in 1912, already announces the post-Cubist stylization of the next phase. It was sold for $ 11.3M by Sotheby's on May 3, 2011, lot 12.
The artist kept these two examples from this period of explosive creativity until his death.
Jawlensky takes as a model a very young woman from a Bavarian village. The workshop is cold and she asks for a cup of hot chocolate. The artist nicknames her Schokko. He likes to dress her with extravagant hats which are pretexts for new color studies. He paints Schokko in the Red Hat in 1909.
Schokko with Wide Hat, oil on cardboard 75 x 65 cm stretched on canvas painted in 1910, was sold by Sotheby's for $ 8.3M on November 5, 2003, lot 20, and for £ 9.4M on February 5, 2008, lot 8. The image is shared by Wikimedia.
The portrait of Helene with a Green Fan, oil on panel 65 x 54 cm painted in 1912, already announces the post-Cubist stylization of the next phase. It was sold for $ 11.3M by Sotheby's on May 3, 2011, lot 12.
The artist kept these two examples from this period of explosive creativity until his death.
