1914
Except otherwise stated, all results include the premium.
See also : France Germany II Schiele Russia and Eastern Europe Brancusi Picasso 1907-1931 Gris Music and dance Monet Bassin aux nymphéas Léger Kandinsky
See also : France Germany II Schiele Russia and Eastern Europe Brancusi Picasso 1907-1931 Gris Music and dance Monet Bassin aux nymphéas Léger Kandinsky
masterpiece
1914 Canto d'Amore by De Chirico
MoMA
This painting by De Chirico staging uncorrelated objects is a precursor to the Surrealism. The main focus is a small wall on which is mounted a Greek marble head of Apollo and a surgeon's glove. A green ball is added in the foreground. A train is outlined on the horizon.
The French title, le Chant d'Amour, refers to a poem by Apollinaire.
The French title, le Chant d'Amour, refers to a poem by Apollinaire.
1914-1917 Nymphéas by MONET
1
2018 SOLD for $ 85M by Christie's
In 1912, aged 71, Monet suddenly loses the vision in his right eye blinded by cataract. This illness could have been a disaster for his career as an artist, and for his passion to show in his paintings the transparent surface of the water.
1914 is a terrible year. His son Jean dies in February, less than three years after Alice. International relations are desperate. Fortunately his friend Georges Clemenceau pushes him back to work by suggesting the project of the Grandes Décorations.
This new phase includes a major modification in Monet's art, the use of large formats of canvas. He looks more closely at the details of the flowers in his garden. A group of giant iris at water's edge 200 x 100 cm was sold for £ 10.8M by Christie's on June 23, 2015, lot 12.
The idea is ahead of his time. The artwork must wrap the viewer to the point of making him forget the actual environment of the exhibition room. The means chosen by Monet is to align the views of the pond after removing the horizon. Only remain the flowers and the reflecting of foliage in the water. He worked hard to the project from 1914 to 1917. This goal to wrap the viewer in the subject will be the thread of the art of the great colourist of Abstract Expressionism, Mark Rothko, four decades later.
On May 8, 2018, Christie's sold for $ 85M as Nymphéas en fleur, oil on canvas 140 x 180 cm painted in his signature style of 1914-1917, lot 10. The large size enables here a synthesis of the two visions of the artist. Nine big flowers in five groups have retrieved the details of the earliest series while the leaves and reflections are positioning the surface of the water on the whole of this image with no horizon.
A large oil on canvas of this period, 130 x 200 cm, was sold for £ 9M by Sotheby's on February 5, 2013. Its composition is uncommon within the suite of Monet's Nymphéas, perhaps in conjunction with his loss of depth perception. Flowers fill the foreground in only one group. The artist had accustomed to offer several groups to generate the perspective. He compensates by sprawling grass, coming from nowhere, and whose reflection extends to the flowers.
1914 is a terrible year. His son Jean dies in February, less than three years after Alice. International relations are desperate. Fortunately his friend Georges Clemenceau pushes him back to work by suggesting the project of the Grandes Décorations.
This new phase includes a major modification in Monet's art, the use of large formats of canvas. He looks more closely at the details of the flowers in his garden. A group of giant iris at water's edge 200 x 100 cm was sold for £ 10.8M by Christie's on June 23, 2015, lot 12.
The idea is ahead of his time. The artwork must wrap the viewer to the point of making him forget the actual environment of the exhibition room. The means chosen by Monet is to align the views of the pond after removing the horizon. Only remain the flowers and the reflecting of foliage in the water. He worked hard to the project from 1914 to 1917. This goal to wrap the viewer in the subject will be the thread of the art of the great colourist of Abstract Expressionism, Mark Rothko, four decades later.
On May 8, 2018, Christie's sold for $ 85M as Nymphéas en fleur, oil on canvas 140 x 180 cm painted in his signature style of 1914-1917, lot 10. The large size enables here a synthesis of the two visions of the artist. Nine big flowers in five groups have retrieved the details of the earliest series while the leaves and reflections are positioning the surface of the water on the whole of this image with no horizon.
A large oil on canvas of this period, 130 x 200 cm, was sold for £ 9M by Sotheby's on February 5, 2013. Its composition is uncommon within the suite of Monet's Nymphéas, perhaps in conjunction with his loss of depth perception. Flowers fill the foreground in only one group. The artist had accustomed to offer several groups to generate the perspective. He compensates by sprawling grass, coming from nowhere, and whose reflection extends to the flowers.
#AuctionUpdate Claude Monet’s ‘Nymphéas en fleur’ achieves $84,687,500, a new #WorldAuctionRecord for the artist!https://t.co/G5xBg3xpbT pic.twitter.com/LD6tGMAVvX
— Christie's (@ChristiesInc) May 9, 2018
#LiveLikeARockefeller: ‘The closer you get to the canvas, the more you feel like you’re inside it. The rest of the world vanishes,’ says Rebecca Wei, our President of Christie’s Asia, of the Rockefellers’ ‘Nymphéas en fleur’ by Claude #Monet.https://t.co/mT8EnKHNAN pic.twitter.com/LrOsMEJU7F
— Christie's (@ChristiesInc) April 24, 2018
2
2024 SOLD for $ 66M by Sotheby's
The Nymphéas opus 1789 in the nomenclature of Wildenstein was painted by Monet in the same style and similar size as the 1790 narrated above. It belongs to the period 1914-1917 and was probably begun in 1914.
The groups of flowers are more scattered but the reflection of the surrounding trees is similar. They are made of touches of white, pink and yellow in a luscious surrounding of purples and blues.
This oil on canvas 175 x 135 cm was sold for $ 66M by Sotheby's on November 18, 2024, lot 8. Please watch the video shared by the auction house.
The groups of flowers are more scattered but the reflection of the surrounding trees is similar. They are made of touches of white, pink and yellow in a luscious surrounding of purples and blues.
This oil on canvas 175 x 135 cm was sold for $ 66M by Sotheby's on November 18, 2024, lot 8. Please watch the video shared by the auction house.
#AuctionUpdate: When most people think of Impressionism, they think of Monet’s waterlilies. ‘Nymphéas’, a seminal Monet waterlily painting, fetches $65.5M at auction. #SothebysModern pic.twitter.com/y1nlo4kuKG
— Sotheby's (@Sothebys) November 19, 2024
1913-1914 Berliner Strassenszene by Kirchner
2006 SOLD 38 M$ by Christie's
The Die Brücke movement was founded in Dresden in 1905 by four students who wanted to define a modern life based on freedom. From 1911 the lights, the pleasures and the opportunities of Berlin attract them like butterflies. The failure is total. The group explodes in January 1913.
Kirchner has to face the facts. Life in Berlin is not communal. Each individual is isolated in the crowd. At that time prostitutes were the queens of the Berlin sidewalk. They are recognizable by customers from odd signs which are not sufficient to make them intercepted by the police of morals : the high feather on the hat, the tight dresses in too bright colors.
The Strassenszene series, begun at the end of 1913 and interrupted by the war, marks Kirchner's attempt to interpret this city life which he did not want. An oil on canvas 122 x 91 cm painted in 1913 or 1914 was sold for $ 38M from a lower estimate of $ 18M by Christie's on November 8, 2006, lot 37. The image is shared by Wikimedia.
Two cocottes walk together in the middle of a dense crowd. The characters around them go in all directions, like in a whirlwind, without any interaction between them. Two men are in the foreground, not without arrogance. They are pimps or customers. In the background, the panel of the tram 15 enables to locate the scene in the heart of the big city.
This anxiety-provoking atmosphere is also perfectly transposed by Kirchner in his wood engravings. A Strassenszene with formidably unfriendly characters passed at Sotheby's on October 23, 2017. Fünf Kokotten, a grotesque interpretation of this weird fashion, was sold for CHF 920K before fees by Kornfeld on June 15, 2012.
Kirchner has to face the facts. Life in Berlin is not communal. Each individual is isolated in the crowd. At that time prostitutes were the queens of the Berlin sidewalk. They are recognizable by customers from odd signs which are not sufficient to make them intercepted by the police of morals : the high feather on the hat, the tight dresses in too bright colors.
The Strassenszene series, begun at the end of 1913 and interrupted by the war, marks Kirchner's attempt to interpret this city life which he did not want. An oil on canvas 122 x 91 cm painted in 1913 or 1914 was sold for $ 38M from a lower estimate of $ 18M by Christie's on November 8, 2006, lot 37. The image is shared by Wikimedia.
Two cocottes walk together in the middle of a dense crowd. The characters around them go in all directions, like in a whirlwind, without any interaction between them. Two men are in the foreground, not without arrogance. They are pimps or customers. In the background, the panel of the tram 15 enables to locate the scene in the heart of the big city.
This anxiety-provoking atmosphere is also perfectly transposed by Kirchner in his wood engravings. A Strassenszene with formidably unfriendly characters passed at Sotheby's on October 23, 2017. Fünf Kokotten, a grotesque interpretation of this weird fashion, was sold for CHF 920K before fees by Kornfeld on June 15, 2012.
1914 SCHIELE
1
Vorstadt
2011 SOLD for £ 24.7M by Sotheby's
Egon Schiele felt misunderstood and was not living with his own time. These difficulties have made him a major artist of the 1910s, just when everything moved in Vienna, Paris, Munich, Berlin, to invent new styles of artistic expression.
Attracted by the morbid and the erotic, he executed in 1912 some extraordinary portraits of himself and his girlfriend Wally. The young artist was soon after returning to his dark thoughts.
He took as a major theme the small town of Krumau, in southern Bohemia, where his mother was born. Sensitive to the paradox of living today in a medieval city, he gave it the name of Tote Stadt (The Dead City).
The panorama is seen from above, an angle of view that Schiele liked even in his portraits. The houses are in close ranks, schematized like on an engraving of the Renaissance. Much later, this vestige of ancient times will be listed in the World Heritage list of the UNESCO. The river flows in the foreground or away: the Moldau.
Sometimes, bright splashes of color give a hope of happiness to the dreary cityscape. The picture, along with the story of the circumstances of its arrival on the market, is shared on an article by Bloomberg.
An oil on canvas 100 x 120 cm executed in 1914 was sold for £ 24.7M by Sotheby's on June 22, 2011 after a Nazi restitution case. It is titled Vorstadt II (Häuser mit bunter Wäsche). On the banks of the river, some laundry is exposed.
This series of paintings is very rare at auction, and is among the most important roots of modern art. Two other specimens were sold over the past decade : for $ 22.5M by Christie's on November 8, 2006 (1915, 110 x 140 cm) and for £ 12.7M by Sotheby's on June 23, 2003 (1916, 110 x 140 cm).
Attracted by the morbid and the erotic, he executed in 1912 some extraordinary portraits of himself and his girlfriend Wally. The young artist was soon after returning to his dark thoughts.
He took as a major theme the small town of Krumau, in southern Bohemia, where his mother was born. Sensitive to the paradox of living today in a medieval city, he gave it the name of Tote Stadt (The Dead City).
The panorama is seen from above, an angle of view that Schiele liked even in his portraits. The houses are in close ranks, schematized like on an engraving of the Renaissance. Much later, this vestige of ancient times will be listed in the World Heritage list of the UNESCO. The river flows in the foreground or away: the Moldau.
Sometimes, bright splashes of color give a hope of happiness to the dreary cityscape. The picture, along with the story of the circumstances of its arrival on the market, is shared on an article by Bloomberg.
An oil on canvas 100 x 120 cm executed in 1914 was sold for £ 24.7M by Sotheby's on June 22, 2011 after a Nazi restitution case. It is titled Vorstadt II (Häuser mit bunter Wäsche). On the banks of the river, some laundry is exposed.
This series of paintings is very rare at auction, and is among the most important roots of modern art. Two other specimens were sold over the past decade : for $ 22.5M by Christie's on November 8, 2006 (1915, 110 x 140 cm) and for £ 12.7M by Sotheby's on June 23, 2003 (1916, 110 x 140 cm).
2
1914 Herbstsonne
2006 SOLD for £ 11.8M by Christie's
Egon Schiele was a hypersensitive artist obsessed by a presence of death within life and by the concept of an eternal vitality despite the decay. Another melancholic crisis happened in 1913, looking for where his late father could have been. The father had died nine years earlier while the boy was 14.
Schiele used to paint landscapes by memory, not by a direct observation, as it is also evidenced in his Krumau cityscapes. Herbstsonne, so titled by the artist, was not made in an autumn but in March 1914. Also its sunflowers do not turn towards the sun as they do in nature.
This oil on canvas 100 x 120 cm displays a sunset through a topless and bottomless column of sunflowers. The sun has the pale hue of autumn in a chilled banded sky. The fall is indeed a promise of wilting for sunflowers while the leaves are drying.
The melancholy suffered at that time by the artist is sufficient to appreciate that theme without referring to some prophecy of the apocalypse of Europe in the world war. The sunflower had been an anthropomorphic symbol for Schiele from his early artistic maturity. The deadly Herbstsonne was his ultimate oil painting on that theme.
Herbstsonne was considered as irremediably lost after being confiscated by the Nazis in 1942. Restituted to the heirs of its spoliated owner 64 years later, it was sold for £ 11.8M from a lower estimate of £ 4M by Christie's on June 20, 2006, lot 7.
Schiele used to paint landscapes by memory, not by a direct observation, as it is also evidenced in his Krumau cityscapes. Herbstsonne, so titled by the artist, was not made in an autumn but in March 1914. Also its sunflowers do not turn towards the sun as they do in nature.
This oil on canvas 100 x 120 cm displays a sunset through a topless and bottomless column of sunflowers. The sun has the pale hue of autumn in a chilled banded sky. The fall is indeed a promise of wilting for sunflowers while the leaves are drying.
The melancholy suffered at that time by the artist is sufficient to appreciate that theme without referring to some prophecy of the apocalypse of Europe in the world war. The sunflower had been an anthropomorphic symbol for Schiele from his early artistic maturity. The deadly Herbstsonne was his ultimate oil painting on that theme.
Herbstsonne was considered as irremediably lost after being confiscated by the Nazis in 1942. Restituted to the heirs of its spoliated owner 64 years later, it was sold for £ 11.8M from a lower estimate of £ 4M by Christie's on June 20, 2006, lot 7.
1914-1917 Portrait de Mme LR by Brancusi
2009 SOLD for € 29M by Christie's
The Cubist painting was developed in 1907 by Picasso in search of a representation of depth that would no longer use the perspective. At the same time, 1907-1908, the Kiss by Brancusi destructures also the forms. Two stylized head, face to face, form a cube. A simple plaster of this seminal work has been sold for $ 3.6M by Christie's in 2005.
In 1913, the shape of the Danaid is summarized by a perfect ovoid head on which two arcs draw the eyebrows and the nose. We are halfway between the figurative and the abstraction. Figurative is still dominating due to the bun and neck applied to the head egg. A small bronze 28 cm high was sold $ 18M by Christie's in 2002.
The Brancusi from the Saint-Laurent collection is titled Portrait de Madame LR. This wooden figure 1.20 m high has the global look of an African statuette. In focus, it is a geometrical construction where the figurative has almost disappeared. This work was done between 1914 and 1917. It was sold for € 29M from a lower estimate of € 15M by Christie's on February 23-25, 2009.
Then, the lines get longer and become pure forms. The Bird in Space of 1922-1923 is not a bird, excepted for the title of the work and the inspiration of the artist. In marble, one of those statues of 85 cm high, mounted on a stone base, has reached $ 27 million including expenses at Christie's in 2005. As Malevich, as Mondrian, Brancusi was able to free his art from any emotional aspect, to only retain shape and texture.
In 1920-1925, the work entitled Mademoiselle Pogany resumed some characteristics of the Danaid. Christie's sold a bronze for $ 7M in 1997.
In 1913, the shape of the Danaid is summarized by a perfect ovoid head on which two arcs draw the eyebrows and the nose. We are halfway between the figurative and the abstraction. Figurative is still dominating due to the bun and neck applied to the head egg. A small bronze 28 cm high was sold $ 18M by Christie's in 2002.
The Brancusi from the Saint-Laurent collection is titled Portrait de Madame LR. This wooden figure 1.20 m high has the global look of an African statuette. In focus, it is a geometrical construction where the figurative has almost disappeared. This work was done between 1914 and 1917. It was sold for € 29M from a lower estimate of € 15M by Christie's on February 23-25, 2009.
Then, the lines get longer and become pure forms. The Bird in Space of 1922-1923 is not a bird, excepted for the title of the work and the inspiration of the artist. In marble, one of those statues of 85 cm high, mounted on a stone base, has reached $ 27 million including expenses at Christie's in 2005. As Malevich, as Mondrian, Brancusi was able to free his art from any emotional aspect, to only retain shape and texture.
In 1920-1925, the work entitled Mademoiselle Pogany resumed some characteristics of the Danaid. Christie's sold a bronze for $ 7M in 1997.
1914 GRIS
May 1914 La Table de Musicien
2018 SOLD for $ 32M by Christie's
The first cubism which is called analytical cubism is a search for the integration of the volume of objects within a flat surface. Led from 1910 by Picasso and Braque soon followed by Juan Gris, this technique leads to an explosion of forms that hinders the readability. Perspective and even color become non-existent or secondary.
This hermetic art does not satisfy its own inventor Picasso. In 1912 he sticks real ordinary materials in a composition : ropes and oilcloth. Curiously he does not exhibit this first experience that nevertheless launches the cubist collages. Braque, Picasso himself and Gris continue this exploration of a new artistic language conducive to show the everyday surroundings of table settings and still lifes.
The collage of newspaper clippings is a basic element of the new compositions. Easy to simulate also with the brush, the piece does not break the coherence of the work. It draws the attention of the viewer who seeks some meaning to the words in the context of the image, long before the Dada and Merz revolutions. It is also a fun method to date an artwork.
From December 1913 Juan Gris is the champion of this new evolution of cubism which finally retrieves perspective and color while respecting the primary objective of assimilating the represented object and its support. In the following months Malevich reaches the most extreme abstract art : the uselessness of the image in its support is another seminal advance of modernism.
On May 8, 2018, Christie's sold as lot 2 for $ 32M La table de musicien, oil, gouache, pencil and collage of paper on canvas 82 x 60 cm made by Gris in May 1914.
The table is the support of the arrangement. It is shown at an angle in an aerial view. In a subtle balance the collages participate in three different ways : the newspaper on the table, the wall paper and the stylized musical staves drawn on a white paper. The perspective effect allows the drawings of bottle and violin to overlap the painted and glued areas. Transparency effects disrupt the surfaces.
In the same series as La Table de Musicien, a papier collé, oil and graphite on canvas 46 x 27.4 cm executed in June 1914 and titled Tabac, journal et bouteille de vin rosé was sold for $ 8.8M by Sotheby's on November 6, 2013, lot 6.
The war stops this playful phase when Kahnweiler with whom Gris was in contract in Paris is obliged to leave for Switzerland.
Titled Le Livre, an oil on canvas by Juan Gris, 73 x 60 cm, is perhaps his first work of the following year, 1915. Gris wants that his art is no more limited to a raw accumulation of objects, for creating sensations. He puts on the table an open book and a bottle of wine : knowledge and fun.
The wine label is readable, it is one of the best Burgundies. The book is not readable, and you will find therein what you are seeking. It is curiously barred with a colored crease, reminiscent of the period of collages. The perspective came back, especially bold. The message allows multiple interpretations: Gris is already quite close to the future spirit of the Surrealists.
Le Livre was sold for £ 10.3M on February 7, 2012 by Christie's, lot 19.
In 1915 Gris gives up his mixed technique and returns to oil on canvas with brilliantly colored compositions that imitate his collages. Nature morte à la nappe à carreaux, 116 x 90 cm, was sold for £ 35M by Christie's on February 4, 2014.
Anyway Picasso and Gris had quickly appreciated that the loss of perspective was antagonistic to the will of the artist to express his vision of the world. Dada was created in 1916, but it is indeed by evoking Picasso that Apollinaire coined the word "surréaliste" in 1917. The moods of Juan Gris had a significant role in the development of the new languages of art.
This hermetic art does not satisfy its own inventor Picasso. In 1912 he sticks real ordinary materials in a composition : ropes and oilcloth. Curiously he does not exhibit this first experience that nevertheless launches the cubist collages. Braque, Picasso himself and Gris continue this exploration of a new artistic language conducive to show the everyday surroundings of table settings and still lifes.
The collage of newspaper clippings is a basic element of the new compositions. Easy to simulate also with the brush, the piece does not break the coherence of the work. It draws the attention of the viewer who seeks some meaning to the words in the context of the image, long before the Dada and Merz revolutions. It is also a fun method to date an artwork.
From December 1913 Juan Gris is the champion of this new evolution of cubism which finally retrieves perspective and color while respecting the primary objective of assimilating the represented object and its support. In the following months Malevich reaches the most extreme abstract art : the uselessness of the image in its support is another seminal advance of modernism.
On May 8, 2018, Christie's sold as lot 2 for $ 32M La table de musicien, oil, gouache, pencil and collage of paper on canvas 82 x 60 cm made by Gris in May 1914.
The table is the support of the arrangement. It is shown at an angle in an aerial view. In a subtle balance the collages participate in three different ways : the newspaper on the table, the wall paper and the stylized musical staves drawn on a white paper. The perspective effect allows the drawings of bottle and violin to overlap the painted and glued areas. Transparency effects disrupt the surfaces.
In the same series as La Table de Musicien, a papier collé, oil and graphite on canvas 46 x 27.4 cm executed in June 1914 and titled Tabac, journal et bouteille de vin rosé was sold for $ 8.8M by Sotheby's on November 6, 2013, lot 6.
The war stops this playful phase when Kahnweiler with whom Gris was in contract in Paris is obliged to leave for Switzerland.
Titled Le Livre, an oil on canvas by Juan Gris, 73 x 60 cm, is perhaps his first work of the following year, 1915. Gris wants that his art is no more limited to a raw accumulation of objects, for creating sensations. He puts on the table an open book and a bottle of wine : knowledge and fun.
The wine label is readable, it is one of the best Burgundies. The book is not readable, and you will find therein what you are seeking. It is curiously barred with a colored crease, reminiscent of the period of collages. The perspective came back, especially bold. The message allows multiple interpretations: Gris is already quite close to the future spirit of the Surrealists.
Le Livre was sold for £ 10.3M on February 7, 2012 by Christie's, lot 19.
In 1915 Gris gives up his mixed technique and returns to oil on canvas with brilliantly colored compositions that imitate his collages. Nature morte à la nappe à carreaux, 116 x 90 cm, was sold for £ 35M by Christie's on February 4, 2014.
Anyway Picasso and Gris had quickly appreciated that the loss of perspective was antagonistic to the will of the artist to express his vision of the world. Dada was created in 1916, but it is indeed by evoking Picasso that Apollinaire coined the word "surréaliste" in 1917. The moods of Juan Gris had a significant role in the development of the new languages of art.
#AuctionUpdate ‘La table de musician’ by #JuanGris auctions for $31,812,500. https://t.co/kjMtJ5yMWN pic.twitter.com/B4bOAYDloe
— Christie's (@ChristiesInc) May 8, 2018
1914 Fugue by Kandinsky
1990 SOLD for $ 21M by Sotheby's
In 1909 Wassily Kandinsky described his inspiration by three categories : Impression, Improvisation, Komposition. This excessively theoretical approach should not obscure the fact that his great jump forward was to highlight the expression and confrontation of the colors while minimizing the line.
In January 1911 he was enthralled by the music of Schönberg heard in a concert. He will now endeavor to express through his painting a universal and pantheistic feeling with a rhythm which is equivalent to a breath. For that purpose he no longer needs a narrative excuse nor a perspective and he also eliminates the graphic consistency between lines and colors.
Fugue, oil on canvas 130 x 130 cm painted in 1914, was sold for $ 21M from a lower estimate of $ 10M by Sotheby's on May 17, 1990. The image is shared by Wikimedia.
Arnold Schönberg was a theorist of the fugue and a conductor of Bach. The colored striped ribbons hanging to the nearly biomorphic main figure certainly represent the freedom of the notes in Schönberg's system.
In January 1911 he was enthralled by the music of Schönberg heard in a concert. He will now endeavor to express through his painting a universal and pantheistic feeling with a rhythm which is equivalent to a breath. For that purpose he no longer needs a narrative excuse nor a perspective and he also eliminates the graphic consistency between lines and colors.
Fugue, oil on canvas 130 x 130 cm painted in 1914, was sold for $ 21M from a lower estimate of $ 10M by Sotheby's on May 17, 1990. The image is shared by Wikimedia.
Arnold Schönberg was a theorist of the fugue and a conductor of Bach. The colored striped ribbons hanging to the nearly biomorphic main figure certainly represent the freedom of the notes in Schönberg's system.
1914 Nature Morte by Léger
2020 SOLD for £ 12.2M by Sotheby's
The important retrospective exhibition devoted to Cézanne in 1907 at the Grand Palais is a revelation for young artists who want to escape from post-impressionism. Painting is a construction that can be inspired by nature or object but must not claim to copy them. In such an assembly, the basic element is geometric and the use of pure colors is desired.
Fernand Léger is obsessed with this posthumous teaching by Cézanne. To go further in modernity, he tries Cubism. In 1909 his Compotier sur table crushes the volumes in a plunging vision.
The analytical cubism of Picasso and Braque goes even further and Léger seeks something else to stand out. He finds the contrasts, by which the viewer will look in a tangle of lines, forms and colors for a reality beyond the intention of the artist. In this leap forwards, he unintentionally becomes one of the pioneers of abstract art.
In 1913 and 1914 Léger manages in parallel his series of Contrastes de Formes and the reinjection of his observations in typically Cézannian themes like the Femme en bleu and the Still lifes. The figures reappear within a big mess.
In 1914 Léger places objects on table corners : alarm clocks, coffee pots. His modernist effort resulted in a style quite similar as the early Picasso Cubism from five years earlier. It is not Léger but Gris who then gives back to still life the comfort of interpretation that the public needed.
Léger was not freed from his obsessions, however. In 1917 he painted Les Joueurs de Cartes, a reinterpretation of the Cézannian theme in a "tubiste" style.
On July 28, 2020, Sotheby's sold for £ 12.2M from a lower estimate of £ 8M a Nature Morte by Léger displaying various barely discernible objects on a table, oil on burlap 80 x 65 cm painted in 1914, lot 28. Please watch the video shared by the auction house.
Fernand Léger is obsessed with this posthumous teaching by Cézanne. To go further in modernity, he tries Cubism. In 1909 his Compotier sur table crushes the volumes in a plunging vision.
The analytical cubism of Picasso and Braque goes even further and Léger seeks something else to stand out. He finds the contrasts, by which the viewer will look in a tangle of lines, forms and colors for a reality beyond the intention of the artist. In this leap forwards, he unintentionally becomes one of the pioneers of abstract art.
In 1913 and 1914 Léger manages in parallel his series of Contrastes de Formes and the reinjection of his observations in typically Cézannian themes like the Femme en bleu and the Still lifes. The figures reappear within a big mess.
In 1914 Léger places objects on table corners : alarm clocks, coffee pots. His modernist effort resulted in a style quite similar as the early Picasso Cubism from five years earlier. It is not Léger but Gris who then gives back to still life the comfort of interpretation that the public needed.
Léger was not freed from his obsessions, however. In 1917 he painted Les Joueurs de Cartes, a reinterpretation of the Cézannian theme in a "tubiste" style.
On July 28, 2020, Sotheby's sold for £ 12.2M from a lower estimate of £ 8M a Nature Morte by Léger displaying various barely discernible objects on a table, oil on burlap 80 x 65 cm painted in 1914, lot 28. Please watch the video shared by the auction house.
1914-1918 Femme en Corset lisant un Livre by Picasso
2023 SOLD for $ 14.8M by Phillips
In 1911 Pablo Picasso begins an affair with Eva Gouel who was the girlfriend of Louis Marcoussis. Fernande Olivier leaves him in the following year.
In his paintings the artist transfers Eva as a guitar which he authenticates by the love declarations Ma Jolie or J'aime Eva. The hermetic phase known as analytic cubism helps the artist to cancel the appearance of his lover as he will do again in the surrealist phase fifteen years later with the still minor Marie-Thérèse.
Femme en corset lisant un livre was executed in the summer of 1914 in Avignon. Picasso experimented the emotional theme of the seated woman in a recognizable form in a quest for superseding the deadlock of his papiers collés. She is here featured in undergarments as evidenced by the corset.
Eva died of cancer in 1915, aged 30. Picasso completed the painting around 1918, possibly influenced by the joyous colors of the Ballets Russes first staged in 1917.
Picasso did not part of it. This oil and sand on canvas 92 x 60 cm was sold for $ 14.8M by Phillips on November 14, 2023, lot 16.
In his paintings the artist transfers Eva as a guitar which he authenticates by the love declarations Ma Jolie or J'aime Eva. The hermetic phase known as analytic cubism helps the artist to cancel the appearance of his lover as he will do again in the surrealist phase fifteen years later with the still minor Marie-Thérèse.
Femme en corset lisant un livre was executed in the summer of 1914 in Avignon. Picasso experimented the emotional theme of the seated woman in a recognizable form in a quest for superseding the deadlock of his papiers collés. She is here featured in undergarments as evidenced by the corset.
Eva died of cancer in 1915, aged 30. Picasso completed the painting around 1918, possibly influenced by the joyous colors of the Ballets Russes first staged in 1917.
Picasso did not part of it. This oil and sand on canvas 92 x 60 cm was sold for $ 14.8M by Phillips on November 14, 2023, lot 16.
