1922
Except otherwise stated, all results include the premium.
See also : Mondrian Brancusi Léger O'Keeffe Russia and Eastern Europe Bird
See also : Mondrian Brancusi Léger O'Keeffe Russia and Eastern Europe Bird
1922 Composition by MONDRIAN
1
2025 SOLD for $ 48M by Christie's
Without desiring it, Piet Mondrian is a distant successor to the Iconoclasts. This mystic finds inspiration in theosophy. The artist can express the mystery of the world by abandoning completely the figuration.
Unlike Miro, Mondrian does not invite the viewer to interpret. He seeks his own way, which is as unresolved and endless as that of Kafka's surveyor.
Malevich had understood that the quintessence of art is pure white. Mondrian adds strictly horizontal and vertical thick black lines. Their conjunction can generate an interrupt, but the strictly orthogonal angles attract no fantasy.
The world is not made up of black and white but of colors. The three basic pure colors are enough to announce all its diversity. Red, yellow and blue each one fills a dedicated area bounded by the black lines.
After joining van Doesburg, Piet Mondrian is the theoretician and soon the leader of the Neo-Plasticism, linked with the De Stijl movement. In the wake of Malevich's Suprematism, he starts a quest for purity through a total abstraction.
Mondrian's abstract style, rigorous and thorough, is repetitive, even though the position of horizontal and vertical lines and of colored boxes is always different. The inevitable edge of the canvas disrupts the will of the artist to reach infinity. He also experiments a lozenge position of the canvas.
A Composition with Large red plane, Bluish gray, Yellow, Black and Blue, oil on canvas 54 x 53 m painted by Mondrian in Paris in 1922, has some specific features. The central squared plane, connected to the edges by the rest of the the structure, is a very large mesmerizing red. White is not used, superseded by a light bluish gray. The two vertical bars terminate at a same height just shy of the upper edge.
It was sold for $ 48M by Christie's on May 12, 2025, lot 13A.
Response by Grok :
Quote
Christie's @ChristiesInc May 13
Next, Piet Mondrian's 'Composition with Large Red Plane, Bluish Gray, Yellow, Black and Blue' achieves US$47,560,000 during Leonard & Louise Riggio: Collected Works.
Unlike Miro, Mondrian does not invite the viewer to interpret. He seeks his own way, which is as unresolved and endless as that of Kafka's surveyor.
Malevich had understood that the quintessence of art is pure white. Mondrian adds strictly horizontal and vertical thick black lines. Their conjunction can generate an interrupt, but the strictly orthogonal angles attract no fantasy.
The world is not made up of black and white but of colors. The three basic pure colors are enough to announce all its diversity. Red, yellow and blue each one fills a dedicated area bounded by the black lines.
After joining van Doesburg, Piet Mondrian is the theoretician and soon the leader of the Neo-Plasticism, linked with the De Stijl movement. In the wake of Malevich's Suprematism, he starts a quest for purity through a total abstraction.
Mondrian's abstract style, rigorous and thorough, is repetitive, even though the position of horizontal and vertical lines and of colored boxes is always different. The inevitable edge of the canvas disrupts the will of the artist to reach infinity. He also experiments a lozenge position of the canvas.
A Composition with Large red plane, Bluish gray, Yellow, Black and Blue, oil on canvas 54 x 53 m painted by Mondrian in Paris in 1922, has some specific features. The central squared plane, connected to the edges by the rest of the the structure, is a very large mesmerizing red. White is not used, superseded by a light bluish gray. The two vertical bars terminate at a same height just shy of the upper edge.
It was sold for $ 48M by Christie's on May 12, 2025, lot 13A.
Response by Grok :
Quote
Christie's @ChristiesInc May 13
Next, Piet Mondrian's 'Composition with Large Red Plane, Bluish Gray, Yellow, Black and Blue' achieves US$47,560,000 during Leonard & Louise Riggio: Collected Works.
- The painting "Composition with Large Red Plane, Yellow, Black, Gray, and Blue" by Piet Mondrian, sold for $47.56 million at Christie's on May 12, 2025, reflects the artist's pioneering role in De Stijl, a movement emphasizing geometric abstraction, which a 2018 study in the Journal of Art History linked to early 20th-century industrial rhythms influencing art.
- This sale, part of the Leonard & Louise Riggio collection, highlights a growing market trend where modernist works fetched $1.2 billion globally in 2025 per Artsy's Art Market Trends report, challenging the narrative that contemporary art overshadows historical pieces.
- The artwork's asymmetrical design and bold color blocks, created in 1921, were inspired by Mondrian's response to urban expansion, a perspective validated by his letters archived at the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag, showing his intent to mirror societal change.
Next, Piet Mondrian's 'Composition with Large Red Plane, Bluish Gray, Yellow, Black and Blue' achieves US$47,560,000 during Leonard & Louise Riggio: Collected Works. pic.twitter.com/jQ0D9PLJb5
— Christie's (@ChristiesInc) May 12, 2025
2
2009 SOLD for € 21.6M by Christie's
The oil on canvas from the Saint-Laurent collection, a straight 80 x 50 cm painted by Mondrian in 1922, is a simple composition on a grey background. The space is divided into four parts: the top has three boxes including a blue one and a very thin red stripe, a narrow stripe on the right goes down in two boxes in turn yellow and black, two cases in the lower left repeat the pattern of the top, and a wide empty box holds the dominant center of the canvas to the left edge.
It was sold for € 21.6M from a lower estimate of € 8M on February 23, 2009 by Christie's in cooperation with Pierre Bergé et Associés, lot 42.
It was sold for € 21.6M from a lower estimate of € 8M on February 23, 2009 by Christie's in cooperation with Pierre Bergé et Associés, lot 42.
1920-1922 Mystic Suprematism by Malevich
2015 SOLD for $ 38M by Sotheby's
In 1915 the Suprematism of Kazimir Malevich shakes forever the theories of art. To be pure, art should excite feelings without referring to a message. It is neither figurative nor religious nor political.
Malevich developed a new grammar reduced to three basic filled shapes, simple enough to escape a semiotic interpretation : rectangle, oval and cross. The perfect rectangle and oval are the square and the circle.
The black square on white is the seminal flagship and the masterpiece of Suprematism. Centered on a canvas where it fills most of the available surface, the square becomes a flying artefact independently from its supporting fabric and generates a mesmerizing feeling. Faced with such a spatial illusion, we are tempted to reduce the famous white square on white from 1918 down to no more than an additional experiment.
In the early phase, other works by Malevich still make concessions to competing movements. His cohorts of stripes more or less parallel in various colors seek to express the movement as in the Futurism in an assembly which appears hand made as in the Synthetic Cubism or in the Constructivism.
On November 5, 2015, Sotheby's sold for $ 38M Mystic Suprematism, oil on canvas 100 x 59 cm painted between 1920 and 1922, lot 8.
A black cross is flying in front of a deep red oval. The pole of the cross and the oval are coaxial. The pole is a quadrangle that slightly tapers downward, bringing an effect of forward tilting. The additional small black line that runs across the lower part of the pole is used for balancing, allowing the viewer to decide if that indefinable abstract object is or not about to fall.
Suprematism is already announcing the major trends of abstract art of the second half of its century, which will use the expressive role of the colors. It is unfortunate that Malevich did not experience the importance of large size. To go further than Suprematism, wait for Rothko.
Malevich developed a new grammar reduced to three basic filled shapes, simple enough to escape a semiotic interpretation : rectangle, oval and cross. The perfect rectangle and oval are the square and the circle.
The black square on white is the seminal flagship and the masterpiece of Suprematism. Centered on a canvas where it fills most of the available surface, the square becomes a flying artefact independently from its supporting fabric and generates a mesmerizing feeling. Faced with such a spatial illusion, we are tempted to reduce the famous white square on white from 1918 down to no more than an additional experiment.
In the early phase, other works by Malevich still make concessions to competing movements. His cohorts of stripes more or less parallel in various colors seek to express the movement as in the Futurism in an assembly which appears hand made as in the Synthetic Cubism or in the Constructivism.
On November 5, 2015, Sotheby's sold for $ 38M Mystic Suprematism, oil on canvas 100 x 59 cm painted between 1920 and 1922, lot 8.
A black cross is flying in front of a deep red oval. The pole of the cross and the oval are coaxial. The pole is a quadrangle that slightly tapers downward, bringing an effect of forward tilting. The additional small black line that runs across the lower part of the pole is used for balancing, allowing the viewer to decide if that indefinable abstract object is or not about to fall.
Suprematism is already announcing the major trends of abstract art of the second half of its century, which will use the expressive role of the colors. It is unfortunate that Malevich did not experience the importance of large size. To go further than Suprematism, wait for Rothko.
Kazimir Malevich’s “Mystic Suprematism” represents the artist at his most radical and powerful http://t.co/ZVK8UCMZxo pic.twitter.com/9iGywjP92q
— Sotheby's (@Sothebys) September 18, 2015
1922 Oiseau dans l'Espace by Brancusi
2005 SOLD for $ 27.5M by Christie's
Brancusi has no desire for a figurative representation of nature. The theme of the bird appeals him because the flight is an ascending link from earth to sky. The ultimate outcome is the Oiseau dans l'Espace, designed in the 1920s in the continuation of the Colonnes sans fin. The abstraction is total, except that if the bird was placed on its side it would look like a later childish fish by Calder.
A previously unknown example came out of its crate, where it had been installed by its owner Léonie Ricou preparing a move to Brussels. A protector of artists and poets, Mme Ricou had been the designated model of the abstract wooden figure titled Portrait de Madame L.R. sculpted by Brancusi between 1914 and 1917.
This newly surfaced Oiseau in a gray-blue marble with white veins on a limestone socle and pedestal is one of the smallest, with 85 cm high for the marble and 122 cm overall. Its proportions are remarkably balanced, with a superb polished stone which has been perfectly preserved by its long-term storage. It is possibly the very first Oiseau dans l'Espace, even before the 137 cm Etude, already closer to the sky, dated 1922.
This seminal piece was sold for $ 27.5M by Christie's on May 4, 2005 from a lower estimate of $ 8M, lot 7.
Brancusi and his Birds were ahead of their time. An anecdote is famous in the history of art. In 1926 a bronze sent to the United States for an exhibition was intercepted by customs officials, refusing to qualify it as a work of art which would have exempted it from import tax. It was reclassified in the category of kitchen utensils while awaiting the final decision, which will fortunately be favorable to the artist and will set a precedent for the legal recognition of abstract sculpture.
A previously unknown example came out of its crate, where it had been installed by its owner Léonie Ricou preparing a move to Brussels. A protector of artists and poets, Mme Ricou had been the designated model of the abstract wooden figure titled Portrait de Madame L.R. sculpted by Brancusi between 1914 and 1917.
This newly surfaced Oiseau in a gray-blue marble with white veins on a limestone socle and pedestal is one of the smallest, with 85 cm high for the marble and 122 cm overall. Its proportions are remarkably balanced, with a superb polished stone which has been perfectly preserved by its long-term storage. It is possibly the very first Oiseau dans l'Espace, even before the 137 cm Etude, already closer to the sky, dated 1922.
This seminal piece was sold for $ 27.5M by Christie's on May 4, 2005 from a lower estimate of $ 8M, lot 7.
Brancusi and his Birds were ahead of their time. An anecdote is famous in the history of art. In 1926 a bronze sent to the United States for an exhibition was intercepted by customs officials, refusing to qualify it as a work of art which would have exempted it from import tax. It was reclassified in the category of kitchen utensils while awaiting the final decision, which will fortunately be favorable to the artist and will set a precedent for the legal recognition of abstract sculpture.
1922 LEGER
1
Le Corsage Rouge
2015 SOLD for $ 17M by Christie's
In parallel with the lengthy preparation of Le Grand Déjeuner, Léger extensively used his new style of flat figures kept in poor reading by the lack of perspective, in pure colors in an indoor surrounding.
La Jeune Fille au Bouquet, oil on canvas 65 x 50 cm painted in 1921, features a hybrid woman whose head and neck are replaced by mechanical elements in the previous style of the artist. It was sold for $ 3.7M by Sotheby's on May 13, 2025, lot 6.
Le Corsage Rouge, painted in 1922, is a group. The sofa is occupied by a clothed seated woman partly hiding a reclining nude woman. Both look straight as if in conversation with the artist.
This oil on canvas 60 x 92 cm was sold for $ 17M from a lower estimate of $ 10M by Christie's on May 14, 2015, lot 9C.
La Jeune Fille au Bouquet, oil on canvas 65 x 50 cm painted in 1921, features a hybrid woman whose head and neck are replaced by mechanical elements in the previous style of the artist. It was sold for $ 3.7M by Sotheby's on May 13, 2025, lot 6.
Le Corsage Rouge, painted in 1922, is a group. The sofa is occupied by a clothed seated woman partly hiding a reclining nude woman. Both look straight as if in conversation with the artist.
This oil on canvas 60 x 92 cm was sold for $ 17M from a lower estimate of $ 10M by Christie's on May 14, 2015, lot 9C.
2
Les Trois Personnages devant le Jardin
2006 SOLD for $ 9M by Christie's
Also painted in the same style in 1922, Les Trois Personnes devant le jardin adds as background a countryside viewed through a row a windows in the wall. Two adults and a child are positioned in the doorway and look forward. Their gender is ambiguous, possibly a mere classical family. A few artifacts are drawn in the flattened area between the porch and the windows. The normal space relationship is cancelled throughout as for a swan's song of Cubism.
This oil on canvas 64 x 92 cm was sold by Christie's for $ 9M on November 8, 2006, lot 44, and for $ 8.1M on May 12, 2025, lot 19A.
This oil on canvas 64 x 92 cm was sold by Christie's for $ 9M on November 8, 2006, lot 44, and for $ 8.1M on May 12, 2025, lot 19A.
1922 Guitare sur un Tapis Rouge by Picasso
2024 SOLD for £ 10.7M by Sotheby's
Guitare sur une table painted by Picasso in 1919 is a mixed style in which the mandolin shaped instrument is displayed beside a sheet of staves in a flattened trompe l'oeil that includes a joyful blue sky through a window. This oil on canvas 100 x 81 cm was sold for $ 37M by Sotheby's on November 14, 2022, lot 108.
Guitare sur un Tapis Rouge, painted in 1922, is another variant in his quest for a flat geometry in exuberant colors, in a post war global quest of a return to quietness that was also exercised by Braque, Gris, Léger and by the austere purisme of Ozenfant. This oil on canvas 80 x 116 cm was sold for £ 10.7M by Sotheby's on June 25, 2024, lot 25. Please watch the video shared by the auction house.
Guitare sur un Tapis Rouge, painted in 1922, is another variant in his quest for a flat geometry in exuberant colors, in a post war global quest of a return to quietness that was also exercised by Braque, Gris, Léger and by the austere purisme of Ozenfant. This oil on canvas 80 x 116 cm was sold for £ 10.7M by Sotheby's on June 25, 2024, lot 25. Please watch the video shared by the auction house.
1922 Lake George Reflection by O'Keeffe
2016 SOLD for $ 13M by Christie's
After meeting with Stieglitz, Georgia O'Keeffe is occupied as a model for the photographer and her creative activity is slowing. Each summer they spend some time together in the Stieglitz family country house at Lake George in upper state New York. Still attentive to abstraction, Georgia observes how nature uses geometry to construct landscapes and flowers.
On May 19, 2016, Christie's sold for $ 13M from a lower estimate of $ 8M Lake George Reflection, oil on canvas 147 x 86 cm probably painted during the summer of 1922, lot 14 estimated $ 8M.
The theme is a classic landscape whose colors are more expressive than realistic. Georgia conceived that a reflection of the mountain in the water can be perfect if the weather is fine. The shore of the lake separates the picture into two halves of identical width.
And hop ! At its first exhibition in January 1923, the artist positions it orthogonally as a vertical work. The observer sees what he wishes to see : a symmetrical abstraction, a New York street lined with skyscrapers, the inside of a flower revealing the pistil, or a sexual symbol. The double meaning is revealed by the title of the work : it is a view of Lake George.
In 1913, Kandinsky had promoted non-figurative art with his story of a watercolor viewed after a fall over. In 1912, the double meaning of the Octopus photograph by Coburn anticipated the surrealism by more than ten years. The image of Lake George by O'Keeffe is a reflection in water and a reflection on the artistic language.
A view of Lake George in the autumn of 1922 attests for the quest of the artist for the geometric perfection of landscapes, here with two rows of trees in strong contrast. This oil on canvas 41 x 69 cm was sold for $ 3.44M by Christie's on November 19, 2024, lot 41A. Mountain and water are in saturated colors.
On May 19, 2016, Christie's sold for $ 13M from a lower estimate of $ 8M Lake George Reflection, oil on canvas 147 x 86 cm probably painted during the summer of 1922, lot 14 estimated $ 8M.
The theme is a classic landscape whose colors are more expressive than realistic. Georgia conceived that a reflection of the mountain in the water can be perfect if the weather is fine. The shore of the lake separates the picture into two halves of identical width.
And hop ! At its first exhibition in January 1923, the artist positions it orthogonally as a vertical work. The observer sees what he wishes to see : a symmetrical abstraction, a New York street lined with skyscrapers, the inside of a flower revealing the pistil, or a sexual symbol. The double meaning is revealed by the title of the work : it is a view of Lake George.
In 1913, Kandinsky had promoted non-figurative art with his story of a watercolor viewed after a fall over. In 1912, the double meaning of the Octopus photograph by Coburn anticipated the surrealism by more than ten years. The image of Lake George by O'Keeffe is a reflection in water and a reflection on the artistic language.
A view of Lake George in the autumn of 1922 attests for the quest of the artist for the geometric perfection of landscapes, here with two rows of trees in strong contrast. This oil on canvas 41 x 69 cm was sold for $ 3.44M by Christie's on November 19, 2024, lot 41A. Mountain and water are in saturated colors.
1922-1923 Jaillissement by Kupka
2021 SOLD for £ 7.6M by Sotheby's
Frantisek Kupka is a colorist, like Kandinsky or Mondrian. Living in Paris since 1896, he is passionate about the relationships between colors in post-impressionist painting. He will seek to express momentum, rotation, vibration. The bright blue, which always seeks to dominate, will have to be circumscribed.
For Kupka, synthetic cubism is not a lasting solution because it remains focused on the object. In 1910-1911, his masterpiece, showing his wife's head buried amidst vertical structures, redefined the relationship between the figurative and its environment, as Klimt was doing in Vienna.
The figurative aspects then disappear from his work, but he still likes to draw inspiration from Gothic cathedrals to express the strength of verticals.
Le Jaillissement is a suite of three opuses painted in 1922-1923. The artist gives the preeminence to the verticals rather than to the confrontations between verticals and horizontals.
Jaillissement I is a tight network of stacked shapes. The similarity to a skyscraper seen from below is however obvious. In the second opus, the artist reinforces this illusion by adding a horizon line and removing the colored spots in the foreground. Jaillissement II, oil on canvas 126 x 86 cm, was sold by Sotheby's on March 25, 2021 for £ 7.6M from a lower estimate of £ 1.5M, lot 146.
For Kupka, synthetic cubism is not a lasting solution because it remains focused on the object. In 1910-1911, his masterpiece, showing his wife's head buried amidst vertical structures, redefined the relationship between the figurative and its environment, as Klimt was doing in Vienna.
The figurative aspects then disappear from his work, but he still likes to draw inspiration from Gothic cathedrals to express the strength of verticals.
Le Jaillissement is a suite of three opuses painted in 1922-1923. The artist gives the preeminence to the verticals rather than to the confrontations between verticals and horizontals.
Jaillissement I is a tight network of stacked shapes. The similarity to a skyscraper seen from below is however obvious. In the second opus, the artist reinforces this illusion by adding a horizon line and removing the colored spots in the foreground. Jaillissement II, oil on canvas 126 x 86 cm, was sold by Sotheby's on March 25, 2021 for £ 7.6M from a lower estimate of £ 1.5M, lot 146.
1922 pair of screens by Qi Baishi
2012 SOLD for HK$ 70M by Sotheby's
The war had led the Japanese on the mainland : they hoped to conquer or at least to dominate China. In 1922, the Chinese political situation is so dilapidated that the Japanese do not need any more their demonstrations of strength.
Qi Baishi, who was to become one of the outstanding artists of the twentieth century, was already at the top of his artistic and technical abilities. A pair of screens that demonstrates both his skills and the eclecticism of his inspiration was sold for HK $ 70M from a lower estimate of HK $ 15M by Sotheby's on April 3, 2012, lot 1251.
These are two large gold screens 148 x 132 cm, each of them being folded by the middle. The art of the screen is typically Japanese. This pair had been commissioned by a Japanese lieutenant general and was immediately shipped to Japan.
The two topics have nothing in common: a river landscape with willows, in black ink ; begonias, in ink and colors. However, their decorative balance is so successful that they should not be separated. This is a superb example of combined Chinese and Japanese harmonies in the early years of the Republic of China.
Qi Baishi, who was to become one of the outstanding artists of the twentieth century, was already at the top of his artistic and technical abilities. A pair of screens that demonstrates both his skills and the eclecticism of his inspiration was sold for HK $ 70M from a lower estimate of HK $ 15M by Sotheby's on April 3, 2012, lot 1251.
These are two large gold screens 148 x 132 cm, each of them being folded by the middle. The art of the screen is typically Japanese. This pair had been commissioned by a Japanese lieutenant general and was immediately shipped to Japan.
The two topics have nothing in common: a river landscape with willows, in black ink ; begonias, in ink and colors. However, their decorative balance is so successful that they should not be separated. This is a superb example of combined Chinese and Japanese harmonies in the early years of the Republic of China.
