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1935

See also : Kandinsky  Matisse  Picasso later 1930s  Cars II  Cars 1930s  Cars 1934-36   Duesenberg  Mercedes-Benz
1934

1935 Front and Profile Together
2013 SOLD 40 M$ including premium
​2016 SOLD for £ 19M including premium

PRE 2016 SALE DISCUSSION

A Tête de Femme painted by Picasso was sold for $ 40M including premium by Sotheby's on November 6, 2013. It is listed again by Sotheby's, for sale on February 3 in London, lot 10 estimated £ 16M.

I introduced this lot as follows in 2013 :

Pablo Picasso admires the face and the eyes of Marie-Thérèse. She is pregnant, but Picasso is forced to leave her temporarily to prepare his divorce from Olga.

Tête de femme, oil on canvas 65 x 54 cm painted on March 12, 1935, is a tribute by Pablo to his goddess, with bright colors. The artist uncorrelated the two themes of his aesthetic admiration : the face is seen in profile, which is a great angle to highlight the beauty of this young woman, but the eyes look straight towards the observer.

Afterwards, particularly with Dora, Pablo abused with this theme of dislocating the face. Here, the result is fresh and surprising, generating a real illusion of movement of the pretty head.

This artwork is also unique in the career of Pablo. After completing it, he will stop painting during a few months to satisfy other fantasies, including the Minotauromachie.

I invite you to play the video shared by Sotheby's in 2013.
Picasso later 1930s

​1935 The Second Exile of Wassily Kandinsky
​2016 SOLD for $ 23.3M including premium

Wassily Kandinsky left Moscow in 1921 when the Soviets threatened to ban abstract art. He left Berlin in 1933 when the Nazis closed the Bauhaus. He moved to Paris where he was helped by Duchamp.

Kandinsky loves the light and weather of Paris. He has no teaching responsibility and feels free despite the increasing heaviness of the European totalitarianisms. He introduces the curve, or more precisely the planar projection of a flexible tape, in his pictorial vocabulary and lets reappear some figurative symbols.

Rigide et courbé is painted in December 1935 with his new technique where he improves the texture by mingling sand in the oil paint. This mixed media on canvas 114 x 162 cm is estimated $ 18M for sale by Christie's in New York on November 16, lot 18 B.

'Courbé' is the central tape, accompanied by a musical rhythm. Its flexibility expresses with a new optimism the vagaries of fate. This figure is flanked by a bulge and extended at its right end by the horns of a bovine. Its interpretation as the theme of the rape of Europa is plausible and seductive. At the same time Picasso identifies himself with the Minotaur.

'Rigide' is the totalitarianism reduced to a group of skyscrapers from which however escapes a sign of life which may be a leafy branch or perhaps a fetus. In the following year in his Composition No. 9, the symbols of birth become dominant and the theme of the fetus is confirmed in several places either by an explicit figuration or by the addition of umbilical cords.

Please watch the video shared by Christie's :

Kandinsky painting bought directly from the artist by Solomon Guggenheim returns to auction https://t.co/qDctYtdUAX pic.twitter.com/73XK1bmZar

— The Art Newspaper (@TheArtNewspaper) September 15, 2016
Kandinsky

1935 Portrait au Manteau Bleu by Matisse
2008 SOLD for $ 22.4M by Christie's

A penniless Siberian exile in Nice, Lydia was temporarily hired by Monsieur et Madame Matisse as a studio assistant and a domestic help in 1932, aged 22. Coming back in the fall of 1934, she becomes the muse of the artist.

Portrait au manteau bleu, oil on canvas 91 x 60 cm, is a three quarter length portrait of the blue eyed blonde Lydia displaying the modern woman of her time, in opposition in this opus to the signature fantasy odalisques by the artist. It was painted in December 1935 shortly after the completion of the Nu Rose that also featured Lydia.

The drawing is schematic and flat in black paint contours. The colors are a rich saturation in dark blue, green, violet and red plus the warm skin of face and hands. The little hat is stylish and the pearl necklace and wristlets are elegant. Her attitude is of dignity and seriousness.

This modernist portrait was sold for $ 22.4M by Christie's on May 6, 2008, lot 6.
Matisse

​1935 Duesenberg with the Movie Stars
​2018 SOLD for $ 22M including premium

In May 1935 the management of Duesenberg recognizes the commercial failure of their high-end chassis, the Model J released in 1928. EL Cord, boss of the group that owns Duesenberg, launches a project that could save the brand : create the best car in two units to be entrusted respectively to Gary Cooper and Clark Gable. This Duesenberg Special Speedster will be identified from 1951 with the reference SSJ.

The brand's chief designer, J. Herbert Newport, plans to use on a shortened chassis the powerful Duesenberg Special 400 hp eight-cylinder in-line engine under development. The stars give their opinion. An enthusiast about luxury cars, Gary Cooper is appealed by the unprecedented performance of the future model but prefers that this roadster looks like a classic Duesenberg. Newport gives up the idea of ​​a modernist body.

The two cars are provided to the actors in December 1935 for a long-term loan. Cooper's wife, Sandra Shaw, immediately has sent their car back to the factory for changing the color.

Six months later the two stars receive a proposal to buy their car at one-third the price of an ordinary Model J. Cooper accepts. Gable is not interested : he already owns one of the ten units of the Duesenberg JN also produced in 1935.

Cooper and Gable did not make the spectacular use that Cord was waiting for. We do not know when Cooper sold his car. Cord could have anticipated that it is not so easy to use the capricious Hollywood celebrities as advertising agents for luxury cars. Already in 1934 Mae West had refused the project of a SJ Town Car designed especially for her by Duesenberg.

There will be no other SSJ. Its supercharged engine was only used on these two cars and temporarily on the one-off Special ordered by Ab Jenkins to race the land speed record in Bonneville.

Little used, Gary Cooper's SSJ has only 20,000 miles on the clock. It had only two owners since 1949, Briggs Cunningham and Miles Collier. Historian of automotive technology and tall ships, Collier wisely prefers to preserve the old cars rather than to restore them. This SSJ has kept intact its original chassis, engine and body and even has the canvas of its folding roof. It is estimated $ 10M for sale by Gooding at Pebble Beach on August 24, lot 35. Here is the link to the press release.

​The car is driven and narrated by David Gooding in the videoshared by the auction house.
Cars - 2nd page
Duesenberg
Cars of the 1930s
Cars 1934-36

​1935 Marie-Thérèse is asleep again !
2011 SOLD 13.5 M£ including premium

The youth and innocence of Marie-Thérèse Walter had amazed Picasso. Her nude portraits, resting in an armchair or sleeping, painted in 1932 are an art of passion.

In the years that followed, the beautiful model is resting, reading or sleeping. Her own personality is eluded because she is never shown in activity. Unless her main quality, precisely, was to keep quiet even in the presence of the tireless Pablo.

Christie's sells in London on June 21 a Jeune fille endormie (asleep girl) signed on February 3, 1935. This small oil on canvas, 46 x 55 cm, estimated £ 9M, is the achievement of the expression of feelings by bright colors, blue, yellow and red, as Matisse or Léger could also have done.

The face of Marie-Thérèse had for some time a trend to turn to blue sky. Here, it has several shades of rather dark blue, giving up the purity for the benefit of some maturity. Maya was born eight months later, on October 5.

POST SALE COMMENT

Honourable result for this Picasso painting which is not a major work of the artist: £ 13.5 million including premium.

1934-1935 L'Angelus by Dali
2021 SOLD for $ 10.7M by Sotheby's

The art of Jean-François Millet fascinated Van Gogh, who in his early days wanted to become the painter of rural life.

From 1932 
Dali, researching how virtue hides vice and shame, tries Freudian interpretations of Millet's Angélus, a famous symbol of rural piety where he suspected unconscious thoughts. The angelus is a Catholic devotion recited at dawn, midday and dusk.

The composition of L'Angelus, painted by Dali ca 1934-1935, is inspired from Millet's painting.

The characters are silhouetted in the shadow of a twilight. The body of the woman is elongated, reinforcing her praying attitude with a bowing head. Millet's field is replaced by a ground shaped like a track or a parqueted floor, with small scattered rocks in the foreground and with Cadaquès-like big eroded rocks from which a car is taking off. Both lateral sides constitute a dark window, with musicians in small cartouches.

​L'Angelus, oil on panel 15.7 x 22 cm, was sold for $ 10.7M from a lower estimate of $ 4M by Sotheby's on November 17, 2021, lot 15.

Other paintings display various sceneries and actions. In Les Atavismes du crépuscule, the man has a skull head. L'Angélus Architectonique de Millet includes a spear that sexually joins the two characters transformed into gigantic monuments.

​Dali remained obsessed with the Angélus, to which he devoted in 1963 an entire book titled Le Mythe tragique de l'Angélus de Millet. Le Louvre took an x-ray of the painting. The woman's gaze is  directed towards a basket which peacefully symbolizes the harvest. In this place the original painting, masked by a repaint made by Millet, showed a child's coffin. Dali's intuition was confirmed, demonstrating the correctness of his paranoiac-critical hypersensitivity in this specific case.

1935 Noir bigarré by Kandinsky
2021 SOLD for £ 8.8M by Christie's

Link to catalogue.

1935 Fruits by Bonnard
2006 SOLD for $ 8.5M by Christie's

Pierre Bonnard moves in 1927 to a cottage near Le Cannet on the French Riviera. Far away from his beginnings with the Nabi group, he indefatigably exercises his skills to his personal style of painting where the colors and the balance of the surface take precedence over the subject and over the modeling. This highly prolific artist was not a skilled draughtsman.

In that phase Bonnard used to paint multiple canvases simultaneously, adding and erasing colored spots on each of them in his quest for his self defined perfection. He was still working to improve a painting while in his deathbed in 1947.

Deux corbeilles de fruits was acquired in 1935 soon after its completion by its first owner. The tabletop with its checkered tablecloth is a reminiscence of the unbalanced spaces by Cézanne and Matisse while the
 vivid colors and the unconventional perspective may have been inspired from Gauguin and from Japanese prints.

This oil on canvas 60 x 81 cm was sold by Christie's for $ 8.5M on November 8, 2006, lot 73, and for $ 6.7M on November 9, 2022, lot 13.

1935 Workmen in the House by Stanley Spencer
2011 SOLD for £ 4.7M including premium by Sotheby's

Link to catalogue.

1934-1935 Machine à Coudre Electro Sexuelle by Dominguez
​2023 SOLD for £ 4.6M by Christie's

The Surrealists considered the ill fated 19th century poet Isidore Ducasse, usually referred as Comte de Lautréamont, as one of their precursors. His world is fully oneiric. He defined beauty as follows : "Beau comme la rencontre fortuite sur une table de dissection d'une machine à coudre et d'un parapluie" (beautiful as the chance encounter of a sewing machine and an umbrella on a dissecting table).

A native from the Canary Isles, the young artist Oscar Dominguez was appealed around 1934 to the weird surrealism of Breton and Eluard by his brute temper. Brassaï named him l'ours mal léché (the bad licked bear).

Machine à coudre électro-sexuelle, begun in 1934 and completed in 1935, is an illustration of Lautréamont's phrase in most of its elements. The nude back of a woman is being devoured on the slab while blood is brought to the body through a disgusting funnel. A wrapping plant is the reference for the umbrella. The legs are caught in the claws of the plant and the head is hidden within the drapery to be sewn.

This oil on canvas 100 x 80 cm was sold by Christie's for £ 2.1M on February 6, 2013, lot 127,  and for £ 4.6M on February 28, 2023, lot 112.

​1935 Luxury and Sport by Mercedes-Benz
2016 SOLD for € 5.3M including premium

After an early great period around 1928 with its prestigious 680 S, Mercedes-Benz is positioning more firmly in the luxury car market in 1933 with the 380 and its variant named 380 K to indicate that it is super-compressed.

The German brand endeavors to appeal the elite. It will of course be lucky to meet the luxury trends of the new German regime but even in terms of an international perspective its initiative is timely. The Cord group fails to balance the budget of Duesenberg, Bugatti's La Royale is an almost total commercial failure and Bentley went bankrupt.

The Mercedes-Benz 380 can be bodied in limousine, coupe, cabriolet or roadster. It is heavy and sluggish. With a high intelligence Mercedes-Benz appreciates that the wealthiest customers shall prefer a bigger and more powerful car even if it is much more expensive. The 380 is terminated in mid-1934 to be replaced by the 500 and 500 K.

On September 3 in Chantilly, Bonhams sells a 500 K Roadster coachworked in Sindelfingen according to the practice of the company that unlike its competitors did not like subcontracting the body. Completed in February 1935, this car is then the high-end of the brand and is immediately exhibited at the Auto Show in Berlin. Remaining in very good condition with its matching number engine, it is estimated € 5M, lot 16.

I already met it in this column in 2011 when it was part of a tantalizing set of five vehicles demonstrating the dramatic progress of Mercedes-Benz into the later 1930s, with the 540 K introduced at the Salon de l'Auto of Paris in 1936 and the ultimate luxury, the 540 K Spezial launched in the same year, which will delight Göring.

In that sale made by RM Auctions on August 20, 2011, the 500 K Roadster was the earliest built of these five prestigious Mercedes-Benz and the only example in 500 K, the four others being 540 K. It was sold for $ 3.8M.

The other results were : $ 3M for a 1936 Cabriolet A, $ 3.1M for a 1936 Spezial Coupe, $ 9.7M for a 1937 Spezial Roadster and $ 4.6M for a Spezial Roadster from 1939 that was sold again for $ 7.5M by the same auction house in August 2013. These prices include the premium. The five cars were shown on the article shared by Sports Car Digest.
Mercedes-Benz

​1935 Duesenberg Model J Convertible Coupe by Rollston
2022 SOLD for $ 4.7M by RM Sotheby's

In the last phase before the collapse of the Cord group, Rollston had become a major supplier of  luxury automobile bodies for the Duesies, including the 10 cars unofficially referred as variant JN with which the brand tried in 1935 to revive the interest of the celebrities. This coachbuilder operated in New York.

A Duesenberg long wheelbase Model J made in 1935 was fitted with an earlier Rollston two passenger convertible coupe body. That bodywork had been was made in 1933 for an SJ. Its owner was not comfortable driving her supercharged Duesy and had it transferred to that Model J where it still remains.

The car was still in her ownership when the German occupants stole the wheels and tires. She sold it a few years later to a Frenchman who took it to Cuba but died just after his arrival. It was from 1967 a flagship of the Adderley collection.


Its disappearing top is a one of a kind from Rollston, although they also later made four convertible coupes in the JN series. Its highly elegant lines are nevertheless in the continuation of the convertible coupes made by Murphy for the Model J.

It was sold for $ 4.7M from a lower estimate of $ 4M by RM Sotheby's on August 19, 2022, lot 252. Its chassis, engine and firewall are also in matching numbers.
1936
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