1946
breakthrough
3rd century BCE to 1st century CE - first discovery 1946
Dead Sea Scrolls
Israel Museum in Jerusalem and Jordan Museum in Amman
The example below is shared by Wikimedia.
1946 Qi Baishi's Eagle
2011 SOLD 425 M RMB yuan including premium
China Guardian, in Beijing, is preparing its great spring auctions. 32 items of top prestige are grouped on the evening of May 22.
The press release highlights a drawing by Qi Baishi showing an eagle standing in a pine tree, and indicates that it is knowingly the largest work of the artist.
The composition is bold: the bird is completely surrounded by branches, but its proud look makes it the focal point of this image of 266 x 100 cm, flanked by two stripes 66 cm wide. Each stripe includes a poem in four huge calligrams .
As the tiger by the same artist, which had been discussed in this group in April 2010, the animal is a political symbol. This eagle was made in 1946 to celebrate the birthday of Jiang Jieshi (pinyin for Chiang Kai-shek) after the defeat of Japan.
The calculations issued by Artprice are significant: Qi is an artist of the highest level. Gifted and prolific, his importance in the global art market in 2010 joined those of Picasso or Warhol.
POST SALE COMMENT
China Guardian had understood that this was one of the most important works of one of the most valuable artists on the market.
The result is exceptional: RMB 425M including premium. According to the current exchange rate, this price is € 46.5 million and U.S. $ 65M.
This is the highest price recorded since the beginning of the year for an artwork at auction.
Its picture is shared post sale by Paul Fraser collectibles.
The image below is shared by Wikimedia :
The press release highlights a drawing by Qi Baishi showing an eagle standing in a pine tree, and indicates that it is knowingly the largest work of the artist.
The composition is bold: the bird is completely surrounded by branches, but its proud look makes it the focal point of this image of 266 x 100 cm, flanked by two stripes 66 cm wide. Each stripe includes a poem in four huge calligrams .
As the tiger by the same artist, which had been discussed in this group in April 2010, the animal is a political symbol. This eagle was made in 1946 to celebrate the birthday of Jiang Jieshi (pinyin for Chiang Kai-shek) after the defeat of Japan.
The calculations issued by Artprice are significant: Qi is an artist of the highest level. Gifted and prolific, his importance in the global art market in 2010 joined those of Picasso or Warhol.
POST SALE COMMENT
China Guardian had understood that this was one of the most important works of one of the most valuable artists on the market.
The result is exceptional: RMB 425M including premium. According to the current exchange rate, this price is € 46.5 million and U.S. $ 65M.
This is the highest price recorded since the beginning of the year for an artwork at auction.
Its picture is shared post sale by Paul Fraser collectibles.
The image below is shared by Wikimedia :
1946 PH-399 by Clyfford Still
2019 SOLD for $ 24.3M including premium by Sotheby's
Clyfford Still perceives the world as a balance of forces. These notions are not independent : life is vertical, landscape and death are horizontal. He removes any geometric language and all false references to figurative themes or hermetic signs. He refuses that the vision is limited by the frame. He does not provide titles because he considers that the artwork must be self-sufficient. Still is the pioneer who will influence Pollock and the abstract expressionism.
He would like the viewers of his art to discover basic forces within themselves. Figurative art cannot indeed contribute to such an ambitious goal.
In 1944 he paints a red flash on a black field. This oil on canvas 268 x 235 cm is without antecedent in the history of art. Like a thunderbolt in a deep night, the scar occupies a limited surface and excludes the straight line. This storm is imaginary : the lightning is made up of bright color, put with a knife with variations in thickness which bring light effects. Yellow and red forms provide a counterweight to the black invasion. The zigzag lightning is his life force or life line, in his own wording.
His images may seem spontaneous, but they actually results from painstaking compositions. The seminal 1944 picture was preceded by an oil study on paper and followed by another almost identical oil on canvas, 264 x 220 cm.
In front of the canvas, Still expresses his inner world beyond the influence of time, until the color balance and the texture match the feeling that he wishes to express. He considers his art as a whole and will manage throughout his career to keep in his own view all its elements.
PH-399, oil on canvas 136 x 114 cm painted in 1946, gathers on a creamy background the basic elements of the force : heavy dark jagged masses and their pseudo shadows, floating elements in bright colors, and the dark yellow zigzag. It has been sold for $ 24.3M by Sotheby's on November 14, 2019 from a lower estimate of $ 12M, lot 11.
He would like the viewers of his art to discover basic forces within themselves. Figurative art cannot indeed contribute to such an ambitious goal.
In 1944 he paints a red flash on a black field. This oil on canvas 268 x 235 cm is without antecedent in the history of art. Like a thunderbolt in a deep night, the scar occupies a limited surface and excludes the straight line. This storm is imaginary : the lightning is made up of bright color, put with a knife with variations in thickness which bring light effects. Yellow and red forms provide a counterweight to the black invasion. The zigzag lightning is his life force or life line, in his own wording.
His images may seem spontaneous, but they actually results from painstaking compositions. The seminal 1944 picture was preceded by an oil study on paper and followed by another almost identical oil on canvas, 264 x 220 cm.
In front of the canvas, Still expresses his inner world beyond the influence of time, until the color balance and the texture match the feeling that he wishes to express. He considers his art as a whole and will manage throughout his career to keep in his own view all its elements.
PH-399, oil on canvas 136 x 114 cm painted in 1946, gathers on a creamy background the basic elements of the force : heavy dark jagged masses and their pseudo shadows, floating elements in bright colors, and the dark yellow zigzag. It has been sold for $ 24.3M by Sotheby's on November 14, 2019 from a lower estimate of $ 12M, lot 11.
1946 Three Influences and Two Women
2013 SOLD 21 M$ including premium
The art of Jackson Pollock is at the confluence of three sources of inspiration.
He admires the Mexican muralists and mostly Orozco, and retains the idea that an image does not need to be composed in relation to its frame.
He appreciates with Siqueiros that non-conventional techniques of color distribution on the surface to be painted can generate new effects.
Treated for his alcoholism by a psychoanalyst close to Jung, he is convinced that the most important is the creative act, so that the artist is quite right to hide his original message when he completes the artwork.
In the war years, the team of Peggy Guggenheim discovers in Pollock an artist enough spontaneous and innovative to embody the power and action of the American dream. She sponsors him without being close to him.
Lee Krasner got the brilliant intuition that life in the big city is not conducive to the artistic stimulus of this violent and misanthropic young man. She married him and moved with him to a barn with sea sight in Long Island.
On May 14 in New York, Sotheby's sells a large canvas, 213 x 142 cm, painted in 1946 at the beginning of the Long Island studio. It is titled The Blue Unconscious and estimated $ 20M.
First, forget the title, which has never been important in the art of Pollock. This somehow unattractive painting is extraordinary for the analysis of his art.
Most of his other works of the first year in Long Island are nestings of colors interpreting as a continuous structure the boundless view of the lush nature from the window of the barn. Their almost abstract effect is close to what Pollock will achieve by dripping a few months later.
The Blue Unconscious is close to the style of Gorky and de Kooning, perhaps by accident because Pollock was not interested in the works and theories of abstract expressionists. A female nude larger than life occupies the right side of the image while the left side receives grimacing heads. The whole is voluntarily made poorly readable by patterns of colored lines.
It is as if one example had survived of those Pollock's fantasies which he will continue to draw throughout his career before feverishly and systematically hiding them by the dripping.
Pollock was one of the most fertile triggers of modern art and his early success is linked to the American dream. The brutal deaths of James Dean, Jackson Pollock and Marilyn Monroe and the horrors of the Vietnam war will end this utopia in which the real gravedigger in art will be Warhol.
POST SALE COMMENT
This work from a period of transition which was important for the artist and more generally for American art was sold $ 21M including premium.
Here is the link to the catalogue.
He admires the Mexican muralists and mostly Orozco, and retains the idea that an image does not need to be composed in relation to its frame.
He appreciates with Siqueiros that non-conventional techniques of color distribution on the surface to be painted can generate new effects.
Treated for his alcoholism by a psychoanalyst close to Jung, he is convinced that the most important is the creative act, so that the artist is quite right to hide his original message when he completes the artwork.
In the war years, the team of Peggy Guggenheim discovers in Pollock an artist enough spontaneous and innovative to embody the power and action of the American dream. She sponsors him without being close to him.
Lee Krasner got the brilliant intuition that life in the big city is not conducive to the artistic stimulus of this violent and misanthropic young man. She married him and moved with him to a barn with sea sight in Long Island.
On May 14 in New York, Sotheby's sells a large canvas, 213 x 142 cm, painted in 1946 at the beginning of the Long Island studio. It is titled The Blue Unconscious and estimated $ 20M.
First, forget the title, which has never been important in the art of Pollock. This somehow unattractive painting is extraordinary for the analysis of his art.
Most of his other works of the first year in Long Island are nestings of colors interpreting as a continuous structure the boundless view of the lush nature from the window of the barn. Their almost abstract effect is close to what Pollock will achieve by dripping a few months later.
The Blue Unconscious is close to the style of Gorky and de Kooning, perhaps by accident because Pollock was not interested in the works and theories of abstract expressionists. A female nude larger than life occupies the right side of the image while the left side receives grimacing heads. The whole is voluntarily made poorly readable by patterns of colored lines.
It is as if one example had survived of those Pollock's fantasies which he will continue to draw throughout his career before feverishly and systematically hiding them by the dripping.
Pollock was one of the most fertile triggers of modern art and his early success is linked to the American dream. The brutal deaths of James Dean, Jackson Pollock and Marilyn Monroe and the horrors of the Vietnam war will end this utopia in which the real gravedigger in art will be Warhol.
POST SALE COMMENT
This work from a period of transition which was important for the artist and more generally for American art was sold $ 21M including premium.
Here is the link to the catalogue.
1946 The Automatic Painting
2020 SOLD for $ 13M including premium
Jackson Pollock spent his youth in the American West. His heightened creativity retains nothing from the conventional painting. On the contrary, he finds his influences with the Navajo sand figures, the Mexican murals and the automatic writing of French surrealist poets.
Arrived in New York in 1930 at the age of 18, he is attentive to all originalities. He attends a demonstration of the use of liquid paint by Siqueiros and sees Janet Sobel's open patterns covering the entire surface of the image without being altered at the frame.
Peggy Guggenheim opens her aptly named Art of this Century gallery in New York in 1942. She is keenly interested in the synthesis of disparate influences practiced by Pollock. In the big city, the artist cannot solve his social problems. His installation with his wife Lee Krasner in a barn in the depths of Long Island at the end of 1945 finally enables him to develop his own artistic language.
He improves his technique throughout 1946, and abandons his stylized figuration. Wanting to work on a hard surface, he uses the masonite. He begins to apply the pigment in impasto directly at the outlet of the tube and gradually gives up the brush. For convenience, he lays directly on the floor the surface to be painted.
The use of sprayed or flowing liquid paint is made possible by that position of the support. His hand acquires an unprecedented freedom. Pollock's art conveys his subconscious energy, just as Chinese calligraphy is a direct transcription of an artist's emotion. Masson is referred with Miro among Pollock's surrealist influences, but it will be noted that Michaux's automatic drawings were influenced by Chinese calligraphy.
The very first work using dripping was painted at the end of 1946. The surface is bright red and the contributions are black and white. Named Free form, this 49 x 36 cm oil on canvas is kept at the MoMA.
The next step is the diversification of colors. An oil on masonite 48 x 60 cm dated 1946 is painted in bright yellow, bright blue and black by dripping and splashing on a background of the same red. It is estimated between $ 12M and 18M for sale by Christie's in New York on October 6, lot 5. Its first owner was Peggy Guggenheim. It is de-accessioned by the Everson Art Museum in Syracuse NY to refocus their collection on the fight against racial and sexual inequalities.
Pollock's musicalist dances around large-scale works will come soon after.
Arrived in New York in 1930 at the age of 18, he is attentive to all originalities. He attends a demonstration of the use of liquid paint by Siqueiros and sees Janet Sobel's open patterns covering the entire surface of the image without being altered at the frame.
Peggy Guggenheim opens her aptly named Art of this Century gallery in New York in 1942. She is keenly interested in the synthesis of disparate influences practiced by Pollock. In the big city, the artist cannot solve his social problems. His installation with his wife Lee Krasner in a barn in the depths of Long Island at the end of 1945 finally enables him to develop his own artistic language.
He improves his technique throughout 1946, and abandons his stylized figuration. Wanting to work on a hard surface, he uses the masonite. He begins to apply the pigment in impasto directly at the outlet of the tube and gradually gives up the brush. For convenience, he lays directly on the floor the surface to be painted.
The use of sprayed or flowing liquid paint is made possible by that position of the support. His hand acquires an unprecedented freedom. Pollock's art conveys his subconscious energy, just as Chinese calligraphy is a direct transcription of an artist's emotion. Masson is referred with Miro among Pollock's surrealist influences, but it will be noted that Michaux's automatic drawings were influenced by Chinese calligraphy.
The very first work using dripping was painted at the end of 1946. The surface is bright red and the contributions are black and white. Named Free form, this 49 x 36 cm oil on canvas is kept at the MoMA.
The next step is the diversification of colors. An oil on masonite 48 x 60 cm dated 1946 is painted in bright yellow, bright blue and black by dripping and splashing on a background of the same red. It is estimated between $ 12M and 18M for sale by Christie's in New York on October 6, lot 5. Its first owner was Peggy Guggenheim. It is de-accessioned by the Everson Art Museum in Syracuse NY to refocus their collection on the fight against racial and sexual inequalities.
Pollock's musicalist dances around large-scale works will come soon after.
1946 FU BAOSHI
1
Two Goddesses of the River Xiang
2020 SOLD for RMB 105M by Poly
Two Goddesses of the River Xiang was sold for RMB 105M by Poly on December 4, 2020, lot 0639. This hanging scroll, ink and color on paper 165 × 44 cm, was executed by Fu Baoshi. It is illustrated post sale by The Value. It is dated 1948 in the catalogue of the auction house and more convincingly 1946 by The Value.
Its theme frequently used by Fu is inspired from the Jiu Ge series of poems attributed to Qu Yuan narrating ca the 3rd century BCE the suicide of two mythological figures after the death of Emperor Shun.
The two noble women are featured in two registers in that scroll.
Its theme frequently used by Fu is inspired from the Jiu Ge series of poems attributed to Qu Yuan narrating ca the 3rd century BCE the suicide of two mythological figures after the death of Emperor Shun.
The two noble women are featured in two registers in that scroll.
2
Mountain Ghost
2016 SOLD for RMB 52M by China Guardian
Fu Baoshi made his career in Nanjing, the capital of the South. Wanting to join his own emotions to the oldest traditions of China, he is one of the most subtle artists of his time. His art studies in Tokyo brought an undeniable Japanese influence to his figuration of faces.
Fu Baoshi is his artist's name taken at the age of 18 to express his admiration for Shitao, the visionary artist of early Qing time who positioned the tiny human activity within the unfathomable immensity of nature.
Fu's meeting with the eminent scholar Guo Moruo in 1943 draws the artist's attention to the poems of Qu Yuan, collected under the Han. This semi-legendary poet from the dark period of the Warring States is an equivalent of Homer. He provides an invaluable link with ancient mythologies, posing mystical questions without seeking to provide answers.
On June 5, 2017, Poly sold for RMB 64M Mountain Ghost, a scenery including and illustrating a poem by Qu Yuan, lot 2250. Made in 1945 this ink and colors 133 x 66 cm is resolutely original by its entanglement of the lines and by the striking contrast between the actions on the ground and in the clouds.
The young woman in the foreground is a symbol of beauty which already inspired the artists of the Song dynasty interpreting the same poem. She seems standing but the lower part of her gown does not touch the ground. The stormy sky releases for the careful observer two divinities harnessed behind the red leopard.
On May 15, 2016, China Guardian sold for RMB 52M a scroll of same size made in 1946 starring the same characters. The features of the dress blend into the landscape and the seated attitude of this ghost is therefore another illusion.
In 1949 Guo becomes one of the top leaders of the new People's Republic. Using the story of Qu Yuan's suicide protesting against the invasion of his country by the Qin, he makes the old poet an exemplary martyr of the Chinese patriotism. Fu continues to illustrate the gods and clouds of Qu Yuan. A large 223 x 133 cm picture painted in 1954 remained unsold at Poly in June 2013.
Fu Baoshi is his artist's name taken at the age of 18 to express his admiration for Shitao, the visionary artist of early Qing time who positioned the tiny human activity within the unfathomable immensity of nature.
Fu's meeting with the eminent scholar Guo Moruo in 1943 draws the artist's attention to the poems of Qu Yuan, collected under the Han. This semi-legendary poet from the dark period of the Warring States is an equivalent of Homer. He provides an invaluable link with ancient mythologies, posing mystical questions without seeking to provide answers.
On June 5, 2017, Poly sold for RMB 64M Mountain Ghost, a scenery including and illustrating a poem by Qu Yuan, lot 2250. Made in 1945 this ink and colors 133 x 66 cm is resolutely original by its entanglement of the lines and by the striking contrast between the actions on the ground and in the clouds.
The young woman in the foreground is a symbol of beauty which already inspired the artists of the Song dynasty interpreting the same poem. She seems standing but the lower part of her gown does not touch the ground. The stormy sky releases for the careful observer two divinities harnessed behind the red leopard.
On May 15, 2016, China Guardian sold for RMB 52M a scroll of same size made in 1946 starring the same characters. The features of the dress blend into the landscape and the seated attitude of this ghost is therefore another illusion.
In 1949 Guo becomes one of the top leaders of the new People's Republic. Using the story of Qu Yuan's suicide protesting against the invasion of his country by the Qin, he makes the old poet an exemplary martyr of the Chinese patriotism. Fu continues to illustrate the gods and clouds of Qu Yuan. A large 223 x 133 cm picture painted in 1954 remained unsold at Poly in June 2013.
1946 The Explorer of Country Life
2015 SOLD for $ 11.6M including premium
The art of Norman Rockwell is meeting a turning point in 1939 when he leaves the suburbs of New York and settles in Vermont. His observation of life in small towns will appeal to the readers of The Saturday Evening Post.
His pictures that highlight the small occupations contribute to the American nationalism, and this feature is particularly appreciated in those times of war. The American diversity is not ignored: from 1943 to 1948, Rockwell often travels in the eastern United States, up to Georgia.
Close to the readers of the magazine, the artist likes to show himself in scenes of provincial visits. On November 19 in New York, Christie's sells an oil on canvas 84 x 160 cm on the theme of Rockwell's visit to a country editor, published on May 25, 1946 in the inner pages of the Saturday Evening Post. This painting is estimated $ 10M, lot 55.
In this scene located in Paris, Missouri, the boss and the employees are in a hurry for the preparation of the local newspaper in their small workshop looking like those of the ancient times, with bulky typewriters and with souvenirs stuck to the wall.
The characters form several groups. In the center, the editor seated at his desk is preparing an article while listening to a comment from his printer. On the left, a working boy maliciously trades a paper with a pretty secretary. Further to the right, three people are talking. A seated man learns the death of President Roosevelt, which is the main topic in the current edition of the newspaper. Rockwell, recognizable by his pipe and hat, is just entering into the room.
Through such details, precise, picturesque and full of life, Rockwell registered and displayed better than any other artist the everyday life far away from the big cities. He is now acknowledged as one of the outstanding American artists of his time.
His pictures that highlight the small occupations contribute to the American nationalism, and this feature is particularly appreciated in those times of war. The American diversity is not ignored: from 1943 to 1948, Rockwell often travels in the eastern United States, up to Georgia.
Close to the readers of the magazine, the artist likes to show himself in scenes of provincial visits. On November 19 in New York, Christie's sells an oil on canvas 84 x 160 cm on the theme of Rockwell's visit to a country editor, published on May 25, 1946 in the inner pages of the Saturday Evening Post. This painting is estimated $ 10M, lot 55.
In this scene located in Paris, Missouri, the boss and the employees are in a hurry for the preparation of the local newspaper in their small workshop looking like those of the ancient times, with bulky typewriters and with souvenirs stuck to the wall.
The characters form several groups. In the center, the editor seated at his desk is preparing an article while listening to a comment from his printer. On the left, a working boy maliciously trades a paper with a pretty secretary. Further to the right, three people are talking. A seated man learns the death of President Roosevelt, which is the main topic in the current edition of the newspaper. Rockwell, recognizable by his pipe and hat, is just entering into the room.
Through such details, precise, picturesque and full of life, Rockwell registered and displayed better than any other artist the everyday life far away from the big cities. He is now acknowledged as one of the outstanding American artists of his time.
1946 October on Cape Cod by Hopper
2012 SOLD for $ 9.6M by Christie's
Edward Hopper observes the civilization of his time. He sees people, and the traces left by people. The characters rarely communicate. When they do it, we do not understand why.
Unidentified people have built houses and roads. Hopper passes the houses in his car. They have no history and willnever have.
Hopper is both an artist and an American. He has a studio in New York and a summer home in Cape Cod. The road is long, and he stops to draw sketches of trivial houses which he will later use to compose his oil paintings. Not too many: one or two per year. This is enough to exacerbate his sense of a ridiculous American civilization.
On November 28, 2012, Christie's sold for $ 9.6M October on Cape Cod, oil on canvas 67 x 107 cm painted in 1946.
October is recognizable by the autumn sky. Cape Cod is not. The season is over with no longer interest to the large villas of the high society. Hopper shows a meadow at the edge of the road with a little white house, geometric as in a child drawing, with a small barn of the same shape. Like mother and cub.
Jo Hopper had noted the stops on the road to prepare the sketches, but this comment can only apply to the landscape behind because the house is the same as the smaller house of The Puritans, supposed to be a metaphor for herself.
This house and its barn are like a mother protecting her cub. Edward and Jo had no children. Who is the barn ?
This is the great paradox of Hopper to share his doubts about modern civilization with a simple scenery empty of characters and an outsider title.
Unidentified people have built houses and roads. Hopper passes the houses in his car. They have no history and willnever have.
Hopper is both an artist and an American. He has a studio in New York and a summer home in Cape Cod. The road is long, and he stops to draw sketches of trivial houses which he will later use to compose his oil paintings. Not too many: one or two per year. This is enough to exacerbate his sense of a ridiculous American civilization.
On November 28, 2012, Christie's sold for $ 9.6M October on Cape Cod, oil on canvas 67 x 107 cm painted in 1946.
October is recognizable by the autumn sky. Cape Cod is not. The season is over with no longer interest to the large villas of the high society. Hopper shows a meadow at the edge of the road with a little white house, geometric as in a child drawing, with a small barn of the same shape. Like mother and cub.
Jo Hopper had noted the stops on the road to prepare the sketches, but this comment can only apply to the landscape behind because the house is the same as the smaller house of The Puritans, supposed to be a metaphor for herself.
This house and its barn are like a mother protecting her cub. Edward and Jo had no children. Who is the barn ?
This is the great paradox of Hopper to share his doubts about modern civilization with a simple scenery empty of characters and an outsider title.
1946-1947 The Prodigious Spark
2020 SOLD for HK$ 64M including premium
Clyfford Still perceives the world as a balance of forces : life and death, horizontal and vertical, white and black. These notions are not independent : life is vertical, landscape and death are horizontal.
He would like the viewers of his work to discover new forces within themselves. Figurative art cannot contribute to this ambitious goal : Clyfford Still is the inventor of abstract expressionism.
In 1944 he adds the creative energy in the shape of a brilliant flash which crosses the image from top to bottom. All the elements give in to this phenomenon, creating frayed forms that slide in a two-dimensional space while trying to maintain their dominant position. Yellow and red forms provide a counterweight to the black invasion. The zigzag lightning is his life force or life line, in his own wording.
An oil on canvas dated 1946-1947 is typical of this abstract exploration of the world. The format is vertical, 136 x 71 cm. The lightning is visible, which is already rarely the case at that time. It crosses a black mass to fertilize a sort of ground at the bottom of the image.
Still has rarely expressed his conception of creation so completely. He kept this piece for a long time before presenting it to his daughter Sandra in 1976, four years before his death. This painting, numbered PH-306 in the nomenclature of his works, is estimated HK $ 54M for sale by Sotheby's in Hong Kong on July 9, lot 1122.
Conceived in 1946, PH-306 prefigures Pollock's unlimited surfaces, the fringes around Rothko's blocks, the zip of Newman and the floating colors of de Kooning.
Another opus highlighting the transcendental force is 1949-A-No.1, 236 x 200 cm, sold for $ 62M including premium by Sotheby's on November 9, 2011.
He would like the viewers of his work to discover new forces within themselves. Figurative art cannot contribute to this ambitious goal : Clyfford Still is the inventor of abstract expressionism.
In 1944 he adds the creative energy in the shape of a brilliant flash which crosses the image from top to bottom. All the elements give in to this phenomenon, creating frayed forms that slide in a two-dimensional space while trying to maintain their dominant position. Yellow and red forms provide a counterweight to the black invasion. The zigzag lightning is his life force or life line, in his own wording.
An oil on canvas dated 1946-1947 is typical of this abstract exploration of the world. The format is vertical, 136 x 71 cm. The lightning is visible, which is already rarely the case at that time. It crosses a black mass to fertilize a sort of ground at the bottom of the image.
Still has rarely expressed his conception of creation so completely. He kept this piece for a long time before presenting it to his daughter Sandra in 1976, four years before his death. This painting, numbered PH-306 in the nomenclature of his works, is estimated HK $ 54M for sale by Sotheby's in Hong Kong on July 9, lot 1122.
Conceived in 1946, PH-306 prefigures Pollock's unlimited surfaces, the fringes around Rothko's blocks, the zip of Newman and the floating colors of de Kooning.
Another opus highlighting the transcendental force is 1949-A-No.1, 236 x 200 cm, sold for $ 62M including premium by Sotheby's on November 9, 2011.
1946 The Ball of the Would Be
2021 SOLD for £ 6.2M including premium
A wine merchant, Jean Dubuffet invents the Art Brut. He has friends among the surrealists but does not accept any academic influence. The art exhibited in museums is not the best from its time but only what remains of it. He discovers the authenticity of the art of the mad and of the outsiders and begins a collection.
He finds his personal style in 1945 by visiting an exhibition of works by Jean Fautrier. The texture will be dull in a muddy material that he will cut with knife and finger, and the drawing will be childish and burlesque. The theme will be the human condition, no less.
The war is over but the people are as ugly as before. They rediscover their social differentiations and come to dance at balls. A selection of these abject portraits is exhibited in 1946 at the Galerie Drouin, under the double title Mirobolus, Macadam et Cie, and Hautes Pâtes. Macadam is a pun that anticipates the Corps de Dames series. The effect of scandal is assured.
Gesticuleur is a mixed technique oil, enamel, sand, pebbles and resin on canvas 73 x 60 cm, executed in 1945 and dated 1946 for Mirobolus. It was sold by Sotheby's on May 18, 2017 for $ 5.4M including premium from a lower estimate of $ 1.5M, lot 17.
On March 25 in London, Sotheby's sells another opus from the Mirobolus exhibition, titled La Cavalière aux Diamants. This oil, sand, glass and plaster on canvas 99 x 72 cm stretched on board made in 1946 is estimated £ 2.5M, lot 112.
The couple are embracing in the dance. Their ordinary faces do not display their derisory social ambition, revealed by the garish jewels on the ear and on the finger of the woman, which together with the lipstick form the only spots of bright colors in a monochrome texture.
This work had been kept for nearly 70 years in the same collection beside two Fautrier and one Wols from the same period, which are listed in the same sale. Please watch the video in which Sotheby's introduces the four lots.
He finds his personal style in 1945 by visiting an exhibition of works by Jean Fautrier. The texture will be dull in a muddy material that he will cut with knife and finger, and the drawing will be childish and burlesque. The theme will be the human condition, no less.
The war is over but the people are as ugly as before. They rediscover their social differentiations and come to dance at balls. A selection of these abject portraits is exhibited in 1946 at the Galerie Drouin, under the double title Mirobolus, Macadam et Cie, and Hautes Pâtes. Macadam is a pun that anticipates the Corps de Dames series. The effect of scandal is assured.
Gesticuleur is a mixed technique oil, enamel, sand, pebbles and resin on canvas 73 x 60 cm, executed in 1945 and dated 1946 for Mirobolus. It was sold by Sotheby's on May 18, 2017 for $ 5.4M including premium from a lower estimate of $ 1.5M, lot 17.
On March 25 in London, Sotheby's sells another opus from the Mirobolus exhibition, titled La Cavalière aux Diamants. This oil, sand, glass and plaster on canvas 99 x 72 cm stretched on board made in 1946 is estimated £ 2.5M, lot 112.
The couple are embracing in the dance. Their ordinary faces do not display their derisory social ambition, revealed by the garish jewels on the ear and on the finger of the woman, which together with the lipstick form the only spots of bright colors in a monochrome texture.
This work had been kept for nearly 70 years in the same collection beside two Fautrier and one Wols from the same period, which are listed in the same sale. Please watch the video in which Sotheby's introduces the four lots.
1946 Charred Beloved by Gorky
2023 SOLD for$ 23.4M by Christie's
Please watch the video shared by the auction house.
#AuctionRecord: From our 20th Century Evening Sale, Arshile Gorky’s ‘Charred Beloved I’ realizes $23.41M pic.twitter.com/LRFMYtXTaR
— Christie's (@ChristiesInc) November 10, 2023
