1948
See also : Art on paper Abstract art II Giacometti 1947-54 Femme debout Magritte Still Pollock Picasso 1940-60 Modern China Mountains in China Zhang Daqian Zhang Daqian < 1965
masterpiece
1948 Christina's World by Wyeth
MoMA
Trained by his father the illustrator N.C. Wyeth, Andrew Wyeth had an early interest in the landscape and people of his very immediate vicinity in a village of Pennsylvania. This regionalist artist added another focal point in and around a family home in a village of Maine. His realistic pictures are characterized by the use of egg tempera.
His paintings look like a reality show. Over a span of 77 years he maintained the theme of the life of one neighboring family in Pennsylvania. He said : "I didn't think it a picturesque place. It just excited me, purely abstractly and purely emotionally."
His breakthrough picture, Christina's World, painted in 1948, features a day dreaming neighbor from Maine. She is semi-reclining in a white dress in an open field. The pathetic thing is that the 55 year old woman was in real life crippled from a genetic neuropathy and unable to walk.
Andrew's art is unconventional. Asked in 1977 to identify the most overrated and underrated artists, an art critic provided the same name for both categories : Andrew Wyeth.
His paintings look like a reality show. Over a span of 77 years he maintained the theme of the life of one neighboring family in Pennsylvania. He said : "I didn't think it a picturesque place. It just excited me, purely abstractly and purely emotionally."
His breakthrough picture, Christina's World, painted in 1948, features a day dreaming neighbor from Maine. She is semi-reclining in a white dress in an open field. The pathetic thing is that the 55 year old woman was in real life crippled from a genetic neuropathy and unable to walk.
Andrew's art is unconventional. Asked in 1977 to identify the most overrated and underrated artists, an art critic provided the same name for both categories : Andrew Wyeth.
1948 The Organic Abstraction of Jackson Pollock
2013 SOLD 58 M$ including premium
In 1946, Lee Krasner pushes Jackson Pollock to a secluded barn on Long Island. Thus freed from the bustle of the big city, Pollock has the luck to live his artistic Passion, in the strongest meaning of the word 'passion'.
He did not consider himself as an abstract artist. In the first months after his arrival in Long Island, he developed two series of paintings titled 'Sounds in the grass' and 'Accabonac Creek', reflecting his desire to commune with the earth for expressing its richness.
He then invented his own style so well known today but then so different from anything that existed before him. The surface to be painted is placed on the ground and not on an easel. He leaves his brushes to directly throw the liquid paint. There is no horizon and no framing even when the work is small, and there is also no longer a figuration.
The lines of pure colors of various widths form infinite and meticulous tangles. Sometimes, the start of the work is figurative before being hidden, but it is not the most important. The regularity of the final mesh is spectacular without being total, so that certain areas are breathing or vibrating such as an organic matter. Only Richter's rake will be able to generate similar effects.
On May 15 in New York, Christie's sells Number 19, 1948. This oil and enamel on paper mounted on canvas is small, 78 x 57 cm, but the fineness of the line is prodigious. Such a technical and artistic achievement deserves an estimate of $ 25M.
I invite you to watch the exciting video shared by Christie's.
POST SALE COMMENT
Despite its small size, Number 19-1948 is a masterpiece of Pollock by the extreme care of its realization. This painting was sold $ 58M including premium.
He did not consider himself as an abstract artist. In the first months after his arrival in Long Island, he developed two series of paintings titled 'Sounds in the grass' and 'Accabonac Creek', reflecting his desire to commune with the earth for expressing its richness.
He then invented his own style so well known today but then so different from anything that existed before him. The surface to be painted is placed on the ground and not on an easel. He leaves his brushes to directly throw the liquid paint. There is no horizon and no framing even when the work is small, and there is also no longer a figuration.
The lines of pure colors of various widths form infinite and meticulous tangles. Sometimes, the start of the work is figurative before being hidden, but it is not the most important. The regularity of the final mesh is spectacular without being total, so that certain areas are breathing or vibrating such as an organic matter. Only Richter's rake will be able to generate similar effects.
On May 15 in New York, Christie's sells Number 19, 1948. This oil and enamel on paper mounted on canvas is small, 78 x 57 cm, but the fineness of the line is prodigious. Such a technical and artistic achievement deserves an estimate of $ 25M.
I invite you to watch the exciting video shared by Christie's.
POST SALE COMMENT
Despite its small size, Number 19-1948 is a masterpiece of Pollock by the extreme care of its realization. This painting was sold $ 58M including premium.
ZHANG DAQIAN
1
1948 Landscape after Wang Ximeng
2022 SOLD for HK$ 370M by Sotheby's
Zhang Daqian permeated his art with the best antique pictorial traditions, including the blue and green paintings from the Sui, Tang and Song. This practice was vilified by Western observers as plagiarism after the second world war. Yet it fits perfectly in the spirit of continuity that governs the Chinese art for three millennia.
A landscape of rivers and mountains after Wang Ximeng painted in January and February 1948 is a fair example of a transformation performed by Zhang while keeping the spirit and the style of an antique painting. It had not been shown in public since 1983.
Wang was a prodigy artist under the Northern Song dynasty who was taught and commissioned by the Huizong emperor himself. He died in 1119 CE at 23 years old. The unique artwork attributed to him is a handscroll 52 x 1200 cm painted in ink and blue and green colors on silk when he was not yet 18 years old. It is now kept in the Palace Museum in Beijing.
The work by Zhang was to transfer the significant elements of that masterpiece into a 134 x 73 cm hanging scroll of a similar technique. He did not keep the original composition, changing the multi point classical scenery into a modern perspective from a shore while preserving the vastness of the mountain range.
He led the perfection into even copying the seagulls and geese half hidden in the waves. Zhang's make is in fine line and exquisite color including gold flecks that shimmer in the sunlight. The distant mountains are colored in Mogu style.
Landscape after Wang Ximeng was sold for HK $ 370M by Sotheby's on April 30, 2022, lot 3073. Please watch the video shared by the auction house, providing a significant juxtaposition of elements of the antique and modern pictures.
A landscape of rivers and mountains after Wang Ximeng painted in January and February 1948 is a fair example of a transformation performed by Zhang while keeping the spirit and the style of an antique painting. It had not been shown in public since 1983.
Wang was a prodigy artist under the Northern Song dynasty who was taught and commissioned by the Huizong emperor himself. He died in 1119 CE at 23 years old. The unique artwork attributed to him is a handscroll 52 x 1200 cm painted in ink and blue and green colors on silk when he was not yet 18 years old. It is now kept in the Palace Museum in Beijing.
The work by Zhang was to transfer the significant elements of that masterpiece into a 134 x 73 cm hanging scroll of a similar technique. He did not keep the original composition, changing the multi point classical scenery into a modern perspective from a shore while preserving the vastness of the mountain range.
He led the perfection into even copying the seagulls and geese half hidden in the waves. Zhang's make is in fine line and exquisite color including gold flecks that shimmer in the sunlight. The distant mountains are colored in Mogu style.
Landscape after Wang Ximeng was sold for HK $ 370M by Sotheby's on April 30, 2022, lot 3073. Please watch the video shared by the auction house, providing a significant juxtaposition of elements of the antique and modern pictures.
2
later 1940s Copy of a Juran's Landscape
2016 SOLD for RMB 103M by China Guardian
Juran was a landscape painter in the 10th century CE at the court of the Southern Tang in Nanjing when they were overwhelmed by the Northern Song.
His 145 x 55 cm hanging scroll in ink on silk Storied Mountains and Dense Forests is kept at the National Palace Museum in Taipei.
A replica made by Zhang Daqian in the later 1940s, ink and color on paper 170 x 85 cm, was sold for RMB 103M from a lower estimate of RMB 68M by China Guardian on November 12, 2016, lot 724. It is illustrated in the post sale release shared by China Daily.
His 145 x 55 cm hanging scroll in ink on silk Storied Mountains and Dense Forests is kept at the National Palace Museum in Taipei.
A replica made by Zhang Daqian in the later 1940s, ink and color on paper 170 x 85 cm, was sold for RMB 103M from a lower estimate of RMB 68M by China Guardian on November 12, 2016, lot 724. It is illustrated in the post sale release shared by China Daily.
1948 PH-125 by Clyfford Still
2021 SOLD for $ 31M by Sotheby's
PH-125, also titled 1948-No.1, oil on canvas 187 x 173 cm by Still, was sold for $ 31M by Sotheby's on May 12, 2021, lot 8. Please watch the video shared by the auction house.
Its unlimited massive form is made of a richly saturated texture in various deep hues from gold to amber with a yellow jagged interstice. In the opposite of many other works by Still, it looks static and swelling except for its overlap by a deep red form on its right side.
A color photo in the catalogue shows it on the wall of a 1990 exhibition beside the fully static and larger opus PH-91, 240 x 200 cm, painted in the same year with the same pigments. Both appear like a demonstration of the artist's capability to offer an unprecedented mingle of rare colors, anticipating and possibly inspiring Rothko's rectangular forms.
It is one of the early works which were included in the 1969 selling exhibition at the Marlborough gallery in New York.
Its unlimited massive form is made of a richly saturated texture in various deep hues from gold to amber with a yellow jagged interstice. In the opposite of many other works by Still, it looks static and swelling except for its overlap by a deep red form on its right side.
A color photo in the catalogue shows it on the wall of a 1990 exhibition beside the fully static and larger opus PH-91, 240 x 200 cm, painted in the same year with the same pigments. Both appear like a demonstration of the artist's capability to offer an unprecedented mingle of rare colors, anticipating and possibly inspiring Rothko's rectangular forms.
It is one of the early works which were included in the 1969 selling exhibition at the Marlborough gallery in New York.
1948 The Inner Path of Clyfford Still
2016 SOLD for $ 28M including premium
Born in North Dakota far away from the cities, Clyfford Still is deeply original in his art. Along with Matta he is one of the earliest abstract painters to remove any geometric language and all false references to figurative themes or hermetic signs.
In front of the canvas, Still expresses his inner world beyond the influence of time. His thick paint is thoroughly reworked like a sculpture including extra thickness and scars until the color balance and the texture match the feeling that the artist wishes to express.
Like Mondrian, Still refuses that the vision is limited by the frame : he will influence Pollock. Like no one before him in abstract art, Still removes the line to provide to the viewer an almost organic vision of the transitions between colors : Monet was on that trend at the end of his career, and Still will influence Rothko. Like Malevich, Still considers that the artwork must be self-sufficient.
Clyfford Still is decidedly a man of the West. In his period of greatest creativity, from 1946 to 1950, he taught art in San Francisco. His return to New York will cause lasting quarrels with the art market and with the other artists. This pioneer who had everything to become the top abstract artist of his time isolated himself and refused the exhibitions.
He was reluctant to sell his art. At his death 2400 works were bequeathed to his family with the formal instructions to only entrust them to a place that will accept to devote an exclusive museum to him. The widow is quite logically looking for a solution in the West. Denver brilliantly accepts this challenge.
Before the opening of the Clyfford Still Museum, four paintings are released to the art market, creating an intense interest due to the extreme rarity of the masterpieces of this artist at auction. Sotheby's sells them on November 9, 2011. 1947-Y-No.2, 177 x 150 cm, fetches $ 31,5M including premium and 1949-A-No.1, 236 x 200 cm, $ 61,7M including premium.
On May 10 in New York, Christie's sells PH-234, oil on canvas 175 x 151 cm painted in 1948, estimated $ 25M, lot 28B.
In front of the canvas, Still expresses his inner world beyond the influence of time. His thick paint is thoroughly reworked like a sculpture including extra thickness and scars until the color balance and the texture match the feeling that the artist wishes to express.
Like Mondrian, Still refuses that the vision is limited by the frame : he will influence Pollock. Like no one before him in abstract art, Still removes the line to provide to the viewer an almost organic vision of the transitions between colors : Monet was on that trend at the end of his career, and Still will influence Rothko. Like Malevich, Still considers that the artwork must be self-sufficient.
Clyfford Still is decidedly a man of the West. In his period of greatest creativity, from 1946 to 1950, he taught art in San Francisco. His return to New York will cause lasting quarrels with the art market and with the other artists. This pioneer who had everything to become the top abstract artist of his time isolated himself and refused the exhibitions.
He was reluctant to sell his art. At his death 2400 works were bequeathed to his family with the formal instructions to only entrust them to a place that will accept to devote an exclusive museum to him. The widow is quite logically looking for a solution in the West. Denver brilliantly accepts this challenge.
Before the opening of the Clyfford Still Museum, four paintings are released to the art market, creating an intense interest due to the extreme rarity of the masterpieces of this artist at auction. Sotheby's sells them on November 9, 2011. 1947-Y-No.2, 177 x 150 cm, fetches $ 31,5M including premium and 1949-A-No.1, 236 x 200 cm, $ 61,7M including premium.
On May 10 in New York, Christie's sells PH-234, oil on canvas 175 x 151 cm painted in 1948, estimated $ 25M, lot 28B.
1948 Femme au Chignon dans un Fauteuil by Picasso
2015 SOLD for $ 30M by Sotheby's
Once again in the search of another love partner and muse, Picasso, aged 61, met Françoise Gilot, aged 21, in 1943. They moved to Antibes in 1946. A son, Claude, was born in 1947.
In the opposite of his unfair representation of Dora in distress, Françoise was the Femme fleur worthy of his admiration. He attributed to her a saturated emerald green color which is also a symbol of rebirth after the war.
In the summer of 1948 Picasso, who was since 1944 a member of the Parti Communiste Français, attended a peace congress in Wroclaw while Françoise was just becoming pregnant again. She went angry for that abandonment. Picasso, who desired to maintain peace in their couple, gifted to her a Polish peasant coat brightly embroidered in red, blue and yellow.
The next period was happy. Picasso, who had been busy in ceramics and lithography, resumed painting by a small series of portraits of Françoise seated in an armchair, wearing the Polish garment. Every muse of Picasso is different from her predecessors. The strong headed Françoise, a skilled artist in her own right, is proud with a gentle smile.
Femme au chignon dans un fauteuil, oil on canvas 92 x 73 cm painted on November 1, 1948, was
sold for $ 30M from a lower estimate of $ 12M by Sotheby's on May 5, 2015, lot 21. It had been acquired in 1956 the Warsaw born Samuel Goldwyn, arguably impressed by the unexpected Polish element in Picasso's cmposition.
Within the series of portraits of the pregnant Françoise in an armchair with the Polish coat, Femme dans un fauteuil was begun and left unfinished on October 30, 1948, and completed on Christmas day. Picasso did not part of it. This oil on canvas 92 x 73 cm was sold for HK $ 93M by Sotheby's on April 5, 2023, lot 1032. Please watch the video shared by the auction house.
In the opposite of his unfair representation of Dora in distress, Françoise was the Femme fleur worthy of his admiration. He attributed to her a saturated emerald green color which is also a symbol of rebirth after the war.
In the summer of 1948 Picasso, who was since 1944 a member of the Parti Communiste Français, attended a peace congress in Wroclaw while Françoise was just becoming pregnant again. She went angry for that abandonment. Picasso, who desired to maintain peace in their couple, gifted to her a Polish peasant coat brightly embroidered in red, blue and yellow.
The next period was happy. Picasso, who had been busy in ceramics and lithography, resumed painting by a small series of portraits of Françoise seated in an armchair, wearing the Polish garment. Every muse of Picasso is different from her predecessors. The strong headed Françoise, a skilled artist in her own right, is proud with a gentle smile.
Femme au chignon dans un fauteuil, oil on canvas 92 x 73 cm painted on November 1, 1948, was
sold for $ 30M from a lower estimate of $ 12M by Sotheby's on May 5, 2015, lot 21. It had been acquired in 1956 the Warsaw born Samuel Goldwyn, arguably impressed by the unexpected Polish element in Picasso's cmposition.
Within the series of portraits of the pregnant Françoise in an armchair with the Polish coat, Femme dans un fauteuil was begun and left unfinished on October 30, 1948, and completed on Christmas day. Picasso did not part of it. This oil on canvas 92 x 73 cm was sold for HK $ 93M by Sotheby's on April 5, 2023, lot 1032. Please watch the video shared by the auction house.
1948 La Voix du Sang by Magritte
2022 SOLD for $ 26.7M by Christie's
After the War René Magritte revisits his typical Surrealist themes. The series La Voix du Sang is a remake of L'Arbre savant from 1935.
The trunk of the 1935 leafless tree is hollowed like a tall dresser of several compartments one over the other. Each of them has a door curved in alignment to the trunk. L'Arbre Savant had four sections. From bottom to top, a candle, a pyramid, a mingled mass of metal wire and an undefined object behind a nearly closed door. The surrealist play is between the visible and the hidden.
In 1947 the first version of La Voix du Sang, staged in twilight, brings some improvement. The cabinets are reduced to three, whose full front view reveals the impossible balance of the handsome leafy tree. The tree is displayed against a grassy valley instead of a wall. The lower compartments have a lit doll's house and a sphere. The half closed top compartment may be empty. This oil on canvas 65 x 54 cm was sold for $ 3.6M by Christie's on November 6, 2007, lot 77.
Two finished versions follow in 1948 with the same title, one with and one without a red curtain.
The no curtain Voix du Sang, 79 x 59 cm oil on canvas, was sold for $ 26.7M from a lower estimate of $ 12M by Christie's on November 9, 2022, lot 20.
The trunk of the 1935 leafless tree is hollowed like a tall dresser of several compartments one over the other. Each of them has a door curved in alignment to the trunk. L'Arbre Savant had four sections. From bottom to top, a candle, a pyramid, a mingled mass of metal wire and an undefined object behind a nearly closed door. The surrealist play is between the visible and the hidden.
In 1947 the first version of La Voix du Sang, staged in twilight, brings some improvement. The cabinets are reduced to three, whose full front view reveals the impossible balance of the handsome leafy tree. The tree is displayed against a grassy valley instead of a wall. The lower compartments have a lit doll's house and a sphere. The half closed top compartment may be empty. This oil on canvas 65 x 54 cm was sold for $ 3.6M by Christie's on November 6, 2007, lot 77.
Two finished versions follow in 1948 with the same title, one with and one without a red curtain.
The no curtain Voix du Sang, 79 x 59 cm oil on canvas, was sold for $ 26.7M from a lower estimate of $ 12M by Christie's on November 9, 2022, lot 20.
1948 GIACOMETTI
1
La Main
2010 SOLD for $ 26M including premium by Christie's
narrated in 2014 before the auction of another copy by Christie's (see below)
In 1946, Alberto Giacometti is not satisfied with his own art. His plaster figurines are expressive but too small. Haunted by the conjunction of death memories and of nightmares, he abandons the realistic figure of the body for a new wire-drawn disproportion.
1947 is his great year of creativity, including L'homme qui marche (walking man) who was to remain his most powerful work, the masterpiece of the derision of man in his loneliness.
The flesh is a mystery that has no meaning after death. All organs may contribute to the expression. The mouth in his Head on rod is wide open in the agony. The sculpture entitled La Main is actually a hand with long opened fingers at the end of a complete folded arm also mounted on a rod.
A hand does not require the rest of the body for expressing a passion. This asexual hand holds nothing. Fingers crave but the wide opening of the elbow is a gesture of hope.
Pierre Matisse appreciates that Alberto has become one of the most important artists of his time. With the financial participation of Matisse, Giacometti can commission bronzes of his new works to the best foundry in Paris, the Alexis Rudier workshop.
The serial number 1 of the first edition cast by Rudier in 1947 was part of the seminal exhibition of the new art of Giacometti opened by Matisse in New York on January 19, 1948. This bronze with brown patina 57 x 72 x 3.5 cm passed at Christie's on June 24, 2014, from a lower estimate of £ 10M.
A bronze of La Main in the same dimension with brown and green patina cast by Rudier in March 1948 was sold for $ 26M including premium by Christie's on May 4, 2010, lot 30, from a lower estimate of $ 10M.
1947 is his great year of creativity, including L'homme qui marche (walking man) who was to remain his most powerful work, the masterpiece of the derision of man in his loneliness.
The flesh is a mystery that has no meaning after death. All organs may contribute to the expression. The mouth in his Head on rod is wide open in the agony. The sculpture entitled La Main is actually a hand with long opened fingers at the end of a complete folded arm also mounted on a rod.
A hand does not require the rest of the body for expressing a passion. This asexual hand holds nothing. Fingers crave but the wide opening of the elbow is a gesture of hope.
Pierre Matisse appreciates that Alberto has become one of the most important artists of his time. With the financial participation of Matisse, Giacometti can commission bronzes of his new works to the best foundry in Paris, the Alexis Rudier workshop.
The serial number 1 of the first edition cast by Rudier in 1947 was part of the seminal exhibition of the new art of Giacometti opened by Matisse in New York on January 19, 1948. This bronze with brown patina 57 x 72 x 3.5 cm passed at Christie's on June 24, 2014, from a lower estimate of £ 10M.
A bronze of La Main in the same dimension with brown and green patina cast by Rudier in March 1948 was sold for $ 26M including premium by Christie's on May 4, 2010, lot 30, from a lower estimate of $ 10M.
2
Grande Figure
2017 SOLD for £ 18M including premium
After the war Alberto Giacometti reinstalled himself in his Parisian studio which had been carefully maintained by Diego. His life is stabilized by his meeting with Annette. He wants to exhibit through his sculptures his own view about the human nature, close to Sartre's existentialism.
His threadlike characters are both fragile in their bodies and solid in their bronze. These humans are not identifiable but the original plaster tirelessly kneaded by the artist's hand brings them a tormented texture that resembles their creator.
Pierre Matisse is seduced but cannot wait. Alberto achieves in 1947 in a hurry which is not his usual practice his primordial trilogy dominated by the Man with the finger. The other two elements are the Walking man with his compass shaped legs prophesying the imbalance of the future, and his opposite the everlasting Standing woman.
Other figures will soon be created as well as groups and busts. The attitude of the frail and stoic woman will remain unchanged throughout Alberto's career as if this perfectionist artist had at first found how to express the timeless woman. With her strictly joined legs she is inspired from the Egyptian anthropomorphic coffins. Gilt or perched on a chariot to be worshiped, she is the mother goddess of Alberto's surrealist pantheon.
On June 21 in London, Sotheby's sells Grande Figure, a bronze 1.30m high in a patina of dark gold color. Cast as a unique copy by the Alexis Rudier company in Paris in 1948 from a plaster dated 1947, it is one of the earliest large size examples of Alberto's standing woman. It is estimated £ 15M, lot 57.
His threadlike characters are both fragile in their bodies and solid in their bronze. These humans are not identifiable but the original plaster tirelessly kneaded by the artist's hand brings them a tormented texture that resembles their creator.
Pierre Matisse is seduced but cannot wait. Alberto achieves in 1947 in a hurry which is not his usual practice his primordial trilogy dominated by the Man with the finger. The other two elements are the Walking man with his compass shaped legs prophesying the imbalance of the future, and his opposite the everlasting Standing woman.
Other figures will soon be created as well as groups and busts. The attitude of the frail and stoic woman will remain unchanged throughout Alberto's career as if this perfectionist artist had at first found how to express the timeless woman. With her strictly joined legs she is inspired from the Egyptian anthropomorphic coffins. Gilt or perched on a chariot to be worshiped, she is the mother goddess of Alberto's surrealist pantheon.
On June 21 in London, Sotheby's sells Grande Figure, a bronze 1.30m high in a patina of dark gold color. Cast as a unique copy by the Alexis Rudier company in Paris in 1948 from a plaster dated 1947, it is one of the earliest large size examples of Alberto's standing woman. It is estimated £ 15M, lot 57.
1948 La Serpentine by Matisse
2000 SOLD for $ 14M by Sotheby's
Matisse sees sculpture useful to his pictorial art for appreciating line and volume in space.
For the preparation of La Danse I in 1909, he sculpted La Serpentine inspired by a dance
performed since 1892 by Loie Fuller with her signature whirling veils.
La Serpentine features a standing female body with slender limbs, giving the impression of a linear arabesque drawn in space. It is also known as Femme à la Stèle and L'Araignée.
A bronze 55 cm high, cast in 1948 from an edition of 10 and 1 artist's proof started in 1910, was
sold for $ 14M from a lower estimate of $ 8M by Sotheby's on May 10, 2000, lot 25.
For the preparation of La Danse I in 1909, he sculpted La Serpentine inspired by a dance
performed since 1892 by Loie Fuller with her signature whirling veils.
La Serpentine features a standing female body with slender limbs, giving the impression of a linear arabesque drawn in space. It is also known as Femme à la Stèle and L'Araignée.
A bronze 55 cm high, cast in 1948 from an edition of 10 and 1 artist's proof started in 1910, was
sold for $ 14M from a lower estimate of $ 8M by Sotheby's on May 10, 2000, lot 25.
