1969
Except otherwise stated, all results below include the premium.
See also : Top 10 Painting Bacon Bacon 1963-70 Hockney UK II Twombly Richter < 1983 Picasso in Mougins Zhang Daqian The Man Self portrait Animals Alps Cities
See also : Top 10 Painting Bacon Bacon 1963-70 Hockney UK II Twombly Richter < 1983 Picasso in Mougins Zhang Daqian The Man Self portrait Animals Alps Cities
1969 Three Studies of Lucian Freud by Bacon
2013 SOLD for $ 142M by Christie's
As early as 1944, the triptych is the favorite medium of Bacon. The three perspectives cancel the plane of the canvas to provide to the viewer the mental illusion of a three-dimensional space.
Heads in small sizes often come to auction, but larger works are exceptional. On November 12, 2013, Christie's sold for $ 142M Three Studies of Lucian Freud, three oils on canvas painted in 1969, 198 x 148 cm for each element. Please watch the video shared by Christie's.
The two artists have been friends for nearly a quarter of century. Francis is in his George Dyer period and his appeal to Lucian has no reason to be erotic. Always looking for a total empathy with his entourage, Bacon pays tribute to a rival whom he admires. The seating position is gentle, but the colors and deformities of the face express the passions, in front of a strident yellow background.
Bacon locked Freud in a threadlike prism, similar to a squaring but proving his intent of the three-dimensional nature of the triptych. This desire to control his friend is fictional and symbolic because Bacon, as almost every time, worked this triple portrait from photos made by John Deakin.
Christie's does not indicate an estimate but compares the importance of this work with the triptych of the same size sold for $ 86M by Sotheby's on 14 May 2008. Painted in 1976, this work is more symbolic but also less three-dimensional due to the decomposition of the body in the central picture.
The low resolution image below is shared by Wikimedia for fair use :
Heads in small sizes often come to auction, but larger works are exceptional. On November 12, 2013, Christie's sold for $ 142M Three Studies of Lucian Freud, three oils on canvas painted in 1969, 198 x 148 cm for each element. Please watch the video shared by Christie's.
The two artists have been friends for nearly a quarter of century. Francis is in his George Dyer period and his appeal to Lucian has no reason to be erotic. Always looking for a total empathy with his entourage, Bacon pays tribute to a rival whom he admires. The seating position is gentle, but the colors and deformities of the face express the passions, in front of a strident yellow background.
Bacon locked Freud in a threadlike prism, similar to a squaring but proving his intent of the three-dimensional nature of the triptych. This desire to control his friend is fictional and symbolic because Bacon, as almost every time, worked this triple portrait from photos made by John Deakin.
Christie's does not indicate an estimate but compares the importance of this work with the triptych of the same size sold for $ 86M by Sotheby's on 14 May 2008. Painted in 1976, this work is more symbolic but also less three-dimensional due to the decomposition of the body in the central picture.
The low resolution image below is shared by Wikimedia for fair use :
1969 Geldzahler and Scott by Hockney
2019 SOLD for £ 38M by Christie's
Looking for sexual freedom, David Hockney arrives in California in 1964. The easy life nevertheless does not answer his questioning about communication within a couple.
Between 1968 and 1977 he makes double portraits in very large format, 214 x 305 cm. He alternates between homosexual and heterosexual couples and ends the series with his own parents, clearly assessing that his concern is no longer sex but dialogue. The sitters are most often identified in the title and are very recognizable.
Invariably the two characters are distant from each other with a deliberately orthogonal gazing. In this strange intimacy, the painter is an invisible social voyeur.
Installed again in London in 1968, he does not neglect America. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York is preparing a major exhibition that will reveal post-war American art to the general public. The curator of this important cultural operation is the highly influential Henry Geldzahler.
Hockney arrives in Geldzahler's living room in Manhattan with his sketchbook, polaroid camera and flu. Back in his studio in London, he paints in 1969 'Henry Geldzahler and Christopher Scott'. This acrylic on canvas was sold for £ 38M by Christie's on March 6, 2019, lot 8.
The two men could not be more dissimilar and yet their life as a couple is sustainable. Robust and confident in himself, Geldzahler is comfortably seated in the middle of a beautiful sofa worthy of the greatest Art Deco collections. On the right, his young partner is standing, dressed in a raincoat too big for him and as stiff as the floor lamp. The scene is located by the skyscrapers beyond the small window.
Between 1968 and 1977 he makes double portraits in very large format, 214 x 305 cm. He alternates between homosexual and heterosexual couples and ends the series with his own parents, clearly assessing that his concern is no longer sex but dialogue. The sitters are most often identified in the title and are very recognizable.
Invariably the two characters are distant from each other with a deliberately orthogonal gazing. In this strange intimacy, the painter is an invisible social voyeur.
Installed again in London in 1968, he does not neglect America. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York is preparing a major exhibition that will reveal post-war American art to the general public. The curator of this important cultural operation is the highly influential Henry Geldzahler.
Hockney arrives in Geldzahler's living room in Manhattan with his sketchbook, polaroid camera and flu. Back in his studio in London, he paints in 1969 'Henry Geldzahler and Christopher Scott'. This acrylic on canvas was sold for £ 38M by Christie's on March 6, 2019, lot 8.
The two men could not be more dissimilar and yet their life as a couple is sustainable. Robust and confident in himself, Geldzahler is comfortably seated in the middle of a beautiful sofa worthy of the greatest Art Deco collections. On the right, his young partner is standing, dressed in a raincoat too big for him and as stiff as the floor lamp. The scene is located by the skyscrapers beyond the small window.
1969 Study for Bullfight by Bacon
2007 SOLD for $ 46M by Sotheby's
Life is a struggle that must include risks. Michel Leiris is looking for a ritual to explain his conception of literature. He finds bullfighting, this game in public between man and beast of which one of them will die. In 1938 he publishes an essay titled Miroir de la Tauromachie.
Francis Bacon, existentialist artist, was familiar with the work of Leiris, famous for his reciprocal influence with Sartre. In 1966 Leiris presented to Bacon a copy of his Miroir. Bacon sees in it a new theme for his art, with a sexual allusion in the physical rapprochement between man and bull. He finds photos in the memory book of the matador Antonio Ordóñez.
In 1969 Bacon prepares canvases 200 x 148 cm, probably for the project of a triptych. Two versions, Study for Bullfight No. 1 and No. 2, show the instant action when the bull passes the matador's cape. The arena is a circular area without background, with a tall concave screen in which the artist installs the crowd of spectators.
The sexual excitement is not achieved in these realistic images. His Second Version of Study for Bullfight No. 1 displays two major modifications. The screen is now empty, accentuating the intimacy of the two protagonists of the action. In the foreground, a spermatozoid is disproportionately enlarged, and released from a human shadow on which it had been placed.
Second Version of Study for Bullfight No. 1 was sold for $ 46M by Sotheby's on November 14, 2007, lot 29.
As far as bullfight is concerned, Bacon is neither Hemingway nor Picasso. He probably appreciates that it is illusory to go forward on this theme with his too limited experience of corridas. His torero with a blackened face cannot appeal the aficionados. He will not execute the triptych.
Francis Bacon, existentialist artist, was familiar with the work of Leiris, famous for his reciprocal influence with Sartre. In 1966 Leiris presented to Bacon a copy of his Miroir. Bacon sees in it a new theme for his art, with a sexual allusion in the physical rapprochement between man and bull. He finds photos in the memory book of the matador Antonio Ordóñez.
In 1969 Bacon prepares canvases 200 x 148 cm, probably for the project of a triptych. Two versions, Study for Bullfight No. 1 and No. 2, show the instant action when the bull passes the matador's cape. The arena is a circular area without background, with a tall concave screen in which the artist installs the crowd of spectators.
The sexual excitement is not achieved in these realistic images. His Second Version of Study for Bullfight No. 1 displays two major modifications. The screen is now empty, accentuating the intimacy of the two protagonists of the action. In the foreground, a spermatozoid is disproportionately enlarged, and released from a human shadow on which it had been placed.
Second Version of Study for Bullfight No. 1 was sold for $ 46M by Sotheby's on November 14, 2007, lot 29.
As far as bullfight is concerned, Bacon is neither Hemingway nor Picasso. He probably appreciates that it is illusory to go forward on this theme with his too limited experience of corridas. His torero with a blackened face cannot appeal the aficionados. He will not execute the triptych.
1969 TWOMBLY in Bolsena
1
2015 SOLD for $ 43M by Christie's
From May to October 1969 Cy Twombly spends the summer in a Renaissance palace above Lake Bolsena, where he isolates himself to deepen his quest about the primordial generation of human energy through movement. Aged 41, he is certainly less sensitive to pornography and more to communication.
His new style will be comparable to a street art whose insignificant details form an opulent waterfall of graffiti through the spontaneity of the artist's gesture. He works with house paint, lead or graphite, wax pencil and sometimes felt-tip pen on canvases 200 x 240 cm.
Temporarily renouncing the dark background, he distributes his floating forms on a cream or off-white surface. Color is limited to pencil lines. Rectangles and numerals replace in this waterfall his previous graffitis of the antique passions.
This sub-series inspired by the Apollo 11 lunar mission is made of 14 Untitled (Bolsena) 200 x 240 cm canvases.
One of them was sold for $ 15.4M by Sotheby's on May 13, 2013.
Another opus was sold for $ 43M by Christie's on May 13, 2015, lot 43B. It is very precisely dated July 10, 1969, during the preparation phase of the space mission.
His new style will be comparable to a street art whose insignificant details form an opulent waterfall of graffiti through the spontaneity of the artist's gesture. He works with house paint, lead or graphite, wax pencil and sometimes felt-tip pen on canvases 200 x 240 cm.
Temporarily renouncing the dark background, he distributes his floating forms on a cream or off-white surface. Color is limited to pencil lines. Rectangles and numerals replace in this waterfall his previous graffitis of the antique passions.
This sub-series inspired by the Apollo 11 lunar mission is made of 14 Untitled (Bolsena) 200 x 240 cm canvases.
One of them was sold for $ 15.4M by Sotheby's on May 13, 2013.
Another opus was sold for $ 43M by Christie's on May 13, 2015, lot 43B. It is very precisely dated July 10, 1969, during the preparation phase of the space mission.
2
2020 SOLD for $ 39M by Christie's
1969 Self Portrait by Bacon
2007 SOLD for $ 33M by Sotheby's
In 1969 Francis Bacon is 60 years old. His Soho friends are also aging. He looks at himself, once again.
A painting featuring him with a sad gaze is important for him, as evidenced by its simple title Self Portrait without the frequent "Study for ..." that he uses when a work belongs to a series or an intended series.
This oil on canvas 35 x 45 cm was sold for $ 33M by Sotheby's on November 14, 2007, lot 19.
A painting featuring him with a sad gaze is important for him, as evidenced by its simple title Self Portrait without the frequent "Study for ..." that he uses when a work belongs to a series or an intended series.
This oil on canvas 35 x 45 cm was sold for $ 33M by Sotheby's on November 14, 2007, lot 19.
1969 Mousquetaire by Picasso
1
Mousquetaire à la pipe by Picasso
2013 SOLD for $ 31M including by Sotheby's
In 1966, Pablo Picasso is recovering. Despite his fragile health, the artist has kept his frenzy of creation, but his relationship to the world has changed. He no longer travels and is afraid of being jostled by a crowd.
His Musketeers are an offshoot of the masculinity that still excites the old man, but it is difficult to regard them as self-portraits. They are instead his companions of adventures. The temperament of the male transcends time: Picasso compares the soldiers from Rembrandt's time with the hippies of the sexual revolution.
The art of Picasso becomes a wink of complicity with youth. For the first time, his theme is decidedly humorous. The French boys, always fans of Alexandre Dumas, are delighted. They do not consider the dominant red and gold of these paintings that also mark the artist's refusal to return to Franco's Spain. Art critics are skeptical, except Zervos.
Pablo combines his own styles within that series as he has done since the early 1930s. A decidedly cubist Mousquetaire à la pipe, oil on canvas 195 x 130 cm painted on March 5, 1969, was sold for $ 31M by Sotheby's on November 6, 2013 from a lower estimate of $ 12M, lot 29.
His Musketeers are an offshoot of the masculinity that still excites the old man, but it is difficult to regard them as self-portraits. They are instead his companions of adventures. The temperament of the male transcends time: Picasso compares the soldiers from Rembrandt's time with the hippies of the sexual revolution.
The art of Picasso becomes a wink of complicity with youth. For the first time, his theme is decidedly humorous. The French boys, always fans of Alexandre Dumas, are delighted. They do not consider the dominant red and gold of these paintings that also mark the artist's refusal to return to Franco's Spain. Art critics are skeptical, except Zervos.
Pablo combines his own styles within that series as he has done since the early 1930s. A decidedly cubist Mousquetaire à la pipe, oil on canvas 195 x 130 cm painted on March 5, 1969, was sold for $ 31M by Sotheby's on November 6, 2013 from a lower estimate of $ 12M, lot 29.
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L'Homme à l'Epée
2015 SOLD for $ 22.6M by Christie's
L'Homme à l'épée, oil on canvas 146 x 114 cm painted by Picasso on July 25, 1969 during the preparation of the Woodstock festival, is undoubtedly a hidalgo. He is a bodyguard of the old artist in his approach to the new world. The face that is only slightly deformed outside the aggressive gaze is perhaps a tribute to Velazquez. On the following year, Picasso approves the choice of this picture for the poster of the exhibition of his most recent art in Avignon.
L'Homme à l'épée was sold for £ 7M by Sotheby's on June 24, 2009 and for $ 22.6M by Christie's on November 9, 2015, lot 20A.
L'Homme à l'épée was sold for £ 7M by Sotheby's on June 24, 2009 and for $ 22.6M by Christie's on November 9, 2015, lot 20A.
1969 The Mountain of the Marshals by Zhang Daqian
2019 SOLD for HK$ 163M by Sotheby's
Zhang Daqian had fled the Communist China. In his Garden of the Eight Virtues near Sao Paulo, he develops an art inspired both by Expressionism and by traditional Chinese graphic art. He travels and exhibits a lot during this period. In 1968 he is named honorary doctor by a college in Taiwan.
Also in 1968, Zhang leaves Brazil to relocate in California where he meets other exiles, including Zhang Xueliang's daughter with her husband.
Succeeding in 1928 to his father Zhang Zuolin murdered by the Japanese, Zhang Xueliang had been one of the most powerful warlords, operating from Manchuria and nicknamed the Young Marshal. Assigned to residency since 1936 for temporarily bringing Chiang Kai-shek to negotiate with the Communists against the Japanese, he was forced to follow in 1949 the exode of the Kuomintang to Taiwan.
Zhang Zuolin, the Old Marshal, was a poor peasant. The two "Marshals", father and son, loved to locate their origins in the Yiwulu Mountains, one of the most beautiful landscapes of Manchuria. Still stuck in Taiwan, Zhang Xueliang became a refined poet, connoisseur and collector. To inspire his friend Zhang Daqian, he composed a poetic essay on the ever green beauty of his beloved mountain.
On April 2, 2019, Sotheby's sold for HK $ 163M from a lower estimate of HK $ 50M an imaginary view of the Yiwulu Mountains, splashed ink and colors on paper 101 x 196 cm painted in 1969 by Zhang Daqian and dedicated by him to the daughter and son-in-law of Zhang Xueliang, lot 1415. Please watch the video shared by Sotheby's.
In a style where a realistic illusion takes precedence over the abstraction that had dominated his landscapes in the previous years, this artwork can be compared with a view of non-located hills under the snows of spring, 68 x 138 cm, painted in the same year, sold for HK $ 42M by Christie's on November 28, 2017.
Also in 1968, Zhang leaves Brazil to relocate in California where he meets other exiles, including Zhang Xueliang's daughter with her husband.
Succeeding in 1928 to his father Zhang Zuolin murdered by the Japanese, Zhang Xueliang had been one of the most powerful warlords, operating from Manchuria and nicknamed the Young Marshal. Assigned to residency since 1936 for temporarily bringing Chiang Kai-shek to negotiate with the Communists against the Japanese, he was forced to follow in 1949 the exode of the Kuomintang to Taiwan.
Zhang Zuolin, the Old Marshal, was a poor peasant. The two "Marshals", father and son, loved to locate their origins in the Yiwulu Mountains, one of the most beautiful landscapes of Manchuria. Still stuck in Taiwan, Zhang Xueliang became a refined poet, connoisseur and collector. To inspire his friend Zhang Daqian, he composed a poetic essay on the ever green beauty of his beloved mountain.
On April 2, 2019, Sotheby's sold for HK $ 163M from a lower estimate of HK $ 50M an imaginary view of the Yiwulu Mountains, splashed ink and colors on paper 101 x 196 cm painted in 1969 by Zhang Daqian and dedicated by him to the daughter and son-in-law of Zhang Xueliang, lot 1415. Please watch the video shared by Sotheby's.
In a style where a realistic illusion takes precedence over the abstraction that had dominated his landscapes in the previous years, this artwork can be compared with a view of non-located hills under the snows of spring, 68 x 138 cm, painted in the same year, sold for HK $ 42M by Christie's on November 28, 2017.
1969 Lake Lucerne by Gerhard Richter
2015 SOLD for £ 15.8M by Christie's
From his beginnings in the 1960s with his recuperation of blurry photos, Gerhard Richter questioned the meaning of art in the society. In parallel, he perfected his technique of brushstrokes to create subtle color variations that will characterize the rest of his career.
In 1969, he already appears both as an excellent practitioner and as a theorist. Admirer of Friedrich, Richter appreciates that the romantic paintings of landscapes are timeless because the landscapes have no soul. The fact that the most beautiful natural sites are universally considered as sublime is a paradox that the perfection of his own art will unveil, or rather denounce.
In his library of images, Richter chooses Lake Lucerne (Vierwaldstätter See) in the violent backlighting of a cloudy day. All the elements converge for his purposed demonstration: the mountains in the shadow or in the fog, the variations of sky and water and the reflections on the lake.
The lines are blurred like the edges of Rothko's rectangles. Richter brings a sumptuous variation of shades by spreading a dry brush on the wet canvas, two decades before extending his use of the squeegee in abstract art.
His view of Lake Lucerne is supposed to compete altogether with nature and Turner. This oil on canvas 120 x 150 cm was sold for £ 15.8M by Christie's on February 11, 2015, lot 8.
In 1969, he already appears both as an excellent practitioner and as a theorist. Admirer of Friedrich, Richter appreciates that the romantic paintings of landscapes are timeless because the landscapes have no soul. The fact that the most beautiful natural sites are universally considered as sublime is a paradox that the perfection of his own art will unveil, or rather denounce.
In his library of images, Richter chooses Lake Lucerne (Vierwaldstätter See) in the violent backlighting of a cloudy day. All the elements converge for his purposed demonstration: the mountains in the shadow or in the fog, the variations of sky and water and the reflections on the lake.
The lines are blurred like the edges of Rothko's rectangles. Richter brings a sumptuous variation of shades by spreading a dry brush on the wet canvas, two decades before extending his use of the squeegee in abstract art.
His view of Lake Lucerne is supposed to compete altogether with nature and Turner. This oil on canvas 120 x 150 cm was sold for £ 15.8M by Christie's on February 11, 2015, lot 8.
