1971
1971 Study of Red Pope by Bacon
2022 SOLD for $ 46M by Sotheby's
The art of Francis Bacon mostly expressed his difficult psychological relationship with a questionable world. In an early phase, he looks at the decrepitude of his contemporaries, personified by the pope. Death is treated by everyone as a lie, with the exception of the image of the old woman in Eisenstein's movie.
After such a beginning, the artist does not have the right to get old. Francis takes care of his physical appearance but the ravages of time are inevitable. He tries a second youth by taking the handsome George Dyer as his whipping lover. In 1971 a single painting gathers George and the pope.
The work is titled Study of Red Pope, 2nd version by reference to a previous opus from 1962 in which the pope was similarly seated on his throne with a slightly different suffering face. The 1962 pope was alone. His 1971 counterpart is observed from a curved window by a half length George smartly dressed with tuxedo and tie. The quiet straightness of the friend is in full opposition with the crouching distress of the late pope from Velazquez.
It was exhibited in the Grand Palais in 1971. George had joined the camp of the dead 36 hours before the opening by taking his own life in a Paris hotel room. No pope will be painted by Francis any more.
This oil on canvas 178 x 148 cm was sold for $ 46M by Sotheby's on May 19, 2022, lot 115. Please watch the video shared by the auction house.
After such a beginning, the artist does not have the right to get old. Francis takes care of his physical appearance but the ravages of time are inevitable. He tries a second youth by taking the handsome George Dyer as his whipping lover. In 1971 a single painting gathers George and the pope.
The work is titled Study of Red Pope, 2nd version by reference to a previous opus from 1962 in which the pope was similarly seated on his throne with a slightly different suffering face. The 1962 pope was alone. His 1971 counterpart is observed from a curved window by a half length George smartly dressed with tuxedo and tie. The quiet straightness of the friend is in full opposition with the crouching distress of the late pope from Velazquez.
It was exhibited in the Grand Palais in 1971. George had joined the camp of the dead 36 hours before the opening by taking his own life in a Paris hotel room. No pope will be painted by Francis any more.
This oil on canvas 178 x 148 cm was sold for $ 46M by Sotheby's on May 19, 2022, lot 115. Please watch the video shared by the auction house.
1971 HOCKNEY
1
Sur la Terrasse
2019 SOLD for $ 29.5M by Christie's
In 1966 Peter Schlesinger is attending a drawing class in Los Angeles. For this session, the teacher is David Hockney, an eccentric Brit with a tomato red suit, cardboard glasses and a terrible Yorkshire accent. It's love at first sight.
Their life as a couple lasts several years, with social gatherings and travels. The age difference is too much and Peter needs new adventures. They start arguing.
In February 1971 the couple rents a hotel room in Marrakech. David sketches his friend, sometimes from behind, on the large sunny terrace. in the following month, back in his studio, David feels that Peter escapes him. He paints Sur la Terrasse (the title is in French), which he will finish during the summer.
Sur la Terrasse is a staging in three successive distances in the manner of Bonnard's terraces. In the background, the morning sun bathes the lush vegetation. The middle stage is the terrace on which Peter, seen from behind, is standing and looks at the garden. The foreground is the opening of the window from where we imagine that David is observing Peter.
At this time David works in the presence of Jack Hazan for preparing a biopic. The moviemaker has thus the chance to attend during the long period when the artist cannot overcome his first heartbreak. Hazan will also record in 1972 the preparation of Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures) on the theme of Peter's interest in another man.
Sur la Terrasse had not been displayed to the public since 1973. This 275 x 214 cm acrylic on canvas was sold for $ 29.5M for sale by Christie's on November 13, 2019, lot 9 B. Portrait of an artist was sold for $ 90M by Christie's in 2018. The biopic A Bigger Splash was released in 1974.
Their life as a couple lasts several years, with social gatherings and travels. The age difference is too much and Peter needs new adventures. They start arguing.
In February 1971 the couple rents a hotel room in Marrakech. David sketches his friend, sometimes from behind, on the large sunny terrace. in the following month, back in his studio, David feels that Peter escapes him. He paints Sur la Terrasse (the title is in French), which he will finish during the summer.
Sur la Terrasse is a staging in three successive distances in the manner of Bonnard's terraces. In the background, the morning sun bathes the lush vegetation. The middle stage is the terrace on which Peter, seen from behind, is standing and looks at the garden. The foreground is the opening of the window from where we imagine that David is observing Peter.
At this time David works in the presence of Jack Hazan for preparing a biopic. The moviemaker has thus the chance to attend during the long period when the artist cannot overcome his first heartbreak. Hazan will also record in 1972 the preparation of Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures) on the theme of Peter's interest in another man.
Sur la Terrasse had not been displayed to the public since 1973. This 275 x 214 cm acrylic on canvas was sold for $ 29.5M for sale by Christie's on November 13, 2019, lot 9 B. Portrait of an artist was sold for $ 90M by Christie's in 2018. The biopic A Bigger Splash was released in 1974.
2
Webster
2020 SOLD for £ 12.9M by Christie's
David Hockney is back from California in 1968. In the last months of his stay, he had developed a new specialty, the realistic portraiture or, in his own words, naturalistic. He chooses his models among the promoters of culture. When they are in pairs, man and woman or couple of men, they do not communicate with each other.
Hockney modernizes the art of portraiture. The characters are life-size, and often strictly in profile. The furnishings are contemporary. The line is sharp and precise and the colors are clear and bright.
His reputation is now assured. In 1971 he works on a commission from the Royal Opera House in London to celebrate the retirement of Sir David Webster, the General Administrator who succeeded in bringing to the Royal Ballet and the Royal Opera a worldwide reputation.
The artist needs to know his models well for making their portraits. He did not know Webster, whom he meets on several occasions for this project. This is not working and the date of the ceremony is approaching. As for a theatrical setting, Hockney transposes the figure of Webster to his studio and sits him on his Mies van der Rohe chair.
The designer had been photographed in 1964 on a similar chair. He was smoking a cigar in front of a table with an ashtray on it. Hockney does not make Webster smoking and replaces the ashtray with a large bouquet of tulips in a pot, painted with great realism. The character is stiff and unoccupied. He deliberately ignores this flowerpot which personifies the artist by symbolizing his abortive efforts for an empathic communication.
The work meets the needs of the Opera House and is inaugurated in the presence of the old man, who dies a few weeks later. After this psychologically chilling portrait, Hockney refuses that sort of order.
Cultural organizations are hit hard by the 2020 health crisis. The Royal Opera House is in dire need of money to maintain its activities. Hockney's Portrait of Webster, acrylic on canvas 153 x 185 cm, was sold for £ 12.9M by Christie's on October 22, 2020, lot 108.
Hockney modernizes the art of portraiture. The characters are life-size, and often strictly in profile. The furnishings are contemporary. The line is sharp and precise and the colors are clear and bright.
His reputation is now assured. In 1971 he works on a commission from the Royal Opera House in London to celebrate the retirement of Sir David Webster, the General Administrator who succeeded in bringing to the Royal Ballet and the Royal Opera a worldwide reputation.
The artist needs to know his models well for making their portraits. He did not know Webster, whom he meets on several occasions for this project. This is not working and the date of the ceremony is approaching. As for a theatrical setting, Hockney transposes the figure of Webster to his studio and sits him on his Mies van der Rohe chair.
The designer had been photographed in 1964 on a similar chair. He was smoking a cigar in front of a table with an ashtray on it. Hockney does not make Webster smoking and replaces the ashtray with a large bouquet of tulips in a pot, painted with great realism. The character is stiff and unoccupied. He deliberately ignores this flowerpot which personifies the artist by symbolizing his abortive efforts for an empathic communication.
The work meets the needs of the Opera House and is inaugurated in the presence of the old man, who dies a few weeks later. After this psychologically chilling portrait, Hockney refuses that sort of order.
Cultural organizations are hit hard by the 2020 health crisis. The Royal Opera House is in dire need of money to maintain its activities. Hockney's Portrait of Webster, acrylic on canvas 153 x 185 cm, was sold for £ 12.9M by Christie's on October 22, 2020, lot 108.
1971 Ocean Park by DIEBENKORN
1
# 40
2021 SOLD for $ 27M by Sotheby's
An additional maturity is reached from the numbers # 40s of the Ocean Park series, with a greater range of luminescent colors and a geometry that escapes the mere pattern of a window.
# 40 reminds the landscape viewed from the corner of a porch, in a stylization of a three-dimensional effect, previously used by the artist in 1959 in the Californian countryside. Here the porch opens to flat areas in parallel. The upper area may be the sky or the sea.
The viewer is stirred to a small deep blue quarter full circle in the bottom right corner of the marine blue. A closer attention reveals a blue window on the right and lower edges of that area, enabling to cancel the impression of an open space. It is indeed a confrontation of bright colors without a real allusion to a perspective. The lower part of the composition reminds beach and ground.
# 40, oil and charcoal on canvas 236 x 205 cm painted in 1971, was sold for $ 27M from a lower estimate of $ 20M by Sotheby's on May 12, 2021, lot 6. Please watch the video shared by the auction house.
This significant opus illustrated the cover page of the catalogue of a solo exhibition of the Ocean Park series at the Marlborough gallery in New York in December 1971.
# 40 reminds the landscape viewed from the corner of a porch, in a stylization of a three-dimensional effect, previously used by the artist in 1959 in the Californian countryside. Here the porch opens to flat areas in parallel. The upper area may be the sky or the sea.
The viewer is stirred to a small deep blue quarter full circle in the bottom right corner of the marine blue. A closer attention reveals a blue window on the right and lower edges of that area, enabling to cancel the impression of an open space. It is indeed a confrontation of bright colors without a real allusion to a perspective. The lower part of the composition reminds beach and ground.
# 40, oil and charcoal on canvas 236 x 205 cm painted in 1971, was sold for $ 27M from a lower estimate of $ 20M by Sotheby's on May 12, 2021, lot 6. Please watch the video shared by the auction house.
This significant opus illustrated the cover page of the catalogue of a solo exhibition of the Ocean Park series at the Marlborough gallery in New York in December 1971.
2
# 48
2012 SOLD for $ 13.5M by Christie's
Ocean Park # 48 is a return to simple forms of window and through the window, with a delicate harmony of pale colors just confronted to a blue area splitted in two adjacent rectangles, light and deep blue. The whole is offering a view of the luminosity of ground, sky and sea as in the other works of the Ocean Park series.
# 48, oil on canvas 274 x 208 cm painted in 1971, was sold for $ 13.5M by Christie's on November 14, 2012, lot 19, from a lower estimate of $ 8M.
Ocean Park # 50 displays a further step to a full geometry of horizontal and vertical rectangles and stripes from which the diagonals were nearly erased. # 50, oil on canvas 236 x 206 cm painted in 1972, was sold for $ 8.2M by Sotheby's on November 10, 2014, lot 23.
# 48, oil on canvas 274 x 208 cm painted in 1971, was sold for $ 13.5M by Christie's on November 14, 2012, lot 19, from a lower estimate of $ 8M.
Ocean Park # 50 displays a further step to a full geometry of horizontal and vertical rectangles and stripes from which the diagonals were nearly erased. # 50, oil on canvas 236 x 206 cm painted in 1972, was sold for $ 8.2M by Sotheby's on November 10, 2014, lot 23.
1971 Twombly blurs his own Message
2015 SOLD for $ 17.5M including premium
From 1966 to 1970 in his series of Blackboards inspired from the action painting, Cy Twombly had gone to meet the roots and mechanisms of semiotic and graphic communication, beyond the invention of writing.
This break into reflex and subconscious is no longer sufficient. He had lost through his practice in New York the empathy which he maintained in Rome with the emotions from all periods. He then performs a synthesis between the Blackboard and the antique graffiti, altogether reintroducing color which is an improvement and erasing which is a decay.
On November 10, 2004, Christie's sold for $ 5.4 million including premium an oil, wax crayon and graphite on canvas 161 x 195 cm made in Rome in January 1971. The entangled loops in shades of gray are structured in wide lines such as in the blackboards of the previous years, but the clarity of the line is erased over the entire length while the regions empty of proto-writing remain intact.
On November 10 in New York, Christie's sells as lot 17B a canvas 148 x 196 cm painted in similar technique, also dated 1971 but not located. This work certainly subsequent to the example discussed above is a very rare and stunning example of the annihilation by the artist of his own process before he redirects his art to other topics. The estimate is not published.
The oblique and multicolored proto-message is here is a broad line running across the picture from left to right. It has become virtually imperceptible by the domination of a network of colored lines, launched as a waterfall on the entire available surface with the exception of a reserve at the top left corner.
Several years before, at the time of his pornographic inspiration, the Roman waterfall was one of the favorite themes of the artist. It was a flow that looked homogeneous but actually consisted of a texture of multiple graffiti.
This break into reflex and subconscious is no longer sufficient. He had lost through his practice in New York the empathy which he maintained in Rome with the emotions from all periods. He then performs a synthesis between the Blackboard and the antique graffiti, altogether reintroducing color which is an improvement and erasing which is a decay.
On November 10, 2004, Christie's sold for $ 5.4 million including premium an oil, wax crayon and graphite on canvas 161 x 195 cm made in Rome in January 1971. The entangled loops in shades of gray are structured in wide lines such as in the blackboards of the previous years, but the clarity of the line is erased over the entire length while the regions empty of proto-writing remain intact.
On November 10 in New York, Christie's sells as lot 17B a canvas 148 x 196 cm painted in similar technique, also dated 1971 but not located. This work certainly subsequent to the example discussed above is a very rare and stunning example of the annihilation by the artist of his own process before he redirects his art to other topics. The estimate is not published.
The oblique and multicolored proto-message is here is a broad line running across the picture from left to right. It has become virtually imperceptible by the domination of a network of colored lines, launched as a waterfall on the entire available surface with the exception of a reserve at the top left corner.
Several years before, at the time of his pornographic inspiration, the Roman waterfall was one of the favorite themes of the artist. It was a flow that looked homogeneous but actually consisted of a texture of multiple graffiti.
1971 Plowed Field by Joan Mitchell
2019 SOLD for $ 13.3M by Christie's
Plowed Field, painted by Joan Mitchell in 1971, is a culmination of her phase of meditative tranquility in Vétheuil with a great diversity of warm colors in the blocks that simulate the imaginary fields.
The surface is completely filled. The endless ground is composed of blocks as if seen from the air, with shimmering colors that express the various crops. She does not want to copy a landscape but to express her feeling. Paradoxically, she finds in Vétheuil the memory of the unlimited cornfields of her childhood between Saskatchewan and the Great Lakes.
This triptych of oils on canvas of total size 285 x 540 cm was sold for $ 13.3M by Christie's on November 13, 2019, lot 25 B.
The surface is completely filled. The endless ground is composed of blocks as if seen from the air, with shimmering colors that express the various crops. She does not want to copy a landscape but to express her feeling. Paradoxically, she finds in Vétheuil the memory of the unlimited cornfields of her childhood between Saskatchewan and the Great Lakes.
This triptych of oils on canvas of total size 285 x 540 cm was sold for $ 13.3M by Christie's on November 13, 2019, lot 25 B.
1971 Wolkenstudie by Richter
2022 SOLD for £ 11.2M by Christie's
Gerhard Richter redefines art, appropriating shabby photos whose meaning is important to him or more often to nobody. He thus becomes a specialist in blurred images of monumental size.
However, he does not want to lose any filiation with the great masters of the past. The clouds catch his attention. Their shape and color are constantly changing and yet they are perfectly identifiable. Through the clouds, Richter finds Friedrich, Constable and Turner.
After trials in limited dimensions and quantities in 1968 and 1969, the artist explores more systematically the clouds in 1970. For this sole year, his catalogue raisonné includes fifteen paintings on this theme, with various effects : pink, blue, green blue, atmosphere, backlight, abstract.
Within the Wolken the opus 266 subtitled Fenster is the most ambitious, and the only one to meet one of Richter's fundamental ambitions : to simulate an architectural environment. It was sold for £ 10.4M by Sotheby's on July 28, 2020, lot 20.
This quadriptych of oils on canvas of individual dimension 200 x 100 cm appears like a large fragmented window which opens onto nothing. In turn, this nothingness takes on an emotional meaning by making the visitor believe that he sees the sky at sunset from the upper floors of a skyscraper, evaporating the city. This work anticipates the fragmented pools by David Hockney by almost ten years and the panels of snow-capped mountain scenery by Cui Ruzhuo by four decades.
The pink triptych opus 267 of the same dimension of elements as the 266 was sold for $ 5M by Christie's on May 11, 2011.
Amidst the series of clouds painted by Richter from 1968, three opuses in the termination of the 1970 subseries are titled Wolkenstudie. They mark a departure from the otherwise hyperrealistic observation of the sky and reveal a quest for the artist to the deep root of art. Their subtitles are significant : Gegenlicht, grün-blau and abstrakt. Their canvas format is standardized to 80 x 100 cm.
Wolkenstudie (Gegenlicht), oil on canvas 80 x 100 cm, was sold for £ 11.2M by Sotheby's on June 29, 2022, lot 105. Please watch the video shared by the auction house.
The slightly veiled bright sun in the middle of the image is spectacularly surrounded by dark rain clouds with the illusion of a sliding sky. This view is based on two photos, the blue sky and white clouds in daylight and the dark masses at sunrise or sunset. The pictorial rendering is luminescent.
The subtitle grün-blau marks the desire of Richter to reach the basics of the colors and of their confrontations, an effort that will later lead to full abstraction. This opus dated 1971 was sold for £ 11.2M from a lower estimate of £ 6M by Christie's on October 13, 2022, lot 24.
However, he does not want to lose any filiation with the great masters of the past. The clouds catch his attention. Their shape and color are constantly changing and yet they are perfectly identifiable. Through the clouds, Richter finds Friedrich, Constable and Turner.
After trials in limited dimensions and quantities in 1968 and 1969, the artist explores more systematically the clouds in 1970. For this sole year, his catalogue raisonné includes fifteen paintings on this theme, with various effects : pink, blue, green blue, atmosphere, backlight, abstract.
Within the Wolken the opus 266 subtitled Fenster is the most ambitious, and the only one to meet one of Richter's fundamental ambitions : to simulate an architectural environment. It was sold for £ 10.4M by Sotheby's on July 28, 2020, lot 20.
This quadriptych of oils on canvas of individual dimension 200 x 100 cm appears like a large fragmented window which opens onto nothing. In turn, this nothingness takes on an emotional meaning by making the visitor believe that he sees the sky at sunset from the upper floors of a skyscraper, evaporating the city. This work anticipates the fragmented pools by David Hockney by almost ten years and the panels of snow-capped mountain scenery by Cui Ruzhuo by four decades.
The pink triptych opus 267 of the same dimension of elements as the 266 was sold for $ 5M by Christie's on May 11, 2011.
Amidst the series of clouds painted by Richter from 1968, three opuses in the termination of the 1970 subseries are titled Wolkenstudie. They mark a departure from the otherwise hyperrealistic observation of the sky and reveal a quest for the artist to the deep root of art. Their subtitles are significant : Gegenlicht, grün-blau and abstrakt. Their canvas format is standardized to 80 x 100 cm.
Wolkenstudie (Gegenlicht), oil on canvas 80 x 100 cm, was sold for £ 11.2M by Sotheby's on June 29, 2022, lot 105. Please watch the video shared by the auction house.
The slightly veiled bright sun in the middle of the image is spectacularly surrounded by dark rain clouds with the illusion of a sliding sky. This view is based on two photos, the blue sky and white clouds in daylight and the dark masses at sunrise or sunset. The pictorial rendering is luminescent.
The subtitle grün-blau marks the desire of Richter to reach the basics of the colors and of their confrontations, an effort that will later lead to full abstraction. This opus dated 1971 was sold for £ 11.2M from a lower estimate of £ 6M by Christie's on October 13, 2022, lot 24.
1971 The Blue Universe of Kim Whanki
2019 SOLD for HK$ 102M including premium
After the Korean War, Kim Whanki manages to create a synthesis between avant-garde art and the traditions of his country. In Paris from 1956 to 1959, he appreciates that the diversification of materials allows new pictorial effects. He moves permanently to New York in 1963.
His schematized figurative art is progressively immersed in flat areas of a single color with different shades of density. The blue of sky and sea is his favorite color. Influenced by the art of Barnett Newman, he abandons any figurative reference in 1970 and uses increasing formats.
He wants to express after Newman the basic forces that confront each other in the universe, but without losing sight from Asian concepts such as yin and yang. Like with Yayoi Kusama, the field seems to be spreading beyond the frame. He admires Rothko and brings fine variations within his apparent monochrome.
His works are now patterns of dots that shine on a background of the same color with a painstaking geometric regularity. It is in this phase that Kim Whanki becomes a direct precursor of dansaekhwa, the Korean abstract art movement that will be created in 1975, a year after his untimely death.
Kim Whanki's main works are defined by a serial number and a date. He does not forget the sun. 12-V-70 # 172, 173 x 200 cm, consists of yellow dots on a yellow background. It was sold in November 2016 by Seoul Auction for 4.6 billion won including premium, worth $ 5.4 million at that time.
Artworks that represent an achievement in Kim Whanki's mystical approach have a title. On November 23 in Hong Kong, Christie's sells the most ambitious, Universe, 05-IV-71 # 200 consisting of cobalt blue dots on a dark blue background, lot 17 estimated HK $ 48M.
This oil on cotton is the only diptych and the largest opus of the series, of overall dimension 254 x 254 cm. It is also the only work based on concentric geometries : each element is built on an endless spiral, thus simulating twice the forces of the starry sky.
19-VII-71 # 209 is a pattern of dots in oblique lines, with a technique and shades of blue similar to # 200. This painting 253 x 202 cm was sold for HK $ 31M before fees by Seoul Auction on October 5, 2015.
His schematized figurative art is progressively immersed in flat areas of a single color with different shades of density. The blue of sky and sea is his favorite color. Influenced by the art of Barnett Newman, he abandons any figurative reference in 1970 and uses increasing formats.
He wants to express after Newman the basic forces that confront each other in the universe, but without losing sight from Asian concepts such as yin and yang. Like with Yayoi Kusama, the field seems to be spreading beyond the frame. He admires Rothko and brings fine variations within his apparent monochrome.
His works are now patterns of dots that shine on a background of the same color with a painstaking geometric regularity. It is in this phase that Kim Whanki becomes a direct precursor of dansaekhwa, the Korean abstract art movement that will be created in 1975, a year after his untimely death.
Kim Whanki's main works are defined by a serial number and a date. He does not forget the sun. 12-V-70 # 172, 173 x 200 cm, consists of yellow dots on a yellow background. It was sold in November 2016 by Seoul Auction for 4.6 billion won including premium, worth $ 5.4 million at that time.
Artworks that represent an achievement in Kim Whanki's mystical approach have a title. On November 23 in Hong Kong, Christie's sells the most ambitious, Universe, 05-IV-71 # 200 consisting of cobalt blue dots on a dark blue background, lot 17 estimated HK $ 48M.
This oil on cotton is the only diptych and the largest opus of the series, of overall dimension 254 x 254 cm. It is also the only work based on concentric geometries : each element is built on an endless spiral, thus simulating twice the forces of the starry sky.
19-VII-71 # 209 is a pattern of dots in oblique lines, with a technique and shades of blue similar to # 200. This painting 253 x 202 cm was sold for HK $ 31M before fees by Seoul Auction on October 5, 2015.
1971 At Five in the Afternoon by Motherwell
2018 SOLD for $ 12.7M by Phillips
Robert Motherwell had been one of the pioneers of abstract expressionism which he managed to separate from surrealism. Influenced by psychoanalysis, he will seek throughout his career to give visibility to his own mental universe.
In 1948 he illustrates with a black ink drawing a poem by Harold Rosenberg titled Elegy to the Spanish Republic. On the white background, bulky ovoid elements are stuck at mid-height in a pattern of vertical columns. The masses of white and black display the balance of forces between life and death, or between order and chaos.
The Spanish Civil War was a triumph of death, illustrated by Picasso's Guernica. Motherwell begins to paint in an invariant style a very long series of Elegies to the Spanish Republic. In the same stifling and dismal style, he had also painted in 1949 At Five in the Afternoon, inspired by writings on bullfighting by Garcia Lorca and Hemingway.
The biomorphic forms between the columns look like compressed human heads between the bars of a prison. Escape is impossible. Franco dies in 1975. In 1978 on an order from the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC, Motherwell paints the gigantic Reconciliation Elegy, 305 x 924 cm. A space between two columns has exploded and the left edge is empty, in a new hope for a free world.
The artist had been dispossessed against his will from the original of At Five in the Afternoon. A remake 229 x 305 cm painted in 1971 was sold for $ 12.7M including premium by Phillips on May 17, 2018.
In 1948 he illustrates with a black ink drawing a poem by Harold Rosenberg titled Elegy to the Spanish Republic. On the white background, bulky ovoid elements are stuck at mid-height in a pattern of vertical columns. The masses of white and black display the balance of forces between life and death, or between order and chaos.
The Spanish Civil War was a triumph of death, illustrated by Picasso's Guernica. Motherwell begins to paint in an invariant style a very long series of Elegies to the Spanish Republic. In the same stifling and dismal style, he had also painted in 1949 At Five in the Afternoon, inspired by writings on bullfighting by Garcia Lorca and Hemingway.
The biomorphic forms between the columns look like compressed human heads between the bars of a prison. Escape is impossible. Franco dies in 1975. In 1978 on an order from the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC, Motherwell paints the gigantic Reconciliation Elegy, 305 x 924 cm. A space between two columns has exploded and the left edge is empty, in a new hope for a free world.
The artist had been dispossessed against his will from the original of At Five in the Afternoon. A remake 229 x 305 cm painted in 1971 was sold for $ 12.7M including premium by Phillips on May 17, 2018.
