Decade 1940-1949
See also : Top 10 Women artists Sculpture Art on paper Abstract art II The Man The Woman Self portrait Self portrait II Man and woman Animals Bird Cats Still Pollock Picasso Picasso 1940-1960 Giacometti Giacometti 1947-53 Central and South Americas Mexico China Mountains in China Zhang Daqian Zhang Daqian < 1965 Modern China
1941 Dora Maar au Chat by Picasso
2006 SOLD for $ 95M by Sotheby's
Pablo Picasso once said that Dora Maar had personified the war. This is certainly an exaggeration following their breakup. It remains true that Pablo was reading the evolution of the horrors of war in the attitude and expression of the hypersensitive Dora.
From Guernica to the Nazi Occupation, Dora Maar is indeed a Cassandra for Picasso. He chose in 1940 to refuse the exile and stay working in his studio of the rue des Grands Augustins but he knew that he was threatened by the new authorities. He lives in lockdown with his muse, whom he adores physically but who once again becomes the symbol of resistance to horror, or even quite simply the symbol of horror.
Dora inevitably becomes his only model and his main theme. A drawing 27 x 22 cm sold for € 52K by Sotheby's on December 7, 2016 is typical of this morbid drift. Dora's face is a double blister where nose and mouth take divergent directions. The time when the cubist use of a double angle of view provided another vigor to the image is over.
Picasso marks his instability in an unusual way by changing the date of the drawing by an erasure, from May 7, 1941 to June 7, 1941. He no longer controls time. We will not know if Dora Maar au Chat, featuring the animal which symbolizes the dangers of the outside world, was painted before or after this anxious frenzy of June 1941.
Dora Maar au Chat is an oil on canvas 130 x 97 cm painted by Picasso in 1941. Among the many portraits that Picasso made of his mistress, it is one of the most meticulous, with vibrant colors.
Contrary to the artist's usual practice, it is dated by the year without indication of the day, thus appearing beside the rest of the work. Picasso gathered here his admiration and emotion in front of Dora. He emotionally departed from Dora in 1943 and from this specific painting before 1947.
Throughout Picasso's career, the excessively abundant work is dotted with some dazzling illuminations in which he expresses his deep feelings. Dora Maar au Chat is one of these masterpieces, alongside for example Le Garçon à la pipe, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, La Minotauromachie, La Femme qui pleure and Les Femmes d'Alger.
It is war time. The armchair is a space that might seem open but is in fact an obstacle to freedom, like the throne of Innocent X by Velazquez. Dora is willing to react, with her elegant clothes and her big hat as for going out. She smiles.
And then there is the cat. It is very small. Perched on the back of the chair, it walks towards the woman who does not care at all about it. Black in the least contrasted part of the image, it is sneaky. Pablo and Dora did not like cats, these pets that scratch for a simple change of mood. They preferred dogs. For these reasons this tiny cat cannot be a personification of the artist. It is at best an unsolicited visitor, at worst the danger of the outside world.
The amalgamation between human and animal interested Picasso. In the same phase, he paints portraits of Dora with the muzzle of their Afghan hound. Here Dora's very long nails are in some way the claws of the cat.
Dora Maar au Chat was sold for $ 95M by Sotheby's on May 3, 2006, lot 14.
Dora Maar au Chat was not dated to the month and day by the artist. It is regrettable because the sequence of events of the German occupation and of the Vichy regime generates an increasing anxiety. Picasso's dealer in Paris, Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, is a Jew who had lost the French nationality by the decrees of July 1940. On June 13, 1941 the French government begins the deportation of the Jews. On July 1, as a precaution, Kahnweiler sells his gallery to the daughter of his wife, Louise Leiris.
On November 20, 2019, Heffel sold at lot 136 for $ 9.2M CAD a Tête later titled Femme au Chapeau. oil on canvas 61 x 38 cm dated in that bad June 13, 1941, Her expression, difficult to read within Picasso's multi-perspective style, seems rigid. The bleak white of the chair's structure dominates the composition. The article shared by CTV News includes a video with the participation of David Heffel.
The new configuration of Dora's face responds to the anxieties of Picasso, who has decidedly little respect for Dora. He begins a series of oils on canvas on which Dora's other usual attributes are maintained : the long black hair, the extravagant hat, the smile despite adversity.
He locks her up in an armchair which will symbolize freedom if one day she manages to escape and which anticipates the powerless Popes of Bacon. The nose, which takes its autonomy in this disaster, has been compared to a dog's muzzle or an elephant's trunk.
Another sign of the hard times is the ordinary style of the seat, making bringing the assumption that the comfortable armchair of the smiling Femme au chat had been painted before that dark phase of June 1941.
That series may be viewed as a counter-attack by Picasso against Matisse's Femme au chapeau of 1905, featuring Mme Matisse, which had been an excuse for an explosion of colors.
Femme dans un fauteuil, oil on canvas 130 x 97 cm painted on June 19, 1941, was sold for $ 29.6M by Christie's on October 6, 2020, lot 8.
June 19, 1941, just over a year into the Nazi Occupation of Paris, was a prolific day for Pablo Picasso. In addition to the Femme assise dans un fauteuil sold by Christie's for $ 19.6M, he also painted an oil on canvas of smaller size, 100 x 81 cm, featuring the same woman in the same armchair, seated in profile instead of full front. The smile disappeared and the hands are torn in the anxiety and restrictions of the Occupation. This Femme dans un fauteuil was sold for $ 17.2M by Christie's on May 13, 2021, lot 32 B.
From Guernica to the Nazi Occupation, Dora Maar is indeed a Cassandra for Picasso. He chose in 1940 to refuse the exile and stay working in his studio of the rue des Grands Augustins but he knew that he was threatened by the new authorities. He lives in lockdown with his muse, whom he adores physically but who once again becomes the symbol of resistance to horror, or even quite simply the symbol of horror.
Dora inevitably becomes his only model and his main theme. A drawing 27 x 22 cm sold for € 52K by Sotheby's on December 7, 2016 is typical of this morbid drift. Dora's face is a double blister where nose and mouth take divergent directions. The time when the cubist use of a double angle of view provided another vigor to the image is over.
Picasso marks his instability in an unusual way by changing the date of the drawing by an erasure, from May 7, 1941 to June 7, 1941. He no longer controls time. We will not know if Dora Maar au Chat, featuring the animal which symbolizes the dangers of the outside world, was painted before or after this anxious frenzy of June 1941.
Dora Maar au Chat is an oil on canvas 130 x 97 cm painted by Picasso in 1941. Among the many portraits that Picasso made of his mistress, it is one of the most meticulous, with vibrant colors.
Contrary to the artist's usual practice, it is dated by the year without indication of the day, thus appearing beside the rest of the work. Picasso gathered here his admiration and emotion in front of Dora. He emotionally departed from Dora in 1943 and from this specific painting before 1947.
Throughout Picasso's career, the excessively abundant work is dotted with some dazzling illuminations in which he expresses his deep feelings. Dora Maar au Chat is one of these masterpieces, alongside for example Le Garçon à la pipe, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, La Minotauromachie, La Femme qui pleure and Les Femmes d'Alger.
It is war time. The armchair is a space that might seem open but is in fact an obstacle to freedom, like the throne of Innocent X by Velazquez. Dora is willing to react, with her elegant clothes and her big hat as for going out. She smiles.
And then there is the cat. It is very small. Perched on the back of the chair, it walks towards the woman who does not care at all about it. Black in the least contrasted part of the image, it is sneaky. Pablo and Dora did not like cats, these pets that scratch for a simple change of mood. They preferred dogs. For these reasons this tiny cat cannot be a personification of the artist. It is at best an unsolicited visitor, at worst the danger of the outside world.
The amalgamation between human and animal interested Picasso. In the same phase, he paints portraits of Dora with the muzzle of their Afghan hound. Here Dora's very long nails are in some way the claws of the cat.
Dora Maar au Chat was sold for $ 95M by Sotheby's on May 3, 2006, lot 14.
Dora Maar au Chat was not dated to the month and day by the artist. It is regrettable because the sequence of events of the German occupation and of the Vichy regime generates an increasing anxiety. Picasso's dealer in Paris, Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, is a Jew who had lost the French nationality by the decrees of July 1940. On June 13, 1941 the French government begins the deportation of the Jews. On July 1, as a precaution, Kahnweiler sells his gallery to the daughter of his wife, Louise Leiris.
On November 20, 2019, Heffel sold at lot 136 for $ 9.2M CAD a Tête later titled Femme au Chapeau. oil on canvas 61 x 38 cm dated in that bad June 13, 1941, Her expression, difficult to read within Picasso's multi-perspective style, seems rigid. The bleak white of the chair's structure dominates the composition. The article shared by CTV News includes a video with the participation of David Heffel.
The new configuration of Dora's face responds to the anxieties of Picasso, who has decidedly little respect for Dora. He begins a series of oils on canvas on which Dora's other usual attributes are maintained : the long black hair, the extravagant hat, the smile despite adversity.
He locks her up in an armchair which will symbolize freedom if one day she manages to escape and which anticipates the powerless Popes of Bacon. The nose, which takes its autonomy in this disaster, has been compared to a dog's muzzle or an elephant's trunk.
Another sign of the hard times is the ordinary style of the seat, making bringing the assumption that the comfortable armchair of the smiling Femme au chat had been painted before that dark phase of June 1941.
That series may be viewed as a counter-attack by Picasso against Matisse's Femme au chapeau of 1905, featuring Mme Matisse, which had been an excuse for an explosion of colors.
Femme dans un fauteuil, oil on canvas 130 x 97 cm painted on June 19, 1941, was sold for $ 29.6M by Christie's on October 6, 2020, lot 8.
June 19, 1941, just over a year into the Nazi Occupation of Paris, was a prolific day for Pablo Picasso. In addition to the Femme assise dans un fauteuil sold by Christie's for $ 19.6M, he also painted an oil on canvas of smaller size, 100 x 81 cm, featuring the same woman in the same armchair, seated in profile instead of full front. The smile disappeared and the hands are torn in the anxiety and restrictions of the Occupation. This Femme dans un fauteuil was sold for $ 17.2M by Christie's on May 13, 2021, lot 32 B.
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 :
1947 The Primordial Trinity of Alberto Giacometti
2015 SOLD for $ 140M including premium
War is over. Alberto Giacometti appreciates that some new art is required and that his diminutive sculptures will not appeal anybody. His characters will be life-size. They will be threadlike as the floor lamps that the artist formerly conceived for Jean-Michel Frank.
Pierre Matisse is interested and promises to organize an exhibition in New York in January 1948 of this art which, in October 1947, does not yet exist. The works must be designed and the bronzes have to be melt. The artist is in a hurry. The meeting with the agents of the foundry is scheduled for tomorrow morning. Alberto is not ready.
He is not happy with his prototype and demolishes it. In a night of frenzied creation, he realizes L'Homme au doigt. When it is carried out for the factory, the plaster is achieved but it is still wet. Seven bronzes including an artist's proof are edited by the Alexis Rudier company.
The man points the finger to show the way to the other two sculptures in the trilogy, the walking man and the standing woman. This horizontal finger is a sign of authority, hope and renewal. L'Homme au doigt emits the founding message before disappearing from Alberto's creations, unlike the other two figures that will accompany his whole career.
The plaster was kneaded in a hurry, giving a tormented and scarred texture from which some observers said that L'Homme au doigt is Alberto's self portrait. One bronze, the number 6/6, was hand-painted by the artist. It strengthens the resemblance. The pointing man is not God between Adam and Eve, he is Alberto, the creative artist.
This number 6/6 178 cm high is the most outstanding piece of bronze by Alberto. It will be sold by Christie's on May 11 in New York, lot 29A. The press release of April 15 announced an estimate in the region of $ 130M.
I invite you to play the video shared by Christie's.
The low resolution image below is shared by Wikimedia for fair use :
Pierre Matisse is interested and promises to organize an exhibition in New York in January 1948 of this art which, in October 1947, does not yet exist. The works must be designed and the bronzes have to be melt. The artist is in a hurry. The meeting with the agents of the foundry is scheduled for tomorrow morning. Alberto is not ready.
He is not happy with his prototype and demolishes it. In a night of frenzied creation, he realizes L'Homme au doigt. When it is carried out for the factory, the plaster is achieved but it is still wet. Seven bronzes including an artist's proof are edited by the Alexis Rudier company.
The man points the finger to show the way to the other two sculptures in the trilogy, the walking man and the standing woman. This horizontal finger is a sign of authority, hope and renewal. L'Homme au doigt emits the founding message before disappearing from Alberto's creations, unlike the other two figures that will accompany his whole career.
The plaster was kneaded in a hurry, giving a tormented and scarred texture from which some observers said that L'Homme au doigt is Alberto's self portrait. One bronze, the number 6/6, was hand-painted by the artist. It strengthens the resemblance. The pointing man is not God between Adam and Eve, he is Alberto, the creative artist.
This number 6/6 178 cm high is the most outstanding piece of bronze by Alberto. It will be sold by Christie's on May 11 in New York, lot 29A. The press release of April 15 announced an estimate in the region of $ 130M.
I invite you to play the video shared by Christie's.
The low resolution image below is shared by Wikimedia for fair use :
1948 Number 19 by Pollock
2013 SOLD for $ 58M by Christie's
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 that word.
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.
Pollock 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 instead of using an easel.
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. There is no horizon and no framing even when the work is small, and there is also no longer a figuration.
The next step is the diversification of colors. The lines of pure colors of various widths form infinite and meticulous tangles. The regularity of the final mesh is spectacular without being total, so that certain areas are breathing or vibrating such as an organic matter. Richter's squeegee will generate similar effects.
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 was sold for $ 13M by Christie's on October 6, 2020, 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 came soon after.
The works on paper prepared with a white primer are promising and the small formats make it more possible to obtain in a lesser time a full covering of the surface with the desirable entangled lines of high density.
On May 15, 2013, Christie's sold for $ 58M from a lower estimate of $ 25M Number 19, 1948. This oil and enamel on paper mounted on canvas is small, 78 x 57 cm, but the fineness of the pours and drips is superb. Please watch the video prepared by Christie's.
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.
Pollock 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 instead of using an easel.
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. There is no horizon and no framing even when the work is small, and there is also no longer a figuration.
The next step is the diversification of colors. The lines of pure colors of various widths form infinite and meticulous tangles. The regularity of the final mesh is spectacular without being total, so that certain areas are breathing or vibrating such as an organic matter. Richter's squeegee will generate similar effects.
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 was sold for $ 13M by Christie's on October 6, 2020, 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 came soon after.
The works on paper prepared with a white primer are promising and the small formats make it more possible to obtain in a lesser time a full covering of the surface with the desirable entangled lines of high density.
On May 15, 2013, Christie's sold for $ 58M from a lower estimate of $ 25M Number 19, 1948. This oil and enamel on paper mounted on canvas is small, 78 x 57 cm, but the fineness of the pours and drips is superb. Please watch the video prepared by Christie's.
1948 Landscape after Wang Ximeng by Zhang Daqian
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.
1949 Clyfford Still in Denver
2011 SOLD 62 M$ including premium
With Clyfford Still, the American art changed forever. A pioneer of abstract expressionism, he taught from 1946 to 1950 at the California Institute of Fine Arts. His art made of thick material is an explosion of colors that may symbolize life. Like Rothko, he wants to offer a total art, a vision with no frame. His vivid colors make him a precursor to the psychedelic art.
Yet Still's work is poorly understood. His paintings were exhibited but he did not search to sell and was angry with the artistic establishment. His will, well seconded by his widow, was that almost all his work is held in a unique museum which would be totally dedicated.
The city of Denver won this so special art competition. The Still museum will own about 96% of the artistic output of the master. In a highly original approach, four works are put on the market to pay for the development of the museum. Sotheby's won the bargain by offering a guarantee of $ 25M. The sale will be held in New York on November 9.
These painting are illustrated in the article shared by Art Market Monitor. I will indicate the sizes later. The two most outstanding belong to the most creative period: 1947-Y-No-2 is estimated $ 15M, and 1949-A-No.1 is estimated $ 25M.
These prices are consistent with those obtained in the extremely rare auctions of similar works. 1947-R-No.1, 175 x 165 cm, was sold $ 21M including premium by Christie's on November 15, 2006. A painting made in 1946 numbered PH-182, 154 x 111 cm, was sold $ 14M including premium by Christie's on May 13, 2008.
POST SALE COMMENT
The operation was well organized and well publicized. Knowing now the result, we can consider this sale as superb.
For introducing the many works to be displayed by them, the city of Denver had found Sotheby's as a great helper. The four lots fetched altogether $ 114M including premium, more than doubling the lower estimate, and art lovers are now familiar with three periods of Still's career.
The two paintings from the period of glory received very high prices: $ 62 million for 1949-A-No.1, 236 x 200 cm, and $ 31.5 million for 1947-Y-No.2, 177 x 150 cm.
Sold $ 19.7 million, a painting of 1976, 237 x 210 cm, was from the secret period of the artist.
The formative years were represented by a painting of 1940, 104 x 95 cm, sold $ 1.25 M.
These results include premium.
Yet Still's work is poorly understood. His paintings were exhibited but he did not search to sell and was angry with the artistic establishment. His will, well seconded by his widow, was that almost all his work is held in a unique museum which would be totally dedicated.
The city of Denver won this so special art competition. The Still museum will own about 96% of the artistic output of the master. In a highly original approach, four works are put on the market to pay for the development of the museum. Sotheby's won the bargain by offering a guarantee of $ 25M. The sale will be held in New York on November 9.
These painting are illustrated in the article shared by Art Market Monitor. I will indicate the sizes later. The two most outstanding belong to the most creative period: 1947-Y-No-2 is estimated $ 15M, and 1949-A-No.1 is estimated $ 25M.
These prices are consistent with those obtained in the extremely rare auctions of similar works. 1947-R-No.1, 175 x 165 cm, was sold $ 21M including premium by Christie's on November 15, 2006. A painting made in 1946 numbered PH-182, 154 x 111 cm, was sold $ 14M including premium by Christie's on May 13, 2008.
POST SALE COMMENT
The operation was well organized and well publicized. Knowing now the result, we can consider this sale as superb.
For introducing the many works to be displayed by them, the city of Denver had found Sotheby's as a great helper. The four lots fetched altogether $ 114M including premium, more than doubling the lower estimate, and art lovers are now familiar with three periods of Still's career.
The two paintings from the period of glory received very high prices: $ 62 million for 1949-A-No.1, 236 x 200 cm, and $ 31.5 million for 1947-Y-No.2, 177 x 150 cm.
Sold $ 19.7 million, a painting of 1976, 237 x 210 cm, was from the secret period of the artist.
The formative years were represented by a painting of 1940, 104 x 95 cm, sold $ 1.25 M.
These results include premium.
1949 Diego y yo by Kahlo
2021 SOLD for $ 35M by Sotheby's
Frida Kahlo suffered a lifelong intense pain in her back after an accident. She courageously faced her condition by her art and by her quest for a passion out of the ordinary, including political commitment and bisexuality. She found her partner, unfaithful husband and accomplice in the Communist artist Diego Rivera, 20 years older than her.
Kahlo's art is made of metaphors and symbols with a high poetry. A friend of the Surrealists, she nevertheless insisted to state that she was not representing her dreams but her reality. 55 of her ca 143 paintings are self portraits.
Eager to exchange an empathy, she often made and inscribed self portraits for friends : Trotsky, her doctors. On November 16, 2021, Sotheby's sold such a self portrait for $ 35M, lot 12. This oil on masonite 30 x 22 cm painted in 1949 is dedicated to Florence and Sam, a couple of friends who were instrumental in promoting her art. Please watch the video shared by the auction house.
The piece was titled Diego y yo by the artist. It displays the portrait in bust of Diego Rivera on the forehead, fully centered between eyebrows and hair. This figure has at the same place the third eye of wisdom. The intimate theme of this self portrait is indeed her obsession for Diego. Three tears flow on her cheeks.
A self portrait executed in 1954, the year of her untimely death, is in the same inspiration, with the image of Diego on the breast and of her rival Maria between the eyebrows.
Kahlo's art is made of metaphors and symbols with a high poetry. A friend of the Surrealists, she nevertheless insisted to state that she was not representing her dreams but her reality. 55 of her ca 143 paintings are self portraits.
Eager to exchange an empathy, she often made and inscribed self portraits for friends : Trotsky, her doctors. On November 16, 2021, Sotheby's sold such a self portrait for $ 35M, lot 12. This oil on masonite 30 x 22 cm painted in 1949 is dedicated to Florence and Sam, a couple of friends who were instrumental in promoting her art. Please watch the video shared by the auction house.
The piece was titled Diego y yo by the artist. It displays the portrait in bust of Diego Rivera on the forehead, fully centered between eyebrows and hair. This figure has at the same place the third eye of wisdom. The intimate theme of this self portrait is indeed her obsession for Diego. Three tears flow on her cheeks.
A self portrait executed in 1954, the year of her untimely death, is in the same inspiration, with the image of Diego on the breast and of her rival Maria between the eyebrows.
1949 Oil and Enamel on Paper on Masonite by POLLOCK
Intro
1949 was the pinnacle in the life of Jackson Pollock. His unprecedented method of painting with dripping, which he invented two years earlier, is operational. His wife Lee Krasner and the gallery owner Betty Parsons manage his career, sparing him those social relationships in which he is so uncomfortable. From the end of 1948 until November 1950, he did not drink alcohol.
With these favorable circumstances, Jack can devote himself to his art, which he has always understood as the expression of his subconscious. The laudatory comments from some art critics don't surprise him : he tells Lee that there is no other example of creativity in their country except for the Bebop by Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker.
He has detractors, who consider that his creative gesture is random and therefore meaningless. Motivated by this opposition, he is preparing a series of paintings which will be exhibited together at the end of the year by Betty Parsons to demonstrate the diversity of his pictorial effects in a unique format.
He chooses oil and enamel on paper, which does not alter the colors of the pigments, adding on some works a phosphorescence effect with aluminum paint. The paper format, 78 x 57 cm, is not comparable to the gigantic canvases of the previous year, but it has an operational advantage : the jerky movement of the wrist is sufficient to perform a dripping of great precision without resorting to a gesticulatory dance all around the work.
This set of 16 works mounted on masonite is exhibited in November 1949 by Betty Parsons alongside unsold items from the previous show.
With these favorable circumstances, Jack can devote himself to his art, which he has always understood as the expression of his subconscious. The laudatory comments from some art critics don't surprise him : he tells Lee that there is no other example of creativity in their country except for the Bebop by Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker.
He has detractors, who consider that his creative gesture is random and therefore meaningless. Motivated by this opposition, he is preparing a series of paintings which will be exhibited together at the end of the year by Betty Parsons to demonstrate the diversity of his pictorial effects in a unique format.
He chooses oil and enamel on paper, which does not alter the colors of the pigments, adding on some works a phosphorescence effect with aluminum paint. The paper format, 78 x 57 cm, is not comparable to the gigantic canvases of the previous year, but it has an operational advantage : the jerky movement of the wrist is sufficient to perform a dripping of great precision without resorting to a gesticulatory dance all around the work.
This set of 16 works mounted on masonite is exhibited in November 1949 by Betty Parsons alongside unsold items from the previous show.
1
Number 31
2022 SOLD for $ 54M by Christie's
The Number 31 of 1949, oil, enamel, aluminum paint and gesso on paper mounted on Masonite
79 x 57 cm painted in 1949, was sold for $ 54M by Christie's on May 12, 2022, lot 21C. It is in a great original condition with fresh colors.
The abstract swirls and stains densely occupy the whole surface of the paper in a vibrant arrangement of colors. It is one of the eight examples in that series which used drips of aluminum paint to increase the brightness. Brilliant red, emerald green, turquoise, yellow and orange offer a rainbow spectrum effect.
This piece demonstrating the full maturity of Pollock's dripping process was included in the second solo show at Betty Parsons Gallery in November and December 1949.
79 x 57 cm painted in 1949, was sold for $ 54M by Christie's on May 12, 2022, lot 21C. It is in a great original condition with fresh colors.
The abstract swirls and stains densely occupy the whole surface of the paper in a vibrant arrangement of colors. It is one of the eight examples in that series which used drips of aluminum paint to increase the brightness. Brilliant red, emerald green, turquoise, yellow and orange offer a rainbow spectrum effect.
This piece demonstrating the full maturity of Pollock's dripping process was included in the second solo show at Betty Parsons Gallery in November and December 1949.
2
Number 32
2018 SOLD for $ 34M by Sotheby's
Number 32, 1949 is one of the 8 examples that used aluminum.
In a nice freshness thanks to a parsimonious use in exhibitions, this oil, enamel, and aluminum paint on paper mounted on Masonite was sold for $ 34M by Sotheby's on May 16, 2018, lot 14. Please watch the short video and the full video shared by the auction house.
In a nice freshness thanks to a parsimonious use in exhibitions, this oil, enamel, and aluminum paint on paper mounted on Masonite was sold for $ 34M by Sotheby's on May 16, 2018, lot 14. Please watch the short video and the full video shared by the auction house.
3
Number 16
2013 SOLD for $ 32.6M by Christie's
The numbers 12, 16 and 17 appear as nets entangling the black and colored lines over an ocher background. This centered pattern which hardly reaches the edge of the image gives up the effect of infinite field, which was therefore not essential in Pollock's creativity, while maintaining the total absence of a third dimension.
Number 16 was sold for $ 32.6M by Christie's on November 12, 2013, lot 39.
Number 17, 57 x 72 cm, was sold for $ 23M by Sotheby's on November 11, 2015, lot 9.
De-accessed from MoMA, Number 12 was sold for $ 11.7M by Christie's on May 11, 2004, lot 17.
Number 16 was sold for $ 32.6M by Christie's on November 12, 2013, lot 39.
Number 17, 57 x 72 cm, was sold for $ 23M by Sotheby's on November 11, 2015, lot 9.
De-accessed from MoMA, Number 12 was sold for $ 11.7M by Christie's on May 11, 2004, lot 17.
