Plus 1910s
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Except otherwise stated, all results include the premium.
Except otherwise stated, all results include the premium.
1910 Portrait by Kokoschka
2018 SOLD for $ 20.4M by Sotheby's
From the beginning of his career as a playwright and artist in 1909, Oskar Kokoschka positions himself as a nonconformist and as a troublemaker. He is 23 years old and is called the chief of the savages by the Viennese press. His influence is decisive on Egon Schiele, four years younger than him.
The modernist architect Adolf Loos is another fighter of preconceived ideas. His girlfriend is tuberculous. He placed her in Switzerland in one of the most luxurious sanatoriums, used by the European aristocracy. In January 1910 Loos makes a long stay with his girlfriend. He is accompanied by Kokoschka.
This microcosm of characters weakened by the disease and their visitors who are hardly more beautiful inspires Kokoschka who paints a series of spontaneous portraits, without preparatory drawings. The models are not clients : the young artist is uncompromising and pitiless.
Psychology dominates over the technique, and it does not matter if impastos interplay with zones of very thin layers on the canvas. The result is the angular line, giving the impression of great nervousness, which will characterize the art of Kokoschka in all his themes throughout his career. In 1937 he was classified as a degenerate artist.
On November 12, 2018, Sotheby's sold for $ 20.4M from a lower estimate of $ 15M the portrait of Joseph de Montesquiou-Fezensac, oil on canvas 80 x 63 cm, lot 21. The quiet and sad aristocrat, aged 35, had come to the sanatorium for helping his wife Victoire whose portrait Kokoschka also made. The painting for sale has just been returned to the heirs of a Jewish art dealer to whom it had been confiscated in 1934.
The modernist architect Adolf Loos is another fighter of preconceived ideas. His girlfriend is tuberculous. He placed her in Switzerland in one of the most luxurious sanatoriums, used by the European aristocracy. In January 1910 Loos makes a long stay with his girlfriend. He is accompanied by Kokoschka.
This microcosm of characters weakened by the disease and their visitors who are hardly more beautiful inspires Kokoschka who paints a series of spontaneous portraits, without preparatory drawings. The models are not clients : the young artist is uncompromising and pitiless.
Psychology dominates over the technique, and it does not matter if impastos interplay with zones of very thin layers on the canvas. The result is the angular line, giving the impression of great nervousness, which will characterize the art of Kokoschka in all his themes throughout his career. In 1937 he was classified as a degenerate artist.
On November 12, 2018, Sotheby's sold for $ 20.4M from a lower estimate of $ 15M the portrait of Joseph de Montesquiou-Fezensac, oil on canvas 80 x 63 cm, lot 21. The quiet and sad aristocrat, aged 35, had come to the sanatorium for helping his wife Victoire whose portrait Kokoschka also made. The painting for sale has just been returned to the heirs of a Jewish art dealer to whom it had been confiscated in 1934.
1910 Schokko by Jawlensky
2008 SOLD for £ 9.4M by Sotheby's
Fauvism, better than Impressionism, can be applied to all pictorial themes. The pioneers for the portrait are Kees van Dongen and Alexej von Jawlensky. Attentive to new theories, Jawlensky spent two summers in Murnau with Kandinsky and their respective companions, Marianne and Gabriele, in 1908 and 1909. Thick lines delimit zones of wild colors, through which expression prevails over the transcription of nature.
Jawlensky takes as a model a very young woman from a Bavarian village. The workshop is cold and she asks for a cup of hot chocolate. The artist nicknames her Schokko. He likes to dress her with extravagant hats which are pretexts for new color studies. He paints Schokko in the Red Hat in 1909.
Schokko with Wide Hat, oil on cardboard 75 x 65 cm stretched on canvas painted in 1910, was sold by Sotheby's for $ 8.3M on November 5, 2003, lot 20, and for £ 9.4M on February 5, 2008, lot 8. The image is shared by Wikimedia.
The portrait of Helene with a Green Fan, oil on panel 65 x 54 cm painted in 1912, already announces the post-Cubist stylization of the next phase. It was sold for $ 11.3M by Sotheby's on May 3, 2011, lot 12.
The artist kept these two examples from this period of explosive creativity until his death.
Jawlensky takes as a model a very young woman from a Bavarian village. The workshop is cold and she asks for a cup of hot chocolate. The artist nicknames her Schokko. He likes to dress her with extravagant hats which are pretexts for new color studies. He paints Schokko in the Red Hat in 1909.
Schokko with Wide Hat, oil on cardboard 75 x 65 cm stretched on canvas painted in 1910, was sold by Sotheby's for $ 8.3M on November 5, 2003, lot 20, and for £ 9.4M on February 5, 2008, lot 8. The image is shared by Wikimedia.
The portrait of Helene with a Green Fan, oil on panel 65 x 54 cm painted in 1912, already announces the post-Cubist stylization of the next phase. It was sold for $ 11.3M by Sotheby's on May 3, 2011, lot 12.
The artist kept these two examples from this period of explosive creativity until his death.
1912 Portrait of his Wife by Jawlensky
2011 SOLD for $ 11.3M by Sotheby's
In 1912 in Munich, the artists of the Blaue Reiter group explore color as a means of expression. The realism of the drawing is contradicted by aggressive colors that clash together.
Alexej von Jawlensky expresses this tendency in beautiful paintings of female faces, which were to remain his most spectacular art. The head is turned toward the artist, the eyes underlined by large rings provide a very effective sense of presence.
On May 3, 2011, Sotheby's sold for $ 11.3M from a lower estimate of $ 8M a portrait of the artist's wife, lot 12. Her confident and intimate attitude is made strange and attractive by her yellow cheeks and neck, red nose, blue and red clothing, and the green of the fan.
This oil on board, 65 x 54 cm, is one of the masterpieces of the master, who kept it until his death. The image is shared by Wikimedia.
Alexej von Jawlensky expresses this tendency in beautiful paintings of female faces, which were to remain his most spectacular art. The head is turned toward the artist, the eyes underlined by large rings provide a very effective sense of presence.
On May 3, 2011, Sotheby's sold for $ 11.3M from a lower estimate of $ 8M a portrait of the artist's wife, lot 12. Her confident and intimate attitude is made strange and attractive by her yellow cheeks and neck, red nose, blue and red clothing, and the green of the fan.
This oil on board, 65 x 54 cm, is one of the masterpieces of the master, who kept it until his death. The image is shared by Wikimedia.
1913 Il Pomeriggio di Arianna by De Chirico
2020 SOLD for $ 16M by Sotheby's
The Greek mythology is an enigmatic poetry. The myth of Ariadne, mixing life and death, past and present, truth and dream, inspired Nietzsche. A granddaughter of Zeus, she is a mortal princess and the half-sister of the Minotaur. She dies when Theseus abandons her, but the ancient accounts are contradictory. She is the complement or the antithesis of Dionysus who may have married her. An allegory of vegetation, she will be reborn in spring.
In 1910 Giorgio de Chirico conceives that painting can display the indistinguishable and the revelation. In 1912 and 1913, he devotes eight works to Ariadne's final sleep in Naxos, when she did not yet know that Theseus had fled.
The piazza is huge and deserted. Ariadne is a recumbent in marble symbolizing loneliness, but the position of the arms evokes sleep and life. The late afternoon brings the mysterious threat of shadows. The piazza is closed by an antique brick tomb but personal symbols of the artist, the train and the boat, are still beyond.
Il Pomeriggio di Arianna, painted in 1913, is the dreamlike culmination of the series. Ariadne is almost androgynous. The brick tower, as vertiginous as a skyscraper, is flanked by a broken column of similar height. This oil on canvas 135 x 65 cm was sold for $ 16M from a lower estimate of $ 10M by Sotheby's on October 28, 2020, lot 115.
De Chirico brought a metaphysical dimension to symbolism. His Ariadne series anticipates surrealism in substance, through recourse to the psyche, and in form, through deliberately contradictory elements. Especially in Il Pomeriggio, the inverted perspective of the stele reminds the foreshortening of the Dead Christ by Mantegna.
In 1910 Giorgio de Chirico conceives that painting can display the indistinguishable and the revelation. In 1912 and 1913, he devotes eight works to Ariadne's final sleep in Naxos, when she did not yet know that Theseus had fled.
The piazza is huge and deserted. Ariadne is a recumbent in marble symbolizing loneliness, but the position of the arms evokes sleep and life. The late afternoon brings the mysterious threat of shadows. The piazza is closed by an antique brick tomb but personal symbols of the artist, the train and the boat, are still beyond.
Il Pomeriggio di Arianna, painted in 1913, is the dreamlike culmination of the series. Ariadne is almost androgynous. The brick tower, as vertiginous as a skyscraper, is flanked by a broken column of similar height. This oil on canvas 135 x 65 cm was sold for $ 16M from a lower estimate of $ 10M by Sotheby's on October 28, 2020, lot 115.
De Chirico brought a metaphysical dimension to symbolism. His Ariadne series anticipates surrealism in substance, through recourse to the psyche, and in form, through deliberately contradictory elements. Especially in Il Pomeriggio, the inverted perspective of the stele reminds the foreshortening of the Dead Christ by Mantegna.
1913 Automobile in Corsa by Balla
2013 SOLD for $ 11.5M by Sotheby's
The wonder of the time is the automobile, and the new art must express up to excess the feeling of extreme power brought by speed. Defined in 1909, the Italian Futurist movement goes to advocate violence in literature and art.
In 1912, Giacomo Balla had already transposed in painting the experiments of chronophotography, but too softly in the opinion of his futurist fellows. This is also in the same year that Duchamp painted his Nu descendant un escalier.
Automobile in corsa, oil and ink on paper 74 x 104 cm, throws him in full speed in 1913 into the new trend at such a point that he is now signing Futur Balla.
The car is essentially limited to the unlimited vortex of the successive positions of the wheels. The ghost vehicle moves in an open space whose characteristic is to have multiple vanishing points. The purpose of the composition is to show the strength of the motion in a kind of fourth dimension.
As spontaneous as a drawing, this work in black, gray and white is also a tribute to photography, which had been the first art that dared breaking the motion.
Automobile in corsa was sold for $ 11.5M by Sotheby's on November 6, 2013, lot 9o. Please watch the video shared by the auction house.
In 1912, Giacomo Balla had already transposed in painting the experiments of chronophotography, but too softly in the opinion of his futurist fellows. This is also in the same year that Duchamp painted his Nu descendant un escalier.
Automobile in corsa, oil and ink on paper 74 x 104 cm, throws him in full speed in 1913 into the new trend at such a point that he is now signing Futur Balla.
The car is essentially limited to the unlimited vortex of the successive positions of the wheels. The ghost vehicle moves in an open space whose characteristic is to have multiple vanishing points. The purpose of the composition is to show the strength of the motion in a kind of fourth dimension.
As spontaneous as a drawing, this work in black, gray and white is also a tribute to photography, which had been the first art that dared breaking the motion.
Automobile in corsa was sold for $ 11.5M by Sotheby's on November 6, 2013, lot 9o. Please watch the video shared by the auction house.
1918 Les Deux Acrobates by Léger
2022 SOLD for $ 14M by Christie's
Painted in 1918, Les Deux Acrobates marks Léger's desire to remain at the border between abstraction and Cubist fragmentation.
A mid length performer from Cirque Médrano in Montmartre is holding a fellow reverted acrobat in an airy vertical composition. The face to face heads are figured in a cartoonish style while hats and arms form a loose construction of curved volumes.
This oil on canvas 90 x 58 cm was sold by Christie's for $ 5.5M on November 6, 2002, lot 41 and for $ 14M on May 12, 2022, lot 36C.
A mid length performer from Cirque Médrano in Montmartre is holding a fellow reverted acrobat in an airy vertical composition. The face to face heads are figured in a cartoonish style while hats and arms form a loose construction of curved volumes.
This oil on canvas 90 x 58 cm was sold by Christie's for $ 5.5M on November 6, 2002, lot 41 and for $ 14M on May 12, 2022, lot 36C.
1918 Gefärliche Strasse by Grosz
2020 SOLD for £ 9.7M by Christie's
Born in Berlin, George Grosz is 21 years old in 1914. Disgusted by the atrocities of war, he is twice discharged from the German army. He escapes in 1917 a scheduled execution because he is considered as insane.
The civil society disgusts him just as much. While the corpses are rotting on the barbed wire, the survivors indulge in all the sins in Friedrichstrasse. Prostitutes reign over this increasingly miserable decadence. The war will be lost but nobody pays attention to it.
Grosz protests in a proletarian caricature, violently anti-militarist and anti-bourgeois. He will try unsuccessfully to approach revolutionary and Dadaist movements and his art will be censored by all regimes. For the Nazis, he will be the worst cultural Bolshevik. Many of his works have been destroyed.
On February 5, 2020, Christie's sold for £ 9.7M from a lower estimate of £ 4.5M Gefährliche Strasse (the dangerous street), oil on canvas 47 x 65 cm painted in July 1918, lot 6.
The image juxtaposes two nightmarish scenes, symbolizing sex and death. A hilarious prostitute, naked under her transparent clothes, excites a lecherous crowd. In the foreground, an austere soldier with emaciated cheeks resolutely turns his back on the rest of the action. Grosz's screams are worthy of Goya's disasters.
The scene is staged by night in dark colors, with a Futurist fragmentation in the style of Boccioni. In the bottom right, the silhouette of a head expressing repulsion or anger is considered to be a self-portrait of the artist.
The civil society disgusts him just as much. While the corpses are rotting on the barbed wire, the survivors indulge in all the sins in Friedrichstrasse. Prostitutes reign over this increasingly miserable decadence. The war will be lost but nobody pays attention to it.
Grosz protests in a proletarian caricature, violently anti-militarist and anti-bourgeois. He will try unsuccessfully to approach revolutionary and Dadaist movements and his art will be censored by all regimes. For the Nazis, he will be the worst cultural Bolshevik. Many of his works have been destroyed.
On February 5, 2020, Christie's sold for £ 9.7M from a lower estimate of £ 4.5M Gefährliche Strasse (the dangerous street), oil on canvas 47 x 65 cm painted in July 1918, lot 6.
The image juxtaposes two nightmarish scenes, symbolizing sex and death. A hilarious prostitute, naked under her transparent clothes, excites a lecherous crowd. In the foreground, an austere soldier with emaciated cheeks resolutely turns his back on the rest of the action. Grosz's screams are worthy of Goya's disasters.
The scene is staged by night in dark colors, with a Futurist fragmentation in the style of Boccioni. In the bottom right, the silhouette of a head expressing repulsion or anger is considered to be a self-portrait of the artist.
1918 Flags by Hassam
2021 SOLD for $ 12.3M by Sotheby's
In 1916 President Wilson is still expecting to maintain the USA out of the First World War, but he nevertheless consolidates the US Army.
The Preparedness movement, supported by former President Roosevelt, manages a campaign for entering the Americans in the war beside the Allies against the Germans. Specific Preparedness days are organized to gather crowds of many thousands around the waving US flags.
Childe Hassam is recognized as the leader of the small group of US Impressionist painters. His style was influenced by the French Impressionnisme. His preferred theme was the everyday life of the crowd in the avenues, in a variety of bright colors. He was a keen Francophile and became early committed to the Preparedness and then to the US Army in war from the formal involvement in April 1917.
From 1916 to 1919, Hassam executed a patriotic set of about thirty views of New York City entitled Flags, displaying crowds and flags in various angles of view, moments and climatic conditions.
The most famous opus from Hassam's Flags is subtitled The Avenue in the Rain. Painted in 1917 in a style close to the French Impressionnisme, it belongs to the White House and was displayed by President Obama on the wall of the Oval Office.
On May 12, 2021, Sotheby's sold for $ 12.3M Flags on 57th Street, Winter 1918, oil on canvas 72 x 61 cm, lot 1026, previously owned by the New York Historical Society. Please watch the video shared by the auction house.
The scene is a rare top to down view without horizon from the window of Hassam's studio. It is the only snowy scenery in the series, with a nice foreground effect of flags stiffened by frost.
The Preparedness movement, supported by former President Roosevelt, manages a campaign for entering the Americans in the war beside the Allies against the Germans. Specific Preparedness days are organized to gather crowds of many thousands around the waving US flags.
Childe Hassam is recognized as the leader of the small group of US Impressionist painters. His style was influenced by the French Impressionnisme. His preferred theme was the everyday life of the crowd in the avenues, in a variety of bright colors. He was a keen Francophile and became early committed to the Preparedness and then to the US Army in war from the formal involvement in April 1917.
From 1916 to 1919, Hassam executed a patriotic set of about thirty views of New York City entitled Flags, displaying crowds and flags in various angles of view, moments and climatic conditions.
The most famous opus from Hassam's Flags is subtitled The Avenue in the Rain. Painted in 1917 in a style close to the French Impressionnisme, it belongs to the White House and was displayed by President Obama on the wall of the Oval Office.
On May 12, 2021, Sotheby's sold for $ 12.3M Flags on 57th Street, Winter 1918, oil on canvas 72 x 61 cm, lot 1026, previously owned by the New York Historical Society. Please watch the video shared by the auction house.
The scene is a rare top to down view without horizon from the window of Hassam's studio. It is the only snowy scenery in the series, with a nice foreground effect of flags stiffened by frost.
#AuctionUpdate: On offer from the New-York Historical Society and sold to benefit museum collections, Childe Hassam’s 'Flags on 57th Street, Winter 1918' achieves $12.3 million - a new auction record for the American artist. pic.twitter.com/32tlAQvDep
— Sotheby's (@Sothebys) May 13, 2021
1918 Saule Pleureur by Monet
2017 SOLD for £ 8.9M by Christie's
The war was a period of great concern for Claude Monet, a patriot and friend of Clemenceau. Too old for active engagement he takes refuge with some feeling of shame within his artistic occupation. With his series of paintings of water lilies that will become Les Grandes Décorations he wants to express that the beauty of nature is immutable unlike the events created by men.
Each water lily painting is a technical feat in increasingly panoramic formats. Monet also observes the shores of his pond in search of vertical themes that will bring an impression of vitality and power. The 200 x 100 cm picture of a group of mauve irises in close-up was sold for £ 10.8M by Christie's on June 23, 2015.
In March 1918 the German counter-offensive threatens Amiens. After some hesitation Monet decides to remain at all costs in Giverny. He immediately begins his paintings on the theme of the weeping willows of his garden. This series will include ten artworks made in 1918 and 1919.
The weeping willow is an ornamental tree with dense and enveloping foliage. Under his tree Monet observes the subtlety of colors. The trunk and a small corner of the ground at the edge of the pond are sufficient to identify the theme. The low angle follows the trunk in bottom-up in its whole height. The leaves provide a mingling of colors treated in a heavy impasto by gestural brush strikes that deliberately ignore the perspective.
The weeping willows of Monet renew the modern art. He is aware and proud of that and wishes to present one of these paintings to France at the time of the armistice. This series opens the path to the experiments close to abstraction of his latest years.
On June 27, 2017, Christie's sold for £ 8.9M a Saule pleureur by Monet, oil on canvas 130 x 110 cm, lot 14.
Each water lily painting is a technical feat in increasingly panoramic formats. Monet also observes the shores of his pond in search of vertical themes that will bring an impression of vitality and power. The 200 x 100 cm picture of a group of mauve irises in close-up was sold for £ 10.8M by Christie's on June 23, 2015.
In March 1918 the German counter-offensive threatens Amiens. After some hesitation Monet decides to remain at all costs in Giverny. He immediately begins his paintings on the theme of the weeping willows of his garden. This series will include ten artworks made in 1918 and 1919.
The weeping willow is an ornamental tree with dense and enveloping foliage. Under his tree Monet observes the subtlety of colors. The trunk and a small corner of the ground at the edge of the pond are sufficient to identify the theme. The low angle follows the trunk in bottom-up in its whole height. The leaves provide a mingling of colors treated in a heavy impasto by gestural brush strikes that deliberately ignore the perspective.
The weeping willows of Monet renew the modern art. He is aware and proud of that and wishes to present one of these paintings to France at the time of the armistice. This series opens the path to the experiments close to abstraction of his latest years.
On June 27, 2017, Christie's sold for £ 8.9M a Saule pleureur by Monet, oil on canvas 130 x 110 cm, lot 14.
Saule pleureur de #Monet : une peinture chargée d’histoire exécutée à l’aube de la fin de la 1ère GM https://t.co/v9exCXAJkq pic.twitter.com/yG83YVjden
— Christie's Paris (@christiesparis) June 14, 2017
1919 Jeune Fille en Bleu by Modigliani
2021 SOLD for $ 16.4M by Sotheby's
From 1916 to 1918 in Montparnasse, Zborowski had sponsored the theme of the nude woman by Modigliani. The artist had a great delicacy and was not always at ease in front of his models. He succeeded to create an unprecedented new style, not overlooking the shyness of the girls.
Under the increasing pressure of the war, he leaves with Zbo in April 1918 for the Côte d'Azur. During their 13 months stay, life was not the same. Their clients were far away. Amedeo took a keen interest in the portraits of local children and teenagers, pictured frontally seated on a simple chair. He tried to reveal their individuality behind their clumsiness or boredom while being observed by the artist.
This new theme became a pretext to improve the features, in another new signature style. Bodies and necks became elongated and flexible. The background was made in light warm colors.
Often the eyes were completely filled in sky blue, without pupil, bringing an enigmatic gaze. This unprecedented feature was probably inspired by his earlier practice in sculpture beside his friend Brancusi, under the influence of African masks lit from behind. Some Montparnasse nudes had similarly filled eyes but slightly darker with a lesser empathy.
On May 12, 2021, Sotheby's sold for $ 16.4M Jeune Fille en bleu, lot 1023. Please watch the video shared by the auction house. This oil on canvas 100 x 64 cm was painted in soft tones throughout, in 1919, probably before they left the Riviera.
Under the increasing pressure of the war, he leaves with Zbo in April 1918 for the Côte d'Azur. During their 13 months stay, life was not the same. Their clients were far away. Amedeo took a keen interest in the portraits of local children and teenagers, pictured frontally seated on a simple chair. He tried to reveal their individuality behind their clumsiness or boredom while being observed by the artist.
This new theme became a pretext to improve the features, in another new signature style. Bodies and necks became elongated and flexible. The background was made in light warm colors.
Often the eyes were completely filled in sky blue, without pupil, bringing an enigmatic gaze. This unprecedented feature was probably inspired by his earlier practice in sculpture beside his friend Brancusi, under the influence of African masks lit from behind. Some Montparnasse nudes had similarly filled eyes but slightly darker with a lesser empathy.
On May 12, 2021, Sotheby's sold for $ 16.4M Jeune Fille en bleu, lot 1023. Please watch the video shared by the auction house. This oil on canvas 100 x 64 cm was painted in soft tones throughout, in 1919, probably before they left the Riviera.
