Sculpture by Painters
not including Modigliani and Klein.
Except otherwise stated, all results include the premium.
See also : French sculpture Bust Children Man and woman Music and dance Degas Gauguin Matisse De Kooning Picasso 1940-1960 Picasso in Mougins Germany II
Chronology : 1902 1908 1910 1920-1929 1927 1953 1959 1970-1979 1972 1978
Except otherwise stated, all results include the premium.
See also : French sculpture Bust Children Man and woman Music and dance Degas Gauguin Matisse De Kooning Picasso 1940-1960 Picasso in Mougins Germany II
Chronology : 1902 1908 1910 1920-1929 1927 1953 1959 1970-1979 1972 1978
1902 GAUGUIN
1
Thérèse
2015 SOLD for $ 31M by Christie's
Gauguin's resentment against the establishment was taking the form of insulting provocations. He left Tahiti where he was not any more finding an inspiration to his art and arrived in the Marquesas in September 1901. He soon retrieved the targets of his vituperation : the Catholic clergy and the gendarmes of the French Republic.
Gauguin blamed the Catholics for their hypocritical opposition to sexual freedom and rejoiced about the weaknesses of the prelates. He purchased a piece of land to the local bishop to build his home which he decorated as a temple to pornography under the complacently inscribed name Maison du Jouir (House of orgasm). He bought a young vahine, achieving to generate the total exasperation of the missionaries.
This exiled artist has humor. The best exhibition place in the Maison du Jouir is the door, visible from outside. Around August 1902, Gauguin installs two statues made by him in rosewood in native style. The man, Père Paillard (Father Debauchery), is a caricature of the bishop as a horned devil. The woman, Thérèse, is inspired by the gossip that the servant of the bishop was also his mistress.
On this phallic shaped statue 66 cm high, Thérèse is a nice woman, naked except for a loincloth. With her oversized head increasing her expressive feature, she is a transposition of primitive art to a Western subject. Although the intention of the artist was purely local, appealing beside him the laughers of Atuona, this artwork anticipates the interpretation of African and Oceanian figures by the artists of the twentieth century.
Thérèse was sold for $ 31M from a lower estimate of $ 18M for sale by Christie's on November 9, 2015, lot 5A. Its pendant Père Paillard is kept at the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC.
Gauguin blamed the Catholics for their hypocritical opposition to sexual freedom and rejoiced about the weaknesses of the prelates. He purchased a piece of land to the local bishop to build his home which he decorated as a temple to pornography under the complacently inscribed name Maison du Jouir (House of orgasm). He bought a young vahine, achieving to generate the total exasperation of the missionaries.
This exiled artist has humor. The best exhibition place in the Maison du Jouir is the door, visible from outside. Around August 1902, Gauguin installs two statues made by him in rosewood in native style. The man, Père Paillard (Father Debauchery), is a caricature of the bishop as a horned devil. The woman, Thérèse, is inspired by the gossip that the servant of the bishop was also his mistress.
On this phallic shaped statue 66 cm high, Thérèse is a nice woman, naked except for a loincloth. With her oversized head increasing her expressive feature, she is a transposition of primitive art to a Western subject. Although the intention of the artist was purely local, appealing beside him the laughers of Atuona, this artwork anticipates the interpretation of African and Oceanian figures by the artists of the twentieth century.
Thérèse was sold for $ 31M from a lower estimate of $ 18M for sale by Christie's on November 9, 2015, lot 5A. Its pendant Père Paillard is kept at the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC.
Paul Gauguin's Thérèse sells for $30,965,000 a #worldauctionrecord for a sculpture by the artist. pic.twitter.com/NuEf8SG0Ex
— Christie's (@ChristiesInc) November 10, 20152
for reference
Père Paillard
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC
The image is shared by Wikimedia.
1908 Nu Allongé by Matisse
2018 SOLD for £ 15M by Phillips
Henri Matisse is one of the earliest artists to release the figurative arts from the realistic proportions of photography. He kneads the clay from 1899. His table sculptures allow him to watch the bold angles of view which will bring an expressive harmony to the disproportions. La Danse in 1909 is the spectacular culmination of this creative process. Matisse's clay nudes are to be compared to Meissonier's wax horses.
Matisse explores several paths in parallel including the pointillisme inspired by Signac and it is Fauvisme that raises its reputation in 1905. Soon afterward the first encounters of European artists with African tribal art convince him of the possibility to derogate from the forms of nature.
During his stays in Collioure Matisse frequently meets Maillol in Banyuls. Maillol endeavors to simplify the nude to achieve the purity in perfect proportions. They have complementary approaches that both release the nude from Rodin's muscular eroticism.
In 1907 in Collioure, Matisse designs Nu allongé I, 34 x 50 x 29 cm. The torsion of the body could evoke Rodin but the hypertrophied raised elbow announces a new style. This artwork will be nicknamed L'Aurore (dawn) by comparison of the robust attitude with the famous funerary marble by Michelangelo. In the same year his Nu bleu is a pictorial projection of the Nu allongé I. This painting will be often imitated by Picasso and inaugurates the lifelong competition between these two artists.
Matisse's priority is painting but he also makes bronzes, sparingly. During his lifetime only eleven bronzes of the Nu allongé I are cast, the last one being an artist's proof. They are distributed from 1908 to 1951 in no less than five different casts.
The first three bronzes were edited in Paris around 1908 by Bingen et Costenoble who were also working for Maillol. One of them was sold for £ 15M from a lower estimate of £ 5M by Phillips on March 8, 2018, lot 9. Two later copies had fetched a very high price at auction for their time : $ 8.4M by Christie's on November 9, 1999 for one of the two 1912 bronzes and $ 9.6M by Phillips on May 7, 2001 for one of the three 1930 bronzes.
Matisse explores several paths in parallel including the pointillisme inspired by Signac and it is Fauvisme that raises its reputation in 1905. Soon afterward the first encounters of European artists with African tribal art convince him of the possibility to derogate from the forms of nature.
During his stays in Collioure Matisse frequently meets Maillol in Banyuls. Maillol endeavors to simplify the nude to achieve the purity in perfect proportions. They have complementary approaches that both release the nude from Rodin's muscular eroticism.
In 1907 in Collioure, Matisse designs Nu allongé I, 34 x 50 x 29 cm. The torsion of the body could evoke Rodin but the hypertrophied raised elbow announces a new style. This artwork will be nicknamed L'Aurore (dawn) by comparison of the robust attitude with the famous funerary marble by Michelangelo. In the same year his Nu bleu is a pictorial projection of the Nu allongé I. This painting will be often imitated by Picasso and inaugurates the lifelong competition between these two artists.
Matisse's priority is painting but he also makes bronzes, sparingly. During his lifetime only eleven bronzes of the Nu allongé I are cast, the last one being an artist's proof. They are distributed from 1908 to 1951 in no less than five different casts.
The first three bronzes were edited in Paris around 1908 by Bingen et Costenoble who were also working for Maillol. One of them was sold for £ 15M from a lower estimate of £ 5M by Phillips on March 8, 2018, lot 9. Two later copies had fetched a very high price at auction for their time : $ 8.4M by Christie's on November 9, 1999 for one of the two 1912 bronzes and $ 9.6M by Phillips on May 7, 2001 for one of the three 1930 bronzes.
1910-1939 Tête de Femme (Fernande) by Picasso
2022 SOLD for $ 48M by Christie's
During his summer of 1909 at Horta, Picasso made eight paintings and several drawings of his accompanying muse Fernande. In his search for a new artistic language that would supersede the reality by the emotion, he bored the 28 year old model.
Back in Paris and ever desiring to experiment techniques, he conceives a Cubist form of bust sculpture based on Fernande's features including her styled hair over the head. The clay is modeled so that the figure is going abstract from some angles of view.
Vollard acquires that clay in 1910 and creates a plaster from which he will have bronzes cast on request from customers up to his death in 1939 for an overall total of about 20 units. The foundry is rarely identified. The exhibition of that Tête de Femme by Vollard in his gallery certainly influenced the development of modern sculpture by Boccioni and Brancusi.
One of these 42 cm bronzes of the Tête de Femme (Fernande) is de-accessioned by the Met Museum which had another example gifted in 2021 by Leonard Lauder. It was sold for $ 48M by Christie's on May 12, 2022, lot 16C.
Back in Paris and ever desiring to experiment techniques, he conceives a Cubist form of bust sculpture based on Fernande's features including her styled hair over the head. The clay is modeled so that the figure is going abstract from some angles of view.
Vollard acquires that clay in 1910 and creates a plaster from which he will have bronzes cast on request from customers up to his death in 1939 for an overall total of about 20 units. The foundry is rarely identified. The exhibition of that Tête de Femme by Vollard in his gallery certainly influenced the development of modern sculpture by Boccioni and Brancusi.
One of these 42 cm bronzes of the Tête de Femme (Fernande) is de-accessioned by the Met Museum which had another example gifted in 2021 by Leonard Lauder. It was sold for $ 48M by Christie's on May 12, 2022, lot 16C.
masterpiece
1913 Forme uniche della continuita nello spazio by Boccioni
museu de arte contemporanea, Sao Paulo
Marinetti creates the Manifesto del Futurismo in 1909. His strategy is to shock, for stopping the weakening of Italian culture and for creating new literary forms adapted to the modern civilization of speed and violence. The past must be forgotten.
In the following year, a group of young artists publishes another manifesto to apply these new ideas to painting. Umberto Boccioni is the theoretician of the group. Perhaps he appreciates that the expression of movement through painting is too difficult for the public. The centipede dog created by Balla in 1912 is a bit ridiculous.
Without neglecting the Futurist painting, Boccioni is now interested in sculpture, which he had never practiced before. He publishes solo in April 1912 a Manifesto tecnico della scultura futurista. He is also inspired by the Cubist fragmentations by Picasso and Duchamp-Villon.
Boccioni makes in 1913 three studies in plaster in which the movement is illustrated by a muscular extension. He then creates a man on the move which is a synthesis of his theories. For marking how much his approach is an incentive for a new art, he titles this figure Forme uniche della continuita nello spazio.
The Forme uniche has remained the only important sculpture by Boccioni, the artist who went too fast, died trampled by a horse in 1916. It expresses an extreme human energy while abandoning realism, and opens the way to Giacometti, Moore and also to the successive transformations of Matisse's Nu de dos and the humanoid robots of the movies. It was chosen in 1998 to illustrate the Italian coin of 20 cents of euro.
The four seminal sculptures by Boccioni were not edited during his lifetime. The first three were destroyed in 1927. The Forme uniche survived. The image is shared by Wikimedia. Two bronzes were created in 1931. One of them brings a refinement, a pedestal under each foot, which still increases the extreme dynamism of the figure. This configuration was cast in ten units in 1972.
A 117 cm high bronze with a gold patina from the 1972 edition was sold for $ 16.2M by Christie's on November 11, 2019, lot 18 A. Despite its importance in the history of modern sculpture, this figure is extremely rare on the art market : no example had been offered at auction since 1975. Please watch the video shared by the auction house.
In the following year, a group of young artists publishes another manifesto to apply these new ideas to painting. Umberto Boccioni is the theoretician of the group. Perhaps he appreciates that the expression of movement through painting is too difficult for the public. The centipede dog created by Balla in 1912 is a bit ridiculous.
Without neglecting the Futurist painting, Boccioni is now interested in sculpture, which he had never practiced before. He publishes solo in April 1912 a Manifesto tecnico della scultura futurista. He is also inspired by the Cubist fragmentations by Picasso and Duchamp-Villon.
Boccioni makes in 1913 three studies in plaster in which the movement is illustrated by a muscular extension. He then creates a man on the move which is a synthesis of his theories. For marking how much his approach is an incentive for a new art, he titles this figure Forme uniche della continuita nello spazio.
The Forme uniche has remained the only important sculpture by Boccioni, the artist who went too fast, died trampled by a horse in 1916. It expresses an extreme human energy while abandoning realism, and opens the way to Giacometti, Moore and also to the successive transformations of Matisse's Nu de dos and the humanoid robots of the movies. It was chosen in 1998 to illustrate the Italian coin of 20 cents of euro.
The four seminal sculptures by Boccioni were not edited during his lifetime. The first three were destroyed in 1927. The Forme uniche survived. The image is shared by Wikimedia. Two bronzes were created in 1931. One of them brings a refinement, a pedestal under each foot, which still increases the extreme dynamism of the figure. This configuration was cast in ten units in 1972.
A 117 cm high bronze with a gold patina from the 1972 edition was sold for $ 16.2M by Christie's on November 11, 2019, lot 18 A. Despite its importance in the history of modern sculpture, this figure is extremely rare on the art market : no example had been offered at auction since 1975. Please watch the video shared by the auction house.
Petite Danseuse de Quatorze Ans by DEGAS (posthumous)
Intro
An original artist with an uneasy temper, Edgar Degas was one of the most innovative graphic artists of the nineteenth century. He knew that he was close to the Impressionists and appreciated their rejection of classicism. His own creative process was very complex, as shown in the example below.
In 1879, Marie draws the attention of the artist. Aged 14, this "petit rat d'Opéra" is an ungrateful teenager, far from physiological maturity, with awkward gestures, but already attracted to her future career as a dancer (which ended before it was to start when she was fired from the dance school for repeated absences).
Degas was a painter, draftsman, sculptor, photographer, printer, but his great art was oil and pastel. He used drawing and sculpture like sketches.
On his first sculpture of Marie, 74 cm high, the girl is naked. This makes sense since the artist wants to study the movements of her body. This is not enough for him. He realized another larger statue in painted wax, a little over 1 m, in the same position, with the unconventional idea to equip it with a dancing dress in cloth and real hair. By its realism that does not reject some ugliness, this portrait of an adolescent girl is indeed a key work of modern sculpture.
As in his many pastels of ballerinas, Degas captures a moment of life which is neither from the performance nor relaxed, which may be a reverie or an exhaustion.
After much hesitation, he shows his Petite danseuse de quatorze ans at the Impressionist exhibition of 1881. After this unique event and until his death in 1917, no sculpture of the master will be exhibited.
Degas had considered that his waxes were too fragile for preparing bronze casts. In 1918 his heirs contracted Adrien Hébrard to produce limited bronze editions of all seventy-four wax sculptures found during the posthumous inventory.
Hébrard worked often on request from collectors. The first complete set of bronzes was finished in 1921. This activity made the founder busy up to 1938 including a total 29 casts of the Petite Danseuse.
Petite danseuse de quatorze ans was edited by Hébrard in bronze with muslin skirt and satin hair ribbon.
In 1879, Marie draws the attention of the artist. Aged 14, this "petit rat d'Opéra" is an ungrateful teenager, far from physiological maturity, with awkward gestures, but already attracted to her future career as a dancer (which ended before it was to start when she was fired from the dance school for repeated absences).
Degas was a painter, draftsman, sculptor, photographer, printer, but his great art was oil and pastel. He used drawing and sculpture like sketches.
On his first sculpture of Marie, 74 cm high, the girl is naked. This makes sense since the artist wants to study the movements of her body. This is not enough for him. He realized another larger statue in painted wax, a little over 1 m, in the same position, with the unconventional idea to equip it with a dancing dress in cloth and real hair. By its realism that does not reject some ugliness, this portrait of an adolescent girl is indeed a key work of modern sculpture.
As in his many pastels of ballerinas, Degas captures a moment of life which is neither from the performance nor relaxed, which may be a reverie or an exhaustion.
After much hesitation, he shows his Petite danseuse de quatorze ans at the Impressionist exhibition of 1881. After this unique event and until his death in 1917, no sculpture of the master will be exhibited.
Degas had considered that his waxes were too fragile for preparing bronze casts. In 1918 his heirs contracted Adrien Hébrard to produce limited bronze editions of all seventy-four wax sculptures found during the posthumous inventory.
Hébrard worked often on request from collectors. The first complete set of bronzes was finished in 1921. This activity made the founder busy up to 1938 including a total 29 casts of the Petite Danseuse.
Petite danseuse de quatorze ans was edited by Hébrard in bronze with muslin skirt and satin hair ribbon.
1
1927
2022 SOLD for $ 42M by Christie's
A bronze 103 cm high not including the wooden base was sold for $ 42M from a lower estimate of $ 20M for sale by Christie's on May 12, 2022, lot 2C.
This copy with brown patina was cast in 1927 by Hébrard in commission from a US collector. It is fitted with the usual muslin skirt and satin hair ribbon of that model.
This copy with brown patina was cast in 1927 by Hébrard in commission from a US collector. It is fitted with the usual muslin skirt and satin hair ribbon of that model.
#AuctionUpdate From the Anne H. Bass Collection, Edgar Degas’s ‘Petite danseuse de quatorze ans’ broke the auction record of the artist tonight; price realized $41.6 million pic.twitter.com/Dn4JLCbWTB
— Christie's (@ChristiesInc) May 12, 2022
2
1921-1938
2015 SOLD for £ 15.8M by Sotheby's
A copy with a provenance history beginning in the 1930s was sold for £ 13.3M by Sotheby's on February 3, 2009, lot 8.
Another example with no reference on the possible date was sold by Sotheby's for £ 15.8M on June 24, 2015, lot 14. Please watch the video shared by the auction house..
Another example with no reference on the possible date was sold by Sotheby's for £ 15.8M on June 24, 2015, lot 14. Please watch the video shared by the auction house..
1953 Le Roi jouant avec la Reine by Ernst
2022 SOLD for $ 24.4M by Christie's
A Dadaist and a Surrealist, Max Ernst enjoyed fancy. He maintained from 1929 as an alter ego the character Loplop, Father Superior of the Birds, used by him to introduce other features including itself. He began to sculpt in 1934 with his then fellow surrealist Giacometti.
Ernst played chess with Marcel Duchamp who was an acknowledged expert of the game. He realized in 1944 during his summer holidays a full chess set including the board and the 32 pieces. He played also with his partner and future wife Dorothea Tanning.
Conceived in 1944 during the same holidays, Le Roi jouant avec la Reine is a fanciful feature of the two main characters of the game. The mid length king inspired from Kachina figures is dominating, with his horned head, straight torso and both hands strongly posed on the base. His attitude reminds a player studying the game. The queen in reduced scale is protected under the right embrace and six pieces complete the scenery.
Ernst presented the plaster to fellow artist Robert Motherwell. Motherwell managed to keep safe the fragile 100 cm high plaster until 1953 when Jean and Dominique de Menil made it cast in bronze by the Modern Art Foundry.
The production of nine bronzes spanned from 1953 to 1961. An undated and not numbered example with brown patina was sold for $ 24.4M from a lower estimate of $ 8M by Christie's on November 9, 2022, lot 40.
Only 4 copies have been numbered. The number 1, also not dated, was sold for $ 16M by Sotheby's on May 16, 2017, lot 4. It had belonged to the De Menils until ca 1973.
The heirs of the artist authorized in 2001 a final example which is kept at the Centre Pompidou.
Ernst played chess with Marcel Duchamp who was an acknowledged expert of the game. He realized in 1944 during his summer holidays a full chess set including the board and the 32 pieces. He played also with his partner and future wife Dorothea Tanning.
Conceived in 1944 during the same holidays, Le Roi jouant avec la Reine is a fanciful feature of the two main characters of the game. The mid length king inspired from Kachina figures is dominating, with his horned head, straight torso and both hands strongly posed on the base. His attitude reminds a player studying the game. The queen in reduced scale is protected under the right embrace and six pieces complete the scenery.
Ernst presented the plaster to fellow artist Robert Motherwell. Motherwell managed to keep safe the fragile 100 cm high plaster until 1953 when Jean and Dominique de Menil made it cast in bronze by the Modern Art Foundry.
The production of nine bronzes spanned from 1953 to 1961. An undated and not numbered example with brown patina was sold for $ 24.4M from a lower estimate of $ 8M by Christie's on November 9, 2022, lot 40.
Only 4 copies have been numbered. The number 1, also not dated, was sold for $ 16M by Sotheby's on May 16, 2017, lot 4. It had belonged to the De Menils until ca 1973.
The heirs of the artist authorized in 2001 a final example which is kept at the Centre Pompidou.
1959 Tête Sculptée de Dora Maar by Picasso
2007 SOLD for $ 29M by Sotheby's
At the beginning of 1941 Picasso relocates his series of busts of Marie-Thérèse, made ten years earlier at Boisgeloup, to his studio on rue des Grands Augustins. In the same year, he makes a plaster head of Dora Maar, 80 cm high. This domineering work, larger than life, is in an idealized style which is in total opposition to the dramatic or allegorical portraits of Dora that he was painting at the same period.
This plaster is edited in bronze in two copies by Susse in 1958 plus two copies by Valsuani at an undocumented date.
Picasso owed a debt of honor to Guillaume Apollinaire, who died in 1918. He had received a commission for the funeral monument of his friend in the Père Lachaise graveyard, but none of his projects had been accepted. In the mid-1950s he offered to provide the statue of Dora as a symbol of the ideal woman for a monument to Apollinaire in the square of the church of Saint-Germain des Prés.
One of the Valsuani bronzes was installed in the square in 1959. The other was kept by the artist, which suggests that the cast by Valsuani was made especially for the Apollinaire project.
The copy which had been kept by Picasso was sold for $ 29M by Sotheby's on November 7, 2007 from a lower estimate of $ 20M, lot 22.
This plaster is edited in bronze in two copies by Susse in 1958 plus two copies by Valsuani at an undocumented date.
Picasso owed a debt of honor to Guillaume Apollinaire, who died in 1918. He had received a commission for the funeral monument of his friend in the Père Lachaise graveyard, but none of his projects had been accepted. In the mid-1950s he offered to provide the statue of Dora as a symbol of the ideal woman for a monument to Apollinaire in the square of the church of Saint-Germain des Prés.
One of the Valsuani bronzes was installed in the square in 1959. The other was kept by the artist, which suggests that the cast by Valsuani was made especially for the Apollinaire project.
The copy which had been kept by Picasso was sold for $ 29M by Sotheby's on November 7, 2007 from a lower estimate of $ 20M, lot 22.
1962 Projet pour Apollinaire by Picasso
2021 SOLD for $ 26.3M by Sotheby's
The poet Guillaume Apollinaire had been a keen supporter of all the Parisian avant-gardes. In the early 1910s he had defined Cubisme as an art that would escape the reality of vision. Picasso maintained a lifelong obligation for his friend.
Picasso contemplated the idea of an Apotheosis fo Apollinaire in the lifetime of the poet. Both were born in the same year, 1881. After the untimely death of Apollinaire in 1918, a memorial committee created by André Billy desired a monument for the grave of their friend in the Cimetière du Père Lachaise. Picasso was the natural candidate for the project with a scheduled date of 1928 for its inauguration.
At that time Picasso was a mad lover of Marie-Thérèse. A first proposal loaded with eroticism was unanimously rejected by the committee. Picasso then tried his hand to a completely unprecedented sculptural style. Supported by his friend the welder artist Julio Gonzalez, he defined a weightless volume composed of and delimited by steel wire and topped by a tiny head. It was also rejected.
The tribute to Apollinaire remained in the mind of Picasso. In 1959 he donated a Tête de Dora as a monument to Apollinaire in the square of the church of Saint-Germain des Prés. An artist's proof of this bronze was sold for $ 29M by Sotheby's on November 7, 2007, lot 22.
That tribute was not sufficient for Picasso. In 1962 he reused and enlarged the design prepared three decades earlier with Gonzalez. Gonzalez had died in 1942. Now supported by the blacksmith Joseph-Marius Tiola, he executed for his own collection a unique Figure in welded steel 120 cm high. This sculpture was sold for $ 26.3M from a lower estimate of $ 15M by Sotheby's on November 15, 2021, lot 7.
Picasso contemplated the idea of an Apotheosis fo Apollinaire in the lifetime of the poet. Both were born in the same year, 1881. After the untimely death of Apollinaire in 1918, a memorial committee created by André Billy desired a monument for the grave of their friend in the Cimetière du Père Lachaise. Picasso was the natural candidate for the project with a scheduled date of 1928 for its inauguration.
At that time Picasso was a mad lover of Marie-Thérèse. A first proposal loaded with eroticism was unanimously rejected by the committee. Picasso then tried his hand to a completely unprecedented sculptural style. Supported by his friend the welder artist Julio Gonzalez, he defined a weightless volume composed of and delimited by steel wire and topped by a tiny head. It was also rejected.
The tribute to Apollinaire remained in the mind of Picasso. In 1959 he donated a Tête de Dora as a monument to Apollinaire in the square of the church of Saint-Germain des Prés. An artist's proof of this bronze was sold for $ 29M by Sotheby's on November 7, 2007, lot 22.
That tribute was not sufficient for Picasso. In 1962 he reused and enlarged the design prepared three decades earlier with Gonzalez. Gonzalez had died in 1942. Now supported by the blacksmith Joseph-Marius Tiola, he executed for his own collection a unique Figure in welded steel 120 cm high. This sculpture was sold for $ 26.3M from a lower estimate of $ 15M by Sotheby's on November 15, 2021, lot 7.
1972 Clamdigger by de Kooning
2014 SOLD for $ 29.3M by Christie's
Willem de Kooning was first of all a painter, of course. Refusing allegiance to any school and any tendency, his works suppressed the border between abstract and biomorphic, generating in the viewer some disorder that was sometimes difficult to characterize.
Suddenly in 1969, de Kooning decided to become a sculptor. He kneaded the clay with energy and passion, creating a turbulent texture reminiscent of Giacometti. His first theme remains his masterpiece as a sculptor : the Clamdigger.
The Clamdigger is searching in sand to extract the shells. His gesture gathers the symbols of creation: sea water, clay, primitive animal, man. It has even been suggested that the Clamdigger by de Kooning is a self-portrait. The texture mimics the lapping waves.
This sculpture 1.51 m high was edited in bronze in 1972 in seven copies plus three artist's proofs. On November 12, 2014, Christie's sold for $ 29.3M the artist's proof that de Kooning had installed at the entrance to his studio, lot 21. The statue had remained up to that sale with his descendants. Please watch the video shared by the auction house.
Suddenly in 1969, de Kooning decided to become a sculptor. He kneaded the clay with energy and passion, creating a turbulent texture reminiscent of Giacometti. His first theme remains his masterpiece as a sculptor : the Clamdigger.
The Clamdigger is searching in sand to extract the shells. His gesture gathers the symbols of creation: sea water, clay, primitive animal, man. It has even been suggested that the Clamdigger by de Kooning is a self-portrait. The texture mimics the lapping waves.
This sculpture 1.51 m high was edited in bronze in 1972 in seven copies plus three artist's proofs. On November 12, 2014, Christie's sold for $ 29.3M the artist's proof that de Kooning had installed at the entrance to his studio, lot 21. The statue had remained up to that sale with his descendants. Please watch the video shared by the auction house.
1978 Back by Matisse (posthumous)
2010 SOLD for $ 49M by Christie's
In 1906, Matisse designs an original theme of sculpture: a nude woman standing, life size, seen from behind, leaning against a wall. The subject fascinated him to such a degree that he created three further versions, in 1913, 1916 and 1930. Psychoanalysts could probably tell us the reason of that backside position.
These four naked Backs are changing from realism to stylization, from flexibility to a balance of the masses. The last state is broad and symmetrical, the body barred from head to buttocks by a vertical braid that resembles the tail of a heavy horse.
Twelve bronzes were published from each of the four plasters between 1948 and 1981. On November 3, 2010, Christie's sold for $ 49M from a lower estimate of $ 25M a bronze of the Back IV, 189 cm high with a brown patina, cast in 1978.
These four naked Backs are changing from realism to stylization, from flexibility to a balance of the masses. The last state is broad and symmetrical, the body barred from head to buttocks by a vertical braid that resembles the tail of a heavy horse.
Twelve bronzes were published from each of the four plasters between 1948 and 1981. On November 3, 2010, Christie's sold for $ 49M from a lower estimate of $ 25M a bronze of the Back IV, 189 cm high with a brown patina, cast in 1978.
