Women Artists
See also : Art by women ca 1960 Current art by women Central and South Americas Eastern Europe Martin Self portrait Self portrait II Man and woman Flowers Furniture 20th century furniture Art Deco Chairs and seats French sculpture Dragon US painting before 1940
Chronology : 1920 1932 1940-1949 1949 1974 1983 1990-1999 1997
Chronology : 1920 1932 1940-1949 1949 1974 1983 1990-1999 1997
<1920 Yves Saint-Laurent in an Armchair ... made by Eileen Gray
2009 SOLD 21.9 M€ including premium
In the very large sale of the collection of the fashion designer Yves Saint-Laurent, the furniture of the 20th century will be led by an armchair made by Eileen Gray.
It is a seat only 61 cm high. The sitting height is normal, but the back is small. It is large (91 cm), making it a comfortable chair. The press release from Christie's describes it as a Dragon armchair, certainly for the sculptures of its armrests. For this seat dating from about 1920-1922, prepare 2.5 million €.
In the work of Eileen Gray, other seats have generated one of the most remarkable results of auctions in recent years. On June 1, 2005 in Paris, Camard sold a set of six armchairs à la Sirène, for a total of nearly 9 million € charges included. Sold separately, these six lots were eventually divided between two buyers. They had belonged to Damia, the music hall singer woman with whom Eileen had a love affair. From a very different model from the chair of the Saint-Laurent collection, their sculpture of the women fish was enhanced by an open back.
Eileen Gray was renowned for the luxurious finish of her lacquered furniture.
The sale will be held at the Grand Palais in Paris from 23 to 25 February. It is jointly organized by Christie's and Pierre Bergé et Associés.
POST SALE COMMENT
This seat had it all. We imagine it perfectly in the middle of the living room of Yves Saint-Laurent, a famous person. It may equally be regarded as a work of art or as a piece of furniture.
Christie's has presented it as one of the top lots in the sale, from the first press release last September. The estimate probably took into account the results obtained at Drouot on the armchairs à la Sirène, remembered in my article above. Cautiously, the estimate had been made a little lower (2 M €) in the catalog than in the first releases.
As I have already written, the current crisis of confidence affects the sellers, not the buyers.
The chair of Yves Saint-Laurent by Eileen Gray was sold € 21.9 million including premium.
The low resolution image below is shared by Wikimedia for fair use :
It is a seat only 61 cm high. The sitting height is normal, but the back is small. It is large (91 cm), making it a comfortable chair. The press release from Christie's describes it as a Dragon armchair, certainly for the sculptures of its armrests. For this seat dating from about 1920-1922, prepare 2.5 million €.
In the work of Eileen Gray, other seats have generated one of the most remarkable results of auctions in recent years. On June 1, 2005 in Paris, Camard sold a set of six armchairs à la Sirène, for a total of nearly 9 million € charges included. Sold separately, these six lots were eventually divided between two buyers. They had belonged to Damia, the music hall singer woman with whom Eileen had a love affair. From a very different model from the chair of the Saint-Laurent collection, their sculpture of the women fish was enhanced by an open back.
Eileen Gray was renowned for the luxurious finish of her lacquered furniture.
The sale will be held at the Grand Palais in Paris from 23 to 25 February. It is jointly organized by Christie's and Pierre Bergé et Associés.
POST SALE COMMENT
This seat had it all. We imagine it perfectly in the middle of the living room of Yves Saint-Laurent, a famous person. It may equally be regarded as a work of art or as a piece of furniture.
Christie's has presented it as one of the top lots in the sale, from the first press release last September. The estimate probably took into account the results obtained at Drouot on the armchairs à la Sirène, remembered in my article above. Cautiously, the estimate had been made a little lower (2 M €) in the catalog than in the first releases.
As I have already written, the current crisis of confidence affects the sellers, not the buyers.
The chair of Yves Saint-Laurent by Eileen Gray was sold € 21.9 million including premium.
The low resolution image below is shared by Wikimedia for fair use :
1932 The Devil's Snare
2014 SOLD for $ 44.4M including premium
The beauty of nature was the main inspiration for Georgia O'Keeffe. Painter amidst the circle of photographers led by her husband Alfred Stieglitz, she wanted to see everything from larger landscapes to tiniest details. From 1929 she regularly visited the wonderful site of Taos.
She is not a botanist but there is no need to be a scientist for being fascinated by the datura, a wild herb that is particularly abundant in New Mexico. Its trumpet flowers appear at the cool of the evening with subtle shades of colors on a white background. A powerful hallucinogen, this plant is locally called Jimson weed and most commonly Devil's snare.
Painted in 1932, Jimson weed - white flower No.1 is a beautiful portrait of a flower. Inspired by macrophotography, it is an invitation to enter full front into the intimate secrets of a disproportionately enlarged datura. This oil on canvas is measuring 122 x 107 cm, a large format for the artist at that time.
This painting is estimated $ 10 million, for sale by Sotheby's in New York on November 20, lot 11. It is deaccessioned by the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe NM with the consent of the donor.
I invite you to play the video shared by Sotheby's.
She is not a botanist but there is no need to be a scientist for being fascinated by the datura, a wild herb that is particularly abundant in New Mexico. Its trumpet flowers appear at the cool of the evening with subtle shades of colors on a white background. A powerful hallucinogen, this plant is locally called Jimson weed and most commonly Devil's snare.
Painted in 1932, Jimson weed - white flower No.1 is a beautiful portrait of a flower. Inspired by macrophotography, it is an invitation to enter full front into the intimate secrets of a disproportionately enlarged datura. This oil on canvas is measuring 122 x 107 cm, a large format for the artist at that time.
This painting is estimated $ 10 million, for sale by Sotheby's in New York on November 20, lot 11. It is deaccessioned by the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe NM with the consent of the donor.
I invite you to play the video shared by Sotheby's.
1932 Women of the Lost Generation
2020 SOLD for £ 16.3M including premium
Tamara de Lempicka manages her career with the skill of a businesswoman. To make her own style of portraits easily recognizable, she conceives a synthesis between the precise features of the Italian Mannerists and the elongated naked bodies by Ingres. The shape and color should remain simple and natural, in the opposite of the impressionism. For the background atmosphere, she is inspired by Lhote's cubism.
After the first successes, she gains her autonomy. In 1928 she buys an apartment in Paris. After having it furnished in the modernist style by Mallet-Stevens, she uses it as a workshop, showroom and social salon. She no longer needs her husband. By divorcing, she appears as a liberated woman who influences the lifestyle.
The young men were decimated by the war and the survivors lost their landmarks. They constitute the "lost generation". Social relationships are transformed to the advantage of the most enterprising women for whom Greta Garbo becomes the reference.
The financial crisis of 1929 accentuated these issues. The eccentric aristocrats who had constituted her early clientele are ruined. The nouveaux riches seek ostentatious signs of the sustainability of their power. They buy luxury cars and marry the prettiest women. Lempicka paints the portraits of these young ladies, with an intimacy favored by her bisexuality. Her only competitor in Paris is Van Dongen.
The portraits of women painted at that time by Lempicka display a domineering and inaccessible attitude, with a gaze in the shade and a small mocking smile. The drapes are of a great variety, without necessarily relying on the fashion of the period.
This phase ends in 1934 when she marries a wealthy Hungarian baron. She no longer needs her clients and her themes become more allegorical without however changing their style.
Painted in 1932, the portrait of Marjorie Ferry is an oil on canvas 100 x 65 cm. Marjorie is an English cabaret singer who married a wealthy financier. The husband had commissioned that artwork, which will be kept by the descendants until 1995.
The pretty blonde is naked above the hips, and wrapped in a large satin drapery that makes her compare to an antique goddess. The well-lit back is sensual and the gaze turned to the spectator is a little cheeky. She is standing behind a wooden bench that can be a theater accessory and the Hollywoodian background consists of Greek columns. She lowers her head to stay in the frame, like Audubon's flamingo.
This painting was sold for $ 4.9M including premium by Sotheby's on May 5, 2009, lot 24. It is estimated £ 8M for sale by Christie's in London on February 5, lot 8.
After the first successes, she gains her autonomy. In 1928 she buys an apartment in Paris. After having it furnished in the modernist style by Mallet-Stevens, she uses it as a workshop, showroom and social salon. She no longer needs her husband. By divorcing, she appears as a liberated woman who influences the lifestyle.
The young men were decimated by the war and the survivors lost their landmarks. They constitute the "lost generation". Social relationships are transformed to the advantage of the most enterprising women for whom Greta Garbo becomes the reference.
The financial crisis of 1929 accentuated these issues. The eccentric aristocrats who had constituted her early clientele are ruined. The nouveaux riches seek ostentatious signs of the sustainability of their power. They buy luxury cars and marry the prettiest women. Lempicka paints the portraits of these young ladies, with an intimacy favored by her bisexuality. Her only competitor in Paris is Van Dongen.
The portraits of women painted at that time by Lempicka display a domineering and inaccessible attitude, with a gaze in the shade and a small mocking smile. The drapes are of a great variety, without necessarily relying on the fashion of the period.
This phase ends in 1934 when she marries a wealthy Hungarian baron. She no longer needs her clients and her themes become more allegorical without however changing their style.
Painted in 1932, the portrait of Marjorie Ferry is an oil on canvas 100 x 65 cm. Marjorie is an English cabaret singer who married a wealthy financier. The husband had commissioned that artwork, which will be kept by the descendants until 1995.
The pretty blonde is naked above the hips, and wrapped in a large satin drapery that makes her compare to an antique goddess. The well-lit back is sensual and the gaze turned to the spectator is a little cheeky. She is standing behind a wooden bench that can be a theater accessory and the Hollywoodian background consists of Greek columns. She lowers her head to stay in the frame, like Audubon's flamingo.
This painting was sold for $ 4.9M including premium by Sotheby's on May 5, 2009, lot 24. It is estimated £ 8M for sale by Christie's in London on February 5, lot 8.
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.
1960 Mitchell with or without Birds
2018 SOLD for $ 14M including premium
Joan Mitchell moved permanently to Paris in 1959, the year when she also began her affair with Riopelle. Her studio in rue Frémicourt is far from intellectual communities, perhaps to better preserve the authenticity and originality of her abstract creativity inspired by the colors of nature.
Despite the illusion of spontaneity close to the Action Painting, her art is the result of a meticulous preparation. Her style changes after she arrives in Paris. It brings her solution to the great ambition of the abstract expressionists to offer the visitor an infinite vision without frame : it gathers a multicolored centrifugal energy in the center of very large canvases whose edges are only reached by apparent splashes.
On November 13 in New York, Christie's sells a 296 x 200 cm oil on canvas painted in 1960, lot 14 B estimated $ 12M. An Untitled 240 x 204 cm painted in the same year and same style was sold for $ 12M including premium by Christie's on May 13, 2014.
Joan gave titles to the works which she considered the most evocative. The painting that comes on sale is named 12 Hawks at 3 O'Clock. The title in English cannot be linked to some Parisian surrealist poetry. The work also has no particularity at that time position on a clock dial.
In her attention to nature, Joan included the birds. 12 hawks at 3:00 is certainly referring to reserves for the protection of raptors in which birdwatchers recorded the flight of birds with that level of detail.
Joan had always stated a great admiration for Le Champ de Blé aux Corbeaux, considered as the ultimate and premonitory work by Vincent van Gogh. In the final phase of her life, she will paint a colorful composition inspired by this artwork, titled No Birds in a poignant effort to force optimism.
Despite the illusion of spontaneity close to the Action Painting, her art is the result of a meticulous preparation. Her style changes after she arrives in Paris. It brings her solution to the great ambition of the abstract expressionists to offer the visitor an infinite vision without frame : it gathers a multicolored centrifugal energy in the center of very large canvases whose edges are only reached by apparent splashes.
On November 13 in New York, Christie's sells a 296 x 200 cm oil on canvas painted in 1960, lot 14 B estimated $ 12M. An Untitled 240 x 204 cm painted in the same year and same style was sold for $ 12M including premium by Christie's on May 13, 2014.
Joan gave titles to the works which she considered the most evocative. The painting that comes on sale is named 12 Hawks at 3 O'Clock. The title in English cannot be linked to some Parisian surrealist poetry. The work also has no particularity at that time position on a clock dial.
In her attention to nature, Joan included the birds. 12 hawks at 3:00 is certainly referring to reserves for the protection of raptors in which birdwatchers recorded the flight of birds with that level of detail.
Joan had always stated a great admiration for Le Champ de Blé aux Corbeaux, considered as the ultimate and premonitory work by Vincent van Gogh. In the final phase of her life, she will paint a colorful composition inspired by this artwork, titled No Birds in a poignant effort to force optimism.
1969 Blueberry by Joan Mitchell
2018 SOLD for $ 16.6M including premium by Christie's
1974 # 44 by Agnes Martin
2021 SOLD for $ 17.7M by Sotheby's
Agnes Martin expressed and disclosed in her art the perfect tranquility of nature. She shared with her audience her deep impregnation within Zen and Taoism. To achieve such a level of spirituality, her painting is devoid of form, space and time.
In the opposite, her life is a poignant fleeing from madness. She is subject to auditory hallucinations and catatonic trances and a paranoid schizophrenia has been diagnosed. In the big city, she forgets who and where she is, accepts exhibitions but rejects fame and catalogs. She once said that she is not a woman. It seems that her illness was aggravated by a frustrated homosexuality that she never confessed.
She decides in 1967 to go to the West. In her case, it is the best therapy. She lives alone without being actually isolated but refuses any help. In her wanderings in the desert she builds her own shelter huts. Old age will help Agnes to retrieve some social life but she deliberately ignores some usual aspects of it. She had never read a newspaper again.
She restarted painting in Taos in 1974. From then her penciled lattices are replaced by bands of pale color. The artist's personal touch in the painting is maintained by her hand guided by a mere straight edge without a masking tape.
Untitled # 44, acrylic and pencil on canvas 183 x 183 cm painted in 1974, was sold for $ 17.7M from a lower estimate of $ 6M by Sotheby's on November 15, 2021, lot 6. It is a highly rare example with a vertical central ivory line that may reminds the structural zips of Barnett Newman. The parallel bands are painted in pale blue and crimson lined with ivory that bring an exceptional luminescence.
In the opposite, her life is a poignant fleeing from madness. She is subject to auditory hallucinations and catatonic trances and a paranoid schizophrenia has been diagnosed. In the big city, she forgets who and where she is, accepts exhibitions but rejects fame and catalogs. She once said that she is not a woman. It seems that her illness was aggravated by a frustrated homosexuality that she never confessed.
She decides in 1967 to go to the West. In her case, it is the best therapy. She lives alone without being actually isolated but refuses any help. In her wanderings in the desert she builds her own shelter huts. Old age will help Agnes to retrieve some social life but she deliberately ignores some usual aspects of it. She had never read a newspaper again.
She restarted painting in Taos in 1974. From then her penciled lattices are replaced by bands of pale color. The artist's personal touch in the painting is maintained by her hand guided by a mere straight edge without a masking tape.
Untitled # 44, acrylic and pencil on canvas 183 x 183 cm painted in 1974, was sold for $ 17.7M from a lower estimate of $ 6M by Sotheby's on November 15, 2021, lot 6. It is a highly rare example with a vertical central ivory line that may reminds the structural zips of Barnett Newman. The parallel bands are painted in pale blue and crimson lined with ivory that bring an exceptional luminescence.
1983 The Secret Valley
2020 SOLD for $ 14.5M including premium
La Grande Vallée is a series of paintings made by Joan Mitchell in 1983 and 1984, expressing memories of childhood. But these memories are not those of the artist.
Children love to have a secret place away from adults, where they can personalize their world. Gisèle Barreau spent her childhood in Brittany, near Nantes, where she appropriated a hidden valley, used to graze cows in the middle of untouched woods, with abandoned barns and wild flowers.
Gisèle is a musician. She becomes Joan's assistant in Vétheuil for the work of everyday life.
Gisèle shared her secret with her cousin Jean-Philippe. The young man died in 1982 without having seen his valley again. In the same week, Joan lost her sister Sally Perry.
Since the 1950s Joan has been inspired by the colors of the French countryside. To face the double mourning and ward off death, she imagines with all the vibrant colors of happiness this Grande Vallée that she will never view.
The series consists of a single triptych, 5 diptychs and 15 single canvases. This set was built with a diversity of composition comparable to the Grandes Décorations by Monet. Monet's presence in Vétheuil from 1878 to 1881 certainly influenced Joan's installation in the same village in 1968. Joan expresses the confrontation of bright colors in abstract landscapes that are not based on any topographic reality, but the tendency to the abstraction in Monet's latest works could not leave her indifferent.
La Grande Vallée VII, diptych 260 x 260 cm overall painted in 1983, is estimated $ 10M for sale by Christie's in New York on July 10, lot 61.
The opus XIV, which is the only triptych, is at the Centre Pompidou. Dominated by the colors of the flowers, the opus XIII, 280 x 200 cm, was sold for € 3.6M including premium by Sotheby's on December 3, 2013. The opus XI predominantly blue, 200 x 180 cm, was sold for £ 2.6M including premium by Sotheby's on February 27, 2008.
Children love to have a secret place away from adults, where they can personalize their world. Gisèle Barreau spent her childhood in Brittany, near Nantes, where she appropriated a hidden valley, used to graze cows in the middle of untouched woods, with abandoned barns and wild flowers.
Gisèle is a musician. She becomes Joan's assistant in Vétheuil for the work of everyday life.
Gisèle shared her secret with her cousin Jean-Philippe. The young man died in 1982 without having seen his valley again. In the same week, Joan lost her sister Sally Perry.
Since the 1950s Joan has been inspired by the colors of the French countryside. To face the double mourning and ward off death, she imagines with all the vibrant colors of happiness this Grande Vallée that she will never view.
The series consists of a single triptych, 5 diptychs and 15 single canvases. This set was built with a diversity of composition comparable to the Grandes Décorations by Monet. Monet's presence in Vétheuil from 1878 to 1881 certainly influenced Joan's installation in the same village in 1968. Joan expresses the confrontation of bright colors in abstract landscapes that are not based on any topographic reality, but the tendency to the abstraction in Monet's latest works could not leave her indifferent.
La Grande Vallée VII, diptych 260 x 260 cm overall painted in 1983, is estimated $ 10M for sale by Christie's in New York on July 10, lot 61.
The opus XIV, which is the only triptych, is at the Centre Pompidou. Dominated by the colors of the flowers, the opus XIII, 280 x 200 cm, was sold for € 3.6M including premium by Sotheby's on December 3, 2013. The opus XI predominantly blue, 200 x 180 cm, was sold for £ 2.6M including premium by Sotheby's on February 27, 2008.
Spider by BOURGEOIS
Intro
Louise Bourgeois desired to interpret her relationship with her own parents, generating a suffering that she appeased by her art at the borderline of sexual provocation. From 1951 to 1980 she tries a psychoanalysis. It is a failure : she considers that Freud does not propose anything for the artists.
She left many writings about her own art but it remains difficult to find the key. The relationship between sex and family, the position of the child within the family cell, are the highly traumatic guides to her creativity. Until 98 years old, she will be an activist in support to all the sexual minorities.
Within her old age, Louise Bourgeois remained hypersensitive to sexual ambiguity and sexual promiscuity. On October 15, 2015, Sotheby's sold for £ 1.2M a showcase realized in 2001 titled Mother and child, exhibiting a limp infant on the nude torso of a woman like some externalization of pregnancy. The carefully carved body of Bourgeois's spiders is a further female carnal symbol.
The world of a real spider is certainly of high complexity. It (she) is patient, steady in the center of her web which she builds and efficiently repairs after a destruction. The polygon of her eight legs offers a shelter for her loved ones, but she is also a fierce predator to the insects. Her small size makes her vulnerable but the artist will enlarge it to make her the towering star of a dehumanized parallel universe.
The spider is not a vertebrate and her behavioral psychology is inaccessible. The spider does not look like us, yet we share the planet with it. Good worker, it tirelessly endeavors to create its web. It disturbs us and has no face, and we interpret it as a threat. By choosing this beast as a symbol of motherhood, Louise Bourgeois is not an artist of animals but indeed a highly disturbing surrealist artist in the line of Wifredo Lam.
The spider symbolizes her own beloved nurturing mother. The high legs provide a shelter. Their slimness is a technical achievement, like the thread of the spider which is of extreme strength considering its size. Some of them have a dressed body, also recalling the memory of the mother whose job was to repair tapestries.
In 1994 she builds a small steel spider 28 cm high which carries marble eggs in a bag under its body. This sculpture, one of the first by Bourgeois on this theme, passed at Sotheby's on November 11, 2015.
In 1995, at the age of 84, she suddenly understands that the spider's maternal function will solve her fantasies. She sculpts new steel spiders and edits them in bronze, in various configurations : lowered body for climbing on the wall or raised on its tall thin legs.
The perimeter of the legs is the safety zone offered by the mother to her offspring. The comparison with the Lupa Capitolina suckling Romulus and Remus is relevant. The spiders of Louise Bourgeois personify her own mother, too frail but intensely protective.
The gigantic dimension of the sculptures, culminating in 1999 with a 10 m high Maman, solves this contradiction. Maman carries her eggs as in the original spider five years earlier.
She left many writings about her own art but it remains difficult to find the key. The relationship between sex and family, the position of the child within the family cell, are the highly traumatic guides to her creativity. Until 98 years old, she will be an activist in support to all the sexual minorities.
Within her old age, Louise Bourgeois remained hypersensitive to sexual ambiguity and sexual promiscuity. On October 15, 2015, Sotheby's sold for £ 1.2M a showcase realized in 2001 titled Mother and child, exhibiting a limp infant on the nude torso of a woman like some externalization of pregnancy. The carefully carved body of Bourgeois's spiders is a further female carnal symbol.
The world of a real spider is certainly of high complexity. It (she) is patient, steady in the center of her web which she builds and efficiently repairs after a destruction. The polygon of her eight legs offers a shelter for her loved ones, but she is also a fierce predator to the insects. Her small size makes her vulnerable but the artist will enlarge it to make her the towering star of a dehumanized parallel universe.
The spider is not a vertebrate and her behavioral psychology is inaccessible. The spider does not look like us, yet we share the planet with it. Good worker, it tirelessly endeavors to create its web. It disturbs us and has no face, and we interpret it as a threat. By choosing this beast as a symbol of motherhood, Louise Bourgeois is not an artist of animals but indeed a highly disturbing surrealist artist in the line of Wifredo Lam.
The spider symbolizes her own beloved nurturing mother. The high legs provide a shelter. Their slimness is a technical achievement, like the thread of the spider which is of extreme strength considering its size. Some of them have a dressed body, also recalling the memory of the mother whose job was to repair tapestries.
In 1994 she builds a small steel spider 28 cm high which carries marble eggs in a bag under its body. This sculpture, one of the first by Bourgeois on this theme, passed at Sotheby's on November 11, 2015.
In 1995, at the age of 84, she suddenly understands that the spider's maternal function will solve her fantasies. She sculpts new steel spiders and edits them in bronze, in various configurations : lowered body for climbing on the wall or raised on its tall thin legs.
The perimeter of the legs is the safety zone offered by the mother to her offspring. The comparison with the Lupa Capitolina suckling Romulus and Remus is relevant. The spiders of Louise Bourgeois personify her own mother, too frail but intensely protective.
The gigantic dimension of the sculptures, culminating in 1999 with a 10 m high Maman, solves this contradiction. Maman carries her eggs as in the original spider five years earlier.
1
1997 3.26 m high 2/6
2019 SOLD for $ 32M by Christie's
A spider 3.26 m high on a 7.56 x 7.06 m overall perimeter designed in 1996 was sculpted in steel and cast in bronze in 1997 in six copies plus one artist's proof and one variant in bronze.
The 2/6 was sold for $ 32M from a lower is estimated $ 25M by Christie's on May 15, 2019, lot 21 B.
The 2/6 was sold for $ 32M from a lower is estimated $ 25M by Christie's on May 15, 2019, lot 21 B.
2
1997 3.26 m high 2/6
2015 SOLD for $ 28M by Christie's
On November 10, 2015, Christie's, sold for $ 28M the bronze 3/6 of the large variant 7.56 x 7.06 x 3.26 m, executed in 1997, lot 10B.
Please watch the video shared by Christie's.
Please watch the video shared by Christie's.
3
Spider IV
2022 SOLD for HK$ 130M by Sotheby's
By realizing her spiders in bronze from 1995 Louise Bourgeois concretizes with an indestructible material her lifelong fantasies about the intrauterine relations. The cohort of these protective spiders form a deeply feminine surrealist universe. The bronzes are edited in six copies plus an artist's proof.
Spider I (127 x 117 x 31 cm) and II (185 x 185 x 57 cm) conceived in 1995 and Spider IV (203 x 180 x 53 cm) conceived in 1996 have a lowered body that invites to apply them on a wall. The right rear leg of Spider IV is folded simulating an upward walking. A Spider II edited in 1995 was sold for $ 11.6M by Christie's on November 15, 2017, lot 7 B.
Spider III (48 x 84 x 83 cm) designed in 1995 is raised on its legs and anticipates the gigantic bronzes of 1996 and 1997 that can be used as garden shelters. The culmination of this evolution is the 9.20 m high spider named Maman made in 1999 which can be used as a city monument.
The Spider IV number 2/6 from the 1997 original edition was sold by Sotheby's for $ 14.7M on November 16, 2017, lot 34 and for HK $ 130M on April 27, 2022, lot 1116. Please watch the video shared by the auction house.
Spider I (127 x 117 x 31 cm) and II (185 x 185 x 57 cm) conceived in 1995 and Spider IV (203 x 180 x 53 cm) conceived in 1996 have a lowered body that invites to apply them on a wall. The right rear leg of Spider IV is folded simulating an upward walking. A Spider II edited in 1995 was sold for $ 11.6M by Christie's on November 15, 2017, lot 7 B.
Spider III (48 x 84 x 83 cm) designed in 1995 is raised on its legs and anticipates the gigantic bronzes of 1996 and 1997 that can be used as garden shelters. The culmination of this evolution is the 9.20 m high spider named Maman made in 1999 which can be used as a city monument.
The Spider IV number 2/6 from the 1997 original edition was sold by Sotheby's for $ 14.7M on November 16, 2017, lot 34 and for HK $ 130M on April 27, 2022, lot 1116. Please watch the video shared by the auction house.
