Women Artists
See also : O'Keeffe Lempicka Central and South Americas Mexico Eastern Europe Self portrait Self portrait II Man and woman Flowers Furniture 20th century furniture Art Deco Chairs and seats French sculpture US painting < 1940 Mitchell
Chronology : 1920 1927 1932 1940-1949 1945 1949 1959 1990-1999 1991 1996 1997
Chronology : 1920 1927 1932 1940-1949 1945 1949 1959 1990-1999 1991 1996 1997
masterpiece
1872 Le Berceau by Morisot
Musée d'Orsay
The image is shared by Wikimedia.
<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.
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.
1927 White Rose with Larkspur by O'Keeffe
2022 SOLD for $ 26.7M by Christie's
Alfred Stieglitz was one of the first to understand the strong link between photography and art, and his gallery in New York was a meeting point for painters and photographers. After being one of the best authors of photos of the city, he became passionately interested in one subject, Georgia O'Keeffe, and married her in 1924.
It was not enough for Georgia to be Stieglitz's wife and model. She finds a small paradise in the grasslands around Lake George in upstate New York. Nature knows how to create perfect shapes much better than an artist can do. She watches the flowering of the weeds.
Georgia was an artist, and such a creative environment transformed her approach. She showed in her paintings some details of nature and also landscape shapes coming close to abstraction, like Weston, like Cunningham. Like them, she wanted to share what she saw.
In 1924, she began a series of oils on canvas on the theme of petunia flowers. The painting allowed a larger, and therefore more spectacular, size than the usual photos of the time.
An oil on canvas 76 x 91 cm painted in 1926 features two flowers of petunia. One is purple and almost black, and the other is pinkish and almost white. This opposition irresistibly evokes the positive negative duality of photography. It was sold for $ 4.1M by Sotheby's on May 19, 2010, lot 32. In the same year Man Ray, who knew Stieglitz, realized his famous photo "Noire et Blanche" (Black and White), showing a white woman's head next to a black African mask.
Georgia expresses the beauty of white flowers in a variety of viewpoints that reveal their sublime geometries in the process of their outbreak.
White rose with larkspur No. 1, oil on canvas 91 x 73 cm painted in 1927, was sold for $ 26.7M from a lower estimate of $ 6M by Christie's on November 9, 2022, lot 9. It had been kept by the artist until she presented it to a friend in 1946.
The pale flesh colored rose is displayed in a surrounding of blue and purple larkspur blooms and green leaves that fills the whole surface. The No. 2 of the same title hang until 1980 in Georgia's bedroom at Abiquiu. In this 1927 series the artist comes back once again to the relation between flower and abstraction, or in some tentative interpretation between flower and female human sex.
In a very different theme, another study of a pale tone, 61 x 91 cm painted in 1930, was sold for $ 3.4M by Sotheby's on May 19, 2010. Closer to the geometric abstraction, it features the mollusk that lives inside a clam shell.
It was not enough for Georgia to be Stieglitz's wife and model. She finds a small paradise in the grasslands around Lake George in upstate New York. Nature knows how to create perfect shapes much better than an artist can do. She watches the flowering of the weeds.
Georgia was an artist, and such a creative environment transformed her approach. She showed in her paintings some details of nature and also landscape shapes coming close to abstraction, like Weston, like Cunningham. Like them, she wanted to share what she saw.
In 1924, she began a series of oils on canvas on the theme of petunia flowers. The painting allowed a larger, and therefore more spectacular, size than the usual photos of the time.
An oil on canvas 76 x 91 cm painted in 1926 features two flowers of petunia. One is purple and almost black, and the other is pinkish and almost white. This opposition irresistibly evokes the positive negative duality of photography. It was sold for $ 4.1M by Sotheby's on May 19, 2010, lot 32. In the same year Man Ray, who knew Stieglitz, realized his famous photo "Noire et Blanche" (Black and White), showing a white woman's head next to a black African mask.
Georgia expresses the beauty of white flowers in a variety of viewpoints that reveal their sublime geometries in the process of their outbreak.
White rose with larkspur No. 1, oil on canvas 91 x 73 cm painted in 1927, was sold for $ 26.7M from a lower estimate of $ 6M by Christie's on November 9, 2022, lot 9. It had been kept by the artist until she presented it to a friend in 1946.
The pale flesh colored rose is displayed in a surrounding of blue and purple larkspur blooms and green leaves that fills the whole surface. The No. 2 of the same title hang until 1980 in Georgia's bedroom at Abiquiu. In this 1927 series the artist comes back once again to the relation between flower and abstraction, or in some tentative interpretation between flower and female human sex.
In a very different theme, another study of a pale tone, 61 x 91 cm painted in 1930, was sold for $ 3.4M by Sotheby's on May 19, 2010. Closer to the geometric abstraction, it features the mollusk that lives inside a clam shell.
1932 Jimson Weed by O'Keeffe
2014 SOLD for $ 44.4M by Sotheby's
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 was sold for $ 44.4M from an estimate of $ 10M by Sotheby's on November 20, 2014, lot 11. It was deaccessioned by the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe NM with the consent of the donor. Please watch 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 was sold for $ 44.4M from an estimate of $ 10M by Sotheby's on November 20, 2014, lot 11. It was deaccessioned by the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe NM with the consent of the donor. Please watch the video shared by Sotheby's.
1945 Les Distractions de Dagobert by Carrington
2024 SOLD for $ 28.5M by Sotheby's
A natural rebel, the English born Leonora Carrington began her career with novels that appealed the Surrealists. She had an affair with Max Ernst and began painting. Aged 21 in 1938, Inn of the Dawn Horse is a self portrait with a hyena pet and a rocking horse with a background garden traveled by a white horse.
Her surrealist life in a bucolic French village in couple with Ernst was interrupted when he was arrested as a German citizen. Carrington fled alone to Spain where she had to be interned for psychotic hallucinations. She did not meet Ernst again.
In 1942 President Manuel Avila Camacho opened Mexico to European artists who fled the war. In Mexico City they could join a rich and highly original artistic tradition including the muralists and the couple Kahlo-Rivera. Carrington built a friendly community of women with the Spanish Remedios Varo and the Hungarian photographer Kati Horna.
The French titled Les Distractions de Dagobert, painted by Carrington in 1945, is a joyful synthesis of her wide knowledge of myths and occultism mingled with her dreams and the memory of her hallucinations. The profusion of details reminds Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights and Dante's subterranean world.
The small scale central figure in a surrealist chariot is the French medieval king reputed for his sexual appetite. The composition around him is divided into the four classical elements of earth, air, wind and fire. An unlimited empty stairs rises to paradise while female teratological hybrids display their occupational. A reclining figure in a flying hammock is certainly a self portrait.
This egg tempera on masonite 76 x 87 cm was sold for $ 28.5M from a lower estimate of $ 12M by Sotheby's on May 15, 2024, lot 20. Please watch the interview of the winning bidder, shared by the auction house.
Her surrealist life in a bucolic French village in couple with Ernst was interrupted when he was arrested as a German citizen. Carrington fled alone to Spain where she had to be interned for psychotic hallucinations. She did not meet Ernst again.
In 1942 President Manuel Avila Camacho opened Mexico to European artists who fled the war. In Mexico City they could join a rich and highly original artistic tradition including the muralists and the couple Kahlo-Rivera. Carrington built a friendly community of women with the Spanish Remedios Varo and the Hungarian photographer Kati Horna.
The French titled Les Distractions de Dagobert, painted by Carrington in 1945, is a joyful synthesis of her wide knowledge of myths and occultism mingled with her dreams and the memory of her hallucinations. The profusion of details reminds Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights and Dante's subterranean world.
The small scale central figure in a surrealist chariot is the French medieval king reputed for his sexual appetite. The composition around him is divided into the four classical elements of earth, air, wind and fire. An unlimited empty stairs rises to paradise while female teratological hybrids display their occupational. A reclining figure in a flying hammock is certainly a self portrait.
This egg tempera on masonite 76 x 87 cm was sold for $ 28.5M from a lower estimate of $ 12M by Sotheby's on May 15, 2024, lot 20. Please watch the interview of the winning bidder, shared by the auction house.
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.
1959 Untitled by Mitchell
2023 SOLD for $ 29M by Christie's
Joan Mitchell is one of the best figures of the second generation of abstract expressionism. She is inspired by the colors of nature in works that seem violent and impulsive but are in fact highly architected.
In two subsequent years, 1955 and 1956, she has her summer time in France. There she discovers that the bright colors of the countryside will be the best source for her inspiration, with limitless variations.
She joins the important Parisian artistic community and her style changes, renouncing to use a geometric grammar. The 'experiment' (in her own words) is so successful that she will move permanently in Paris in 1959.
The violence of the hand, the zigzags, the desire to express the nature through abstraction make her art close to Pollock's, but Mitchell's strong temperament does not necessarily accepts models. Unlike Pollock, she uses a wide brush to perform her long lines of bright and pure colors in an athletic movement that involves the full length of her body including standing on tiptoe. She confronts heavy impasto and translucent washes. The edges are left empty.
An untitled oil on canvas 248 x 220 cm was painted in the culmination of that phase ca 1959. Joan did not part from it. It was sold for $ 29M by Christie's on November 9, 2023, lot 14 B.
This abstract painting is dominated by her favorite color, green, increasingly inspired by the French forests. The diversity and brilliance of the other colors anticipate her angers of the following years. The white background, which she considers necessary, provides the contrast.
Later in Paris, she will express a centrifugal violence, before her great come back to nature in Vétheuil in 1968.
In two subsequent years, 1955 and 1956, she has her summer time in France. There she discovers that the bright colors of the countryside will be the best source for her inspiration, with limitless variations.
She joins the important Parisian artistic community and her style changes, renouncing to use a geometric grammar. The 'experiment' (in her own words) is so successful that she will move permanently in Paris in 1959.
The violence of the hand, the zigzags, the desire to express the nature through abstraction make her art close to Pollock's, but Mitchell's strong temperament does not necessarily accepts models. Unlike Pollock, she uses a wide brush to perform her long lines of bright and pure colors in an athletic movement that involves the full length of her body including standing on tiptoe. She confronts heavy impasto and translucent washes. The edges are left empty.
An untitled oil on canvas 248 x 220 cm was painted in the culmination of that phase ca 1959. Joan did not part from it. It was sold for $ 29M by Christie's on November 9, 2023, lot 14 B.
This abstract painting is dominated by her favorite color, green, increasingly inspired by the French forests. The diversity and brilliance of the other colors anticipate her angers of the following years. The white background, which she considers necessary, provides the contrast.
Later in Paris, she will express a centrifugal violence, before her great come back to nature in Vétheuil in 1968.
1990-1991 Sunflowers by Mitchell
2023 SOLD for $ 28M by Sotheby's
Joan Mitchell once stated : "All I wanted to do was paint". She never gave up.
She was first diagnosed with a cancer in 1984, aged 59. Her health further deteriorated with hip dysplasia and disabling arthritis.
Clearly feeling that her life and art would come to an end, she did not stop working, increasing her quest for the processing of colors by the greatest masters of the past : van Gogh, Monet, Kandinsky, Matisse. She felt like a dying sunflower. She said : "I become the sunflower, the lake, the tree. I no longer exist".
She restarted her former style of color bursts on white background, but without the desperate centrifugal explosion of her Paris period.
An Untitled diptych, oil on canvas 195 x 260 cm overall painted in 1989, was sold for $ 14M by Christie's on November 17, 2022, lot 46.
The multi-colored abstract floating bouquet is well centered on the canvas without reaching the edges. Paint drippings provide some gravitation to the image.
The sunflowers dazzled Joan Mitchell throughout her career, with a culmination when she became aging and ailing.
A group of blossom heads fills in parallel both sides of a diptych painted in 1990-1991 on a white background. The expressive immersion provides a synthesis of Joan's skills. This oil on canvas in two parts 280 x 400 cm overall was sold for $ 28M from a lower estimate of $ 20M by Sotheby's on November 15, 2023, lot 120.
A diptych 130 x 194 cm overall painted ca 1991 stages a flower bed of sunflowers from bloom to ground. It was sold for $ 6.1M by Christie's on November 9, 2023, lot 33 B.
She was first diagnosed with a cancer in 1984, aged 59. Her health further deteriorated with hip dysplasia and disabling arthritis.
Clearly feeling that her life and art would come to an end, she did not stop working, increasing her quest for the processing of colors by the greatest masters of the past : van Gogh, Monet, Kandinsky, Matisse. She felt like a dying sunflower. She said : "I become the sunflower, the lake, the tree. I no longer exist".
She restarted her former style of color bursts on white background, but without the desperate centrifugal explosion of her Paris period.
An Untitled diptych, oil on canvas 195 x 260 cm overall painted in 1989, was sold for $ 14M by Christie's on November 17, 2022, lot 46.
The multi-colored abstract floating bouquet is well centered on the canvas without reaching the edges. Paint drippings provide some gravitation to the image.
The sunflowers dazzled Joan Mitchell throughout her career, with a culmination when she became aging and ailing.
A group of blossom heads fills in parallel both sides of a diptych painted in 1990-1991 on a white background. The expressive immersion provides a synthesis of Joan's skills. This oil on canvas in two parts 280 x 400 cm overall was sold for $ 28M from a lower estimate of $ 20M by Sotheby's on November 15, 2023, lot 120.
A diptych 130 x 194 cm overall painted ca 1991 stages a flower bed of sunflowers from bloom to ground. It was sold for $ 6.1M by Christie's on November 9, 2023, lot 33 B.
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
1996
2023 SOLD for $ 33M by Sotheby's
Largest Bourgeois's spiders have a remarkable feature : this figurative sculpture can be viewed from inside by a tall standing person. He or she admires its graceful arches. An abstract precedent was with Calder's monumental stabiles.
A Spider 340 x 670 x 630 cm was cast in bronze in six copies. Its artist's proof is in steel. One of the eight leg's ends is curved as to catch a prey.
The number 1/6 was cast in January 1996. and immediately exhibited in a San Francisco gallery. It was sold for $ 33M by Sotheby's on May 18, 2023, lot 105. Please watch the video shared by the auction house.
A Spider 340 x 670 x 630 cm was cast in bronze in six copies. Its artist's proof is in steel. One of the eight leg's ends is curved as to catch a prey.
The number 1/6 was cast in January 1996. and immediately exhibited in a San Francisco gallery. It was sold for $ 33M by Sotheby's on May 18, 2023, lot 105. Please watch the video shared by the auction house.
2
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.
