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    • Posts Tagged ‘Christie’s Paris’

    WORLD RECORD PRICE FOR A PIECE OF FURNITURE BY DIEGO GIACOMETTI

    Tuesday, December 3rd, 2024

    DIEGO GIACOMETTI (1902-1985) – CONSOLE PROMENADE DES AMIS

    There was a new world record for Diego Giacometti at Christie’s in Paris today when his witty design console featuring a horse and three dogs meeting under a tree sold for €9.5 million. It was from the collection of Lady Mercia Harrison, widow of the actor Rex Harrison. Four works from her collection directly from the artist’s studio achieved €12.3 million. The top price marks an auction record for a piece of design in France in 2024 at a sale which saw solid results and totalled €19.4 million.

    The first time Lady Mercia Harrison saw furniture by Diego Giacometti was at a cocktail party in Zurich. ‘They were so beautiful I started to cry,’ she says. ‘There was something so joyous about them.’ She begged her host for Giacometti’s telephone number, but was warned that he had a thick book of orders which he ignored, and was not interested in meeting collectors.

    Undeterred, she phoned the artist. ‘I didn’t want to address him as “Monsieur”, so I called him “Maître”, which he thought hilarious, and I think it broke the ice.’ Even so, Giacometti rejected her invitation to lunch, so she got on a plane to Paris. ‘I rang the bell of his studio on Rue Hippolyte-Maindron and said: “I am Mercia Harrison, would you like to have lunch with me?” He was so surprised that he agreed.’ It was the start of an unlikely friendship between the furniture-maker and the wife of a world-famous British actor. The nonagenarian is still very much the art lover, with a keen grasp on the contemporary art world. She believes that her friendship with Giacometti was based on their mutual non-conformity.

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    CHRISTIE’S TO AUCTION ARTWORK RECOVERED BY THE MONUMENT MEN

    Friday, October 25th, 2024

    Left: Neuschwanstein, Germany, May 1945 The Monument Men recovering looted art by the Nazis Right: Nicolas de Largillierre Portrait de femme a mi-corps, estimate €50,000-80,000 to be auctioned on 21 November in Paris. UPDATE: THIS WAS SOLD FOR €529,200

    A painting recovered by the Monument Men will be auctioned at Christie’s in Paris on November 21. Nicolas de Largillierre Portrait de femme a mi-corps, painted around the turn of the 18th century, will be part of the Old Masters sale in Paris. It is part of an iconic photograph taken in May 1945 on the steps of Neuschwanstein Castle in Bavaria, showing James J. Rorimer of the Monuments, Fine Arts and Archive Section together with three soldiers of the 7th US Army, holding three of the many works of art looted by the Germans.  Looted from the bank vault of Baron Philippe de Rothschild (1902-1988) in Arcachon in late 1940 and transferred to the Jeu de Paume in Paris in February 1941, the portrait was recovered by the Monuments Men in May 1945, days before the end of World War II. It was officially restituted to the Rothschild family on May 3, 1946 and remained in their collection until 1978 when it was bought at auction by today’s owner. The Monument Men were greatly helped by Rose Valland (1898-1980), a French art historian and curator at the Jeu de Paume in Paris and a member of the Resistance. During the German occupation of Paris (1940-44) the Jeu de Paume served as warehouse for many works of looted art.  Valland secretly recorded details of art plundered by the Nazis.

    The Monuments Men and Women Foundation will launch the first ever English edition of Front de l’Art [The Art Front] – Valland’s pioneering work, first published in French in 1961, at Christie’s in New York on December 10. Rose Valland was awarded multiple honors, inluding the médaille de la Résistance française (1946). She was named Officer of the Légion d’honneur, and Commander of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government. Abroad, she was awarded the United States Presidential Medal of Freedom (1948) and the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany (1972), becoming one of the most decorated French women ever.

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    A SALE OF THE SURREAL AT CHRISTIE’S IN PARIS

    Thursday, August 29th, 2024

    A surreal collection described by Christie’s as a true theatre of the imagination that perfectly captures its founders’ creativity and intellectual curiosity comes up in Paris on September 24. A total of 150 lots from the collection of Paul and Jacqueline Duchein of Montauban will come under the hammer. Artists featured include Marie Toyen, Yves Tanguy, Max Ernst, Wolfgang Paalen, André Breton, Salvador Dalí, Victor Brauner, Josef Sima and Man Ray. Their collection combines Surrealism with folk art, Art Brut, and tribal art and their home, illustrated here, would become a cabinet of curiosities, rapidly earning a reputation as the city’s second major museum alongside the Musée Ingres Bourdelle. Highlights of the sale include Flux et reflux de la nuit by Marie Cermínovà, also known as Toyen (€800,000–1,200,000), and Trois monstres ou la Horde, a remarkable oil on canvas painted by Max Ernst in 1927 (€400,000–600,000). The global estimate is €4.6-7 million.

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    LEGENDARY LALANNE DEBUTS AT CHRISTIE’S IN PARIS

    Friday, September 1st, 2023
    FRANÇOIS-XAVIER LALANNE (1927-2008) – RHINOCRÉTAIRE I ©Christie’s Images Limited 2023. Photographe : Freddy Persson. UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR €18,335,000

    Christie’s will offer Rhinocrétaire I, the first major sculpture by François-Xavier Lalanne— widely considered to be the artist’s most important work— in a single-lot auction in Paris on October 20. Contained within the armoured body of the animal is a hidden secretary desk, bar, safe and lamps—Lalanne’s ingenious interpretation of a classic theme in the legacy of French decorative arts— furniture with secret compartments. In Rhinocrétaire I, the artist has wittily imbued this heritage with an avant-garde and very modern twist.

    Heralding an extraordinary artistic career, Rhinocrétaire I stands as a seminal prototype in François-Xavier Lalanne’s œuvre: all the elements that would become the hallmark of the artist’s work are present. These would later culminate in his Moutons de Laine, Bar Les Autruches, Baignoires Hippopotame, and Bar YSL. Rhinocrétaire I encapsulates, prefigures, and sets the tone for the poetic excess and whimsy that would define the artist’s signature for the next forty-four years. In creating this rhinoceros, François-Xavier Lalanne knew he was following in the footsteps of some of the world’s greatest artists, from the representations of animals in the Paleolithic cave paintings at Lascaux, to works by Dalí or Dürer. As in the famous engraving by the German master, the rhinoceros does not simulate its real-life counterpart. However, it is Lalanne’s expressive mastery of the metal that truly gives life to the sculpture.

    With a pre-sale estimate of €4,000,000–6,000,000, this stunning work will be the focus of a dedicated exhibition at Christie’s Paris this fall, and a limited-edition catalogue will be available in early October.

    FRANÇOIS-XAVIER LALANNE (1927-2008) – RHINOCRÉTAIRE I ©Christie’s Images Limited 2023. Photographe : Freddy Persson

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    A KNEELING MAN IN PROFILE BY RUBENS AT CHRISTIE’S

    Sunday, March 12th, 2023

    A Study of a Kneeling Man in Profile by Peter Paul Rubens will be among the highlights at Christie’s annual Old Master and 19th Century Drawings sale in Paris on March 22. Drawing inspiration from Caracci and other Italian greats this work is an example of the Italian influence that remained with Rubens long after his return to Antwerp. The delicate study was created using one of his favourite techniques, black chalk accentuated with white.   Drawings by Rubens rarely appear and this one was last on the market in 1867. The estimate is €250,000-€350,000.  The auction, with works spanning more than 400 years of European art, will coincide with the opening of the Salon du Dessin in Paris, the foremost fair dedicated to drawing and now a major international event. Image © Christie’s Images Limited 2023. UPDATE: THIS MADE €378,000 at hammer.

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    CLAUDE LALANNE MIRROR TOPS CHRISTIE’S PARIS DESIGN SALE

    Wednesday, November 30th, 2022
    CLAUDE LALANNE (1925-2019) – UNIQUE MIRROR SOLD FOR €978,000?

    This mirror, a unique piece by Claude Lalanne, sold for €978,000 at Christie’s design sale in Paris yesterday. The 140 lot sale brought together some of the greatest names in 20th Century French design: from Pierre Chareau, Jean Royère and Charlotte Perriand to Philippe Starck, Claude and François-Xavier Lalanne, Maria Pergay, Mathieu Matégot and Line Vautrin. The auction brought in €5.6 million over a top estimate of €4.8 million. It was 81% sold by lot with 55% making more than the high estimate.

    Christie’s will offer the collection of Marie Lalanne, daughter of Francois-Xavier and Claude Lalanne, in New York on December 7. The largest collection of Lalanne ever to be sold in the US will offer more than 150 lots, including sculpture, furniture, jewellery, handbags and dinner services. Among the leading lots is Gorilla Console by Francois-Xavier Lalanne ($1-$1.5 million) which carries the signature humour of the artist: the title is a play on the notion that gorillas are inconsolable by the fact that they will never be fully human. Here, the gorilla has chosen to console himself through becoming a console table.

    UPDATE: THE NEW YORK SALE MADE $77,043,008. It was 100% sold, 319% above low estimate, with 88% of lots selling above the high estimate.

    FRANÇOIS-XAVIER LALANNE (1927-2008) – Gorille Consolé. UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR $3,420,000

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    THE MOST EXPENSIVE MICHELANGELO EVER SOLD

    Wednesday, May 18th, 2022
    Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564). A nude man (after Masaccio) and two figures behind him
    with inscriptions ‘Pietro Faccini’ (twice, on the mount, probably by Genevosio); with inscriptions ‘Pietro Facini/Collection Borghèse’ and ’86’

     A nude young man (after Masaccio) surrounded by two figures by Michelangelo made €23,162,000 at Christie’s in Paris today. This is the most expensive work by the artist to have ever sold, the highest price ever achieved for a work on paper offered on the European continent, and the third highest price for an Old Master drawing ever sold.

    This unpublished drawing, one of the most exciting discoveries made in the field of Old Master drawings in recent decades, is an important addition to a small group of drawings by Michelangelo from the 1490s, copied from works by earlier Florentine masters. ‘He drew for many months from the pictures of Masaccio in the Carmine,’ Giorgio Vasari wrote in his 1568 life of Michelangelo, referring to the paintings by the early fifteenth-century painter Masaccio (1401-1428) in Santa Maria del Carmine in Florence’s Oltrarno quarter, ‘where he copied those works with so much judgment, that the craftsmen and all other men were astonished, in such sort that envy grew against him together with his fame.’These drawings can be dated to the time when Michelangelo enjoyed the protection of Lorenzo de’ Medici, and later of his son Piero de’ Medici, who encouraged the young artist’s study of antique sculpture and early Renaissance art in the years immediately preceding the creation of some of his most famous works, such as the Pietà in Saint Peter’s, Rome (1498-1499), and the marble David in the Galleria dell’Accademia, Florence (1501-1504).

    The drawing was first recognised as the work of Michelangelo in 2019 by Furio Rinaldi, then a specialist in Christie’s department of Old Master Drawings. Paul Joannides, Emeritus Professor of Art History at Cambridge University and author of the complete catalogues of drawings by Michelangelo and his school in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, and the Musée du Louvre, was able to study the original, and supports the attribution. Sold in 1907 at the Hôtel Drouot in Paris as a work of the school of Michelangelo, the drawing escaped the attention of all scholars until its recent rediscovery. It is probably the earliest surviving nude study by the artist.

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    THE THINKER, RODIN’S ICONIC MASTERPIECE, AT PARIS SALE

    Thursday, April 7th, 2022
    Auguste Rodin (1840-1917) –The Thinker, conceived in 1880,
    cast made by Fonderie Alexis Rudier circa 1928 (€9,000,000-14,000,000)
    © Christie’s images limited, Nina Slavcheva. UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR 10,739,500

    Rodin’s most iconic sculpture The Thinker will highlight a sale at Christie’s in Paris on June 30. With an estimate of €9-14 million will highlight an auction entitled Le Grand Style : An apartment on the Quai d’Orsay designed by Alberto Pinto. The powerful presence of Rodin’s emblematic masterpiece was a central feature in a breath-taking apartment overlooking the river Seine on the Quai d’Orsay.

    The Thinker, was first conceived around 1880 as part of the famous and monumental Gates of Hell inspired by Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy. It was only in 1904, when it is exhibited for the first time at the Salon de Paris, that it became a work on its own. It was immediately met with extraordinary enthusiasm and when a public appeal for funds was launched, donations poured in with the sculpture becoming the property of the City of Paris and the colossal bronze taking pride of place in front of the Pantheon in 1906.

    The work will go on a world tour of exhibitions from New York to Hong Kong and London before arriving back in Paris for one week of viewing from June 23 prior to the auction on June 30.

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    THE COLLECTION OF HUBERT DE GIVENCHY AT CHRISTIE’S PARIS

    Wednesday, February 2nd, 2022
    Paris, Hôtel d’Orrouer and an interior view by Pierre Bergian Le Salon Vert à Hôtel d’Orrouer, 2021

    Christie’s has announced the sale of the exceptional fine and decorative arts collection of legendary fashion designer Hubert de Givenchy (1927-2018), featuring more than 1,200 lots of French and European Furniture and works of art, including sculpture and paintings from Old Masters to Modern and Contemporary works. Each object was chosen with Hubert de Givenchy’s meticulous eye and reflects his exquisite taste. Drawn from two of de Givenchy’s most iconic and elegant homes—the Hôtel d’Orrouer in Paris and the Château du Jonchet in the Loire Valley—the collection includes many exceptional objects unseen on the market for decades as well as more recent works acquired towards the end of his collecting journey. Christie’s will offer this extraordinary collection at auction in Paris from June 14 to 17 (live sales) and from  June 8 to 23 in a dedicated online sale. The timing of the announcement of the sale coincides with the 70th anniversary of the first haute couture collection Hubert de Givenchy presented in Paris on February 2, 1952, which was a resounding international success. 

    His family stated: “Through this sale, we are very pleased to be able to celebrate the exceptional taste of Hubert de Givenchy and his lifelong companion Philippe Venet. We wish to share the elegance and aesthetic heritage that they have passed on to us in order to inscribe their vision in the history of art and interior design in a universal way.”

    Loire Valley, Chateau du Jonchet and an interior view by Pierre Bergian L’atelier au Jonchet, 2021

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    DANIEL LEBARD COLLECTION MAKES €31.6 MILLION AT CHRISTIE’S PARIS

    Wednesday, November 3rd, 2021
    JEAN ROYERE (1883-1950)
    Paire de fauteuils Boule dits Ours Polaire, vers 1947

    These Boules chairs by Jean Royere achieved €1,292,000 at Christie’s Paris sale of he Collection Daniel Lebard : Through the Prism of Modernity on November 3. The world record price was achieved over an estimate of 300,000-500,000. The auction realised a total of €31,607,000, almost three times the presale estimate. The collection of design, photography and contemporary art was sold 100% by value and 97% by lot. With registered bidders from 32 countries the sale achieved new world auction records for 24 artists including Charlotte Perriand, Pierre Paulin and Takis.

    The Table de bibliotheque eclairante  created by Charlotte Perriand, Jean Prouvé and Andre Salomon for the Maison de la Médecine in 1951 made €1,016,000 ; the Tête à lumière, a remarkable ceramic lamp by André Borderie which made €325,000, thirteen times its presale estimate ; the Papillon chair by Matthieu Matégot sold for €206,250, five times its presale estimate and the Elysée pair of armchairs by Pierre Paulin quadrupled their estimate and made €200,000. New world auction records were also set for Bertrand Lavier, Michel Buffet, Edouard Wilfred Buquet, Daniel Firman, Morten Løbner Espersen, Hans Luckhardt, André Lurcat, Serge Mouille, Kirstin McKirdy, Barbara Nanning, Nicolas Schöffer, Huge Perignem, Philippe Pradalié, Maurice Pré, Ron Nagle, Bente Skjöttgaard, Roger Tallon, Valérie Belin, Vera Lutter and Raphaël de Villers. The 51 lots by Jean Prouvé made €11,195,000.

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