Great depth of bidding, numerous artist records, and palpable energy marked the opening night of Christie’s Marquee Week in New York, where the auction house achieved exceptional results for two premier sales: The Collection of Robert F. and Patricia G. Ross Weis and the 20th Century Evening Sale. In a packed, energetic saleroom at Rockefeller Center, and with active online bidders, the two sales achieved a total of $689,795,000 million, were 96% sold by lot, 97% sold by value.
The top lot of the evening was Mark Rothko’s No. 31 (Yellow Stripe) from the Weis collection. It work sold for $62,160,000 to a bidder on the phone after a fierce four-minute and 40-second bidding battle—also securing the highest online bid ever for a live auction at Christie’s. Another highlight of the collection was La Lecture, a portrait of Marie-Therese by Pablo Picasso which made $45,485,000.
The top lot from the 20th Century Evening sale was Claude Monet’s Nymphéas from the collection of Japan’s Kawamura Memorial DIC Museum of Art. It made $45,485,000
Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) Spanish – Blue Dove with Flowers. UPDATE: THIS MADE 300 AT HAMMER
This lithograph by Picasso is lot 89 at Morgan O’Driscoll’s off the wall online art auction which finishes this evening. Signed on the plate and numbered 605/1000 it is after a 1961 drawing. The litho was published by SPADEM in 1983 on watermarked Arches paper. The estimate is €300-€500.
Pablo Picasso, Femme à la montre, 1932, oil on canvas, 51 1?4 x 38 inches. Estimate in excess of $120 million. UPDATE: THIS MADE $139 MILLION
An Era Defined is the title of the sales of the Emily Fisher Landau Collection at Sotheby’s in New York on November 8 and 9 next. The collection is synonymous with connoisseurship and quality, and also speaks to Mrs. Fisher Landau’s voracious and instinctive approach to collecting. From Pablo Picasso, Piet Mondrian, and Fernand Léger, through to Ed Ruscha and Jasper Johns, alongside Mark Tansey and Glenn Ligon, the collection traces the greatest achievements of 20th-century art, in each case through key masterpiece examples. Following a series of international exhibition some 120 exceptional works from the collection, estimated to bring well over $400 million, will be offered for sale at Sotheby’s.
MARK TANSEY – Triumph Over Mastery II. UPDATE: THIS MADE $11.8 MILLION
Mrs. Fisher Landau’s collecting journey began in the late 1960s with the purchase of a striking Alexander Calder mobile and with a chance encounter with a poster advertising a forthcoming Josef Albers show at Pace Gallery, from which three major acquisitions followed. Mrs. Fisher Landau began to put together a major ensemble of works by Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Piet Mondrian, Jean Arp, Mark Rothko, Franz Kline, Paul Klee and Louise Nevelson among others. All were complemented, in later years, by the work of artists she came to know and patronize directly, many of whom she collected in depth. Few collectors have been as committed to building relationships with artists as she: from post-war titans such as Ed Ruscha and Jasper Johns to artists at the vanguard in the 21st century, such as Glenn Ligon and Mark Tansey.
Beginning in the mid-1980s, and over the course of the next four decades, Mrs. Fisher Landau was deeply involved with the Whitney Museum in so many ways: a member of the acquisition committees, she also endowed the Museum’s famous Whitney Biennial exhibitions and in 2010 made a landmark donation of nearly 400 works, which was subsequently exhibited under the title “Legacy: The Emily Fisher Landau Collection”. The fourth floor of the Breuer building remains named in her honour.
JASPER JOHNS – Flags. UPDATE: THIS MADE $41 MILLION
This large scale 1932 portrait of Marie-Therese Walter will highlight Christie’s 20th century evening sale in New York on May 11. Nature morte a la fenetre was painted during a pivotal year for Picasso, who reached an extraordinary peak of creativity in 1932. Marie-Therese came to dominate every aspect of his output in the early 1930’s. This is one of the first works of an exceptional series devoted to her. One of them, Femme assise pres d’une fenetre (Marie-Therese), sold for $103 million in 2021. The painting here was shown at the Picasso retrospective in Paris in the summer of 1932 after which it was exhibited at his inaugural museum show in Zurich. It remained in his personal collection for the rest of his life, hidden from public view until the 1980’s. UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR $41,810,000
Pablo Picasso’s Femme dans un rocking-chair (Jacqueline) (1956) made £16,892,000.
The 20/21 evening sale series at Christie’s in London last night, the first of 2023, realised £167,814. More than 50% of the top lots sold above the high estimate. There were bidders from 37 countries.
The 20th/21st Century sale was led by Picasso’s Femme dans un rocking chair (Jacqueline) which made £16,892,200. Magritte’s Le Retour made £6,129,000 to lead The Art of the Surreal sale.
In 1906 Edvard Munch was commissioned to paint the frieze on Max Reinhardt’s avant-garde theatre in Berlin. Dance on the Beach, the last of 12 canvases and one of the first immersive installations ever, is at Sotheby’s Modern and Contemporary sale on March 1. This sale boasts a Picasso portrait of his little daughter Maya born to Marie Therese Walther titled Fillette au bateau (Maya). Her birth sparked a creative rejuvenation at a time of personal crisis after a lengthy divorce battle and a worsening political situation in Europe. Picasso painted Maya’s portrait no less than 14 times between January 1938 and November 1939.
Pablo Picasso – Fillette au bateau (Maya) UPDATE: THIS MADE £18 MILLION
Pablo Picasso – Femme nue couchée SOLD FOR $67,541,000
Picasso’s Femme nue couchée was the top lot at Sotheby’s Modern evening auction in New York last night. It made $67.5 million in a sale which realised $408.5 million. This was the third highest total for an auction at Sotheby’s. Monet’s view of the Grand Canal in Venice with Santa Maria della Salute made $56.6 million and The Glade by Paul Cezanne made $41.6 million. There were artists records for Milton Avery’s The Letter ($6.1 million) Leonora Carrington’s The Garden of Paracelsus ($3.3 million) and Jared French’s The Double ($1.1 million) and Robert Motherwell’s Elegy to the Spanish Republic No. 59($1.2 million) set an auction record for a work on paper by the artist.
Courtyard lounge, ground floor, Givenchy’s Hotel d’Orrouer with Picasso’s Faun with a Spear. Courtesy, Christie’s Images Ltd. UPDATE: THIS PICASSO MADE €3,500,000 AT HAMMER
The first highlights from the collection of Hubert de Givenchy were unveiled by Christie’s today. They include Woman Walking by Alberto Giacometti (€20-30 million); Passage of the Migratory Bird by Joan Miro (€2.5 – €3.5 million) and Faun with a Spear by Pablo Picasso (€1.5 – 2 million). With over 1,200 lots dating from the 17th to the 20th century, this collection features a remarkable gathering of nearly 800 pieces of French and European furniture, including many masterpieces of classical furniture from the French Regency period to the Neoclassical period and onwards.
In the decoration of his homes, Hubert de Givenchy always considered the furniture in constant dialogue with the works of art, both ancient and modern. Alongside numerous major sculptures and paintings by old masters such as Hubert Robert, the collection includes several masterpieces of modern art: from the couturier’s friend and collaborator Alberto Giacometti’s Woman Walking, a key painting by Joan Miró never before presented on the market, several works by Alberto’s brother, Diego Giacometti and more contemporary works by Claudio Bravo and François-Xavier Lalanne.
Already underway in Palm Beach, a selection of works from the collection will be previewed in several cities including New York, Los Angeles and Hong Kong. Sales will take place in Paris from June 14-17 and online from June 8-23.
(See post on antiquesandartireland.com for February 2, 2022)
Joan Miró – Passage of the Migratory Bird. UPDATE: THIS MADE €5,750,000 AT HAMMER
Pablo Picasso, La fenêtre ouverte (1929, estimate: £14,000,000-24,000,000)
A seminal work from Pablo Picasso’s Surrealist period, La fenetre ouverte (1929) will highlight Christie’s 21st edition of The Art of the Surreal evening sale. It is part of the 20/21 Shanghai to London series of auctions due take place on March 1, 2022. Painted on November 22, 1929, this complex and compelling studio scene is one of a series of Atelier works that Picasso had begun around 1926, richly symbolic and radically constructed paintings that reveal the multi-faceted interests of the artist at this time. Other works from this series are housed in museums including The Museum of Modern Art, New York and Musée National d’Art Moderne, Le Centre Pompidou, Paris. At once a still life, a veiled Atelier scene, and a Surrealist distortion of reality, La fenêtre ouverte is rich with personal and artistic symbolism and is estimated at £14 million – £24 million.
Sales at Christie’s totalled $7.1 billion in 2021, the highest total for five years. The highest value work sold at auction this year, Picasso’s Femme Assise pres d’une fenetre (Marie-Therese), sold at Christie’s in New York last May for $103.4 million. The auction house achieved $150 million for NFT’s and it was a record year for private sales. Results were +54% versus 2020 and +22% versus 2019. Live and online sales accounted for $5.4 billion and private sales came to $1.7 billion.
Guillaume Cerutti, Christie’s Chief Executive Officer, commented: “We are pleased with our 2021 achievements. Beyond our auction and private sales results -which are exceptional, Christie’s has also made a breakthrough in new sales formats and categories, NFTS in particular. They have allowed us to showcase works by new emerging and under-represented artists, and to reach out to a new audience of younger clients. We have also made great progress in other priorities, with important investments in Asia and with our commitments to becoming carbon net zero by 2030, and to building and sustaining a more equitable and diverse profile for our company. Growth, innovation and responsibility remain at the forefront of our objectives for 2022.”
PABLO PICASSO 1881 – 1973 FEMME ASSISE PRÈS D’UNE FENÊTRE (MARIE-THERESE)
