Le Seize Septembre by Rene Magritte was the top lot at Christie’s Impressionist and Modern Art evening sale in New York last night. It was $19.6 million in an auction which totalled $191.9 million. Buyers participated from 31 countries across five contintents.
Unique Forms of Continuity in Space by Umberto Boccioni made $16.1 million, an artist record. Femme dans un fauteuil by Picasso made $13.3 million and Jardin et poulailler chez Octave Mirbeau, Les Damps, by Camille Pissarro made $10,2 million.
Conceived in 1913 and cast in 1972 Umberto Boccioni’s Unique Forms of Continuity in Space will come up at Christie’s in New York on November 11. It is the first time in nearly 50 years that one of the artist’s revolutionary sculptures has been offered at auction. The estimate is $3.8-4.5 million.
Max Carter, International Director, Head of Department, Impressionist and Modern Art, remarked:“In his brief life, Boccioni reimagined time, space and movement. Where other works of art are rooted in the past, Unique Forms of Continuity of Space – Boccioni’s greatest achievement and one of the most important sculptures of the 20th century – was, is and will always be the future.”
The architect Sir Norman Foster said of this piece that … it resonates across time. It even has a science fiction aspect—you can almost see Darth Vader [in it].” The work stands not only as the culmination of the artist’s pioneering form of Futurist sculpture, but as a powerful visual embodiment of the Futurists’ iconoclastic and revolutionary artistic aims. Boccioni has taken one of the most revered subjects in the Western tradition of art—the human figure—and split it apart before reconstructing it in a complex, abstract structure of dynamic, interlocking facets and graceful planes that penetrate and activate the space surrounding it. Striding boldly forward it presents a new conception of man, as well as sculpture, in the 20th-century: mechanical, forward moving and entirely modern.
Umberto Boccioni’s Unique Forms of Continuityin Space,
Umberto Boccioni Testa + luce + ambiente UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR £9.7 MILLION
The title of this seminal Futurist work by Umberto Boccioni Testa + luce + ambiente translates as head + light + atmosphere. It was painted in 1912, the year the Futurists issued a call to arms for artists celebrating the modern world in a radical way. The short lived and highly influential movement demanded a break with the past centred on a desire to re-enter life through a focus on the speed, noise, machinery and violence of the new century.
This work centres the human figure in a direct shaft of light, resulting in the fusion of form and atmosphere. Paintings by Boccioni – a leading figure in the Italian Futurists alongside Severini, Balla and Marinetti – are very rare. This one was made just four years before his death at 33 in the First World War. It comes to auction for the first time at Sotheby‘s Impressionist and Modern evening sale in London on February 28 estimated at £5.5-7.5 million.
(See post on antiquesandartireland.com for February 6, 2018)
