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For Immediate ReleasePress Release London
London | +44 (0)20 7293 6000 | Matthew Weigman | [email protected]
Sarah Rustin | [email protected]| Leyla Daybelge | [email protected]
New York Lauren Gioia | [email protected]
SOTHEBYS LONDON FEBRUARYIMPRESSIONIST & MODERN ART EVENING SALE TO FEATURE
MUSEUM-QUALITY WORKS FROM EVERY KEY PERIOD IN THE CANON
Highlights Include a Major 1933 Painting by Joan Mir, a RediscoveredMasterpieceby Gustav Klimt and a Previously Unseen Claude Monet Snowscape
Joan Mir, Peinture, 1933, oil on canvas, 7-10 million*
SOTHEBYS LONDON, Tuesday 10th January, 2012 --- On 8th February 2012, Sothebys London Impressionist
& Modern Art Evening Sale will offer a selection of works of exceptional quality and importance. Highlights include
Joan Mirs monumental Peinture of 1933, estimated at 7-10 million, Gustav Klimts recently rediscovered
landscapeSeeufer mit Birken (est. 6 - 8 million), which has not been seen in public in over a century,a rare and
atmospheric winter scene byClaude Monet, Lentre de Giverny en hiver(est. 4.5 - 6.5 million), and one of Fernand
Lgers definitive compositions of the 1940s,La Jeune fille l'chelle (est. 3.8 4.5 million). The auction features a
particularly strong Surrealist group, with works by Salvador Dal, Giorgio de Chirico, Max Ernst, Yves Tanguy and
Ren Magritte, as well as an outstanding group of paintings by German artists including Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Emil
Nolde, Lyonel Feininger and Otto Dix. The sale is estimated to realise in excess of 78 million.
Helena Newman, Chairman, Sothebys Impressionist and Modern Art, Europe, said: We are delighted to present a
wonderfully rich and varied sale to collectors, with many works of museum quality from every key period in the
Impressionist to Modern canon. Many of the works are appearing at auction for the first time or returning to the
market after many decades in private collections.
Peinture, a monumental masterpiece by visionary Modernist Joan Mir, estimated at 7 - 10 million (illustrated
above) is one of the strongest and most refined works of a series of paintings considered to hold a vital position at the
pinnacle of Modern Art. It is one of the few works from this series that is not currently housed in a major museum.
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Executed in Paris in 1933, it was during this intensely creative period that Mir first broke away from any discernable
influences and created wholly unique works. Mir saw these works as a personal breakthrough and referred to them in
a letter to Matisse as a great success that might mark a red letter day in my career. The critical reception of these
paintings was unprecedented for Mir, signifying a major turning point in his career.
In the same family collection since 1924, Claude Monets previously
unseenLentre de Giverny en hiver (est. 4.5 - 6.5 million, pictured onpage one) depicts the snow-covered road leading into the town on the
outskirts of Paris which would become synonymous with the artists
most innovative compositions. Monet and his family moved to Giverny
in 1883 and the present work, painted in 1885, is one of the artists first
significant depictions of his new surroundings. Monets pictures from
this era exemplified his interest in the transformative power of the
elements on the natural world, in particular the unique properties of
winter light which presented temporal and tonal challenges that appealed
to Monets most profound sensibilities as a landscape painter. For most
of its history, the painting has been in the famed collection formed in the 1920s by Parisian pharmacist and
industrialist Henri Canonne.
Following Sothebys recent sale of Gustav Klimts Litzlberg am Attersee
(Litzlberg on the Attersee) for the remarkable sum of $40.4 million (est. in
excess of $25 million) in the November Impressionist & Modern Art Evening
Sale in New York, a major highlight of the February London Impressionist &
Modern Art Evening Sale is Gustav Klimts recently rediscovered
masterpiece of 1901 Seeufer mit Birken ( Lakeshore with Birches). The
painting (illustrated on the previous page) has not been seen in public for over
a century and is estimated to fetch 6 - 8 million. Coming to auction in the
year of the 150th birthday of the painter, it is a work of haunting beauty that
stands at the very axis of Klimts modernism. Acquired in 1902 from an
exhibition in Dusseldorf by distinguished collectors Richard and Klara
Koenigs-Bunge, Seeufer mit Birken has remained in the same family for over a century. A FULL PRESS RELEASE ONTHIS WORK IS AVAILABLE FROM THE PRESS OFFICE ON REQUEST
One ofFernand Lgers definitive compositions of the 1940s,La Jeune fille
l'chelle is a boldly modelled work of 1949 estimated at 3.8 4.5 million.
Executed with an extraordinarily expressive palette, and contrasting the rarefied
and elitist aesthetic of post-war abstraction, these paintings were intended to
appeal to the public with a more comprehensible, figurative style and subjectmatter. The work exemplifies Lger's firm commitment to neoclassical
figuration and his fascination with the expressive potential of colour the two
defining stylistic factors of his work during the last decade of his life. In the
present work he has rendered the pictorial elements with a sharp clarity that is
characteristic of his mature work, using a vivid plane of primary colour for the
background, and articulating the pictorial elements' contours with bold, black
lines.
Recognised as one ofEdouard Vuillards masterworks,Les Couturires (pictured on following page) is estimated at
3 - 5 million. Vuillard painted this work in 1890 at the start of his involvement with the Nabis painters who,
following the example of Gauguin, eschewed traditional representation to develop their own pictorial language.
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Vuillard was fascinated by the rich ambiguities of the domestic space and
the figures in the work are likely to have been his mother and sister, who
were his constant muses. His predilection for domestic interiors finds clear
lineage in the works of the Dutch and French Old Masters, and the artist
sought similar intimacy in his domestic scenes, though using entirely
different means. The vibrant colour palette of the present painting is
characteristic of Vuillards work of this period and with its historical motifand formal eloquence, it offers a rare glimpse into the artists revolutionary
work at the end of the 19th century.
Offered for sale for the first time in a generation, Georges Braques
LOliveraie(est. 2 3 million) provides - with unprecedented force - a rare
glimpse into the Fauve revolution at the beginning of the 20th century and
Braques seminal contribution to the movement. Braque was inspired by the
unrestrained colour and spontaneous brushstrokes of his contemporaries,
including Matisse and Derain, though chose to depict the rich terrain of the
Provenal landscape as opposed to the port towns of the South of France.Braques explosive Fauve period ended quickly when he turned to the
Cubist idiom, and the rarity of his Fauve canvases make them all the more
valuable to these early moments of Modernism.
Following on from the successful prices achieved by Sothebys for Surrealist works in recent sales, the auction
includes An outstanding selection of Surrealist works
Salvador Dals iconic oil, Oasis, estimated at 4 - 6 million,
holds a vital position in the Surrealist canon and was created at the
height of his successful years in New York. With a sophisticated
manipulation of form and imagery that distinguishes the artist's
most successful compositions, Oasis presents a dreamscape with
the inimitable sense of mystery particular to the artists mature
works. Dal described the composition as The visible lovers. At
the approach to the oasis, Apollo and Venus materialize in empty
space. By grace of the desert flower, they rise into view from the
aridity of the rock.
Regarded as one of Giorgio de Chirico's most successful metaphysical compositions,
Ettore e Andromacaof 1925-30 (est. 2.8 4 million) is a monumental and boldly
coloured work which reveals the immense effect that de Chirico's early works had upon
the course of Surrealist art. The director of the Museum of Modern Art in New York,
Alfred H. Barr, Jr., described the work as 'by far the most powerful of all Chirico's
versions of this theme'. Drawing on the iconography of the metaphysical paintings for
which de Chirico is best known, the present works subject is taken from Homer's The
Iliad, which the artist transformed into a meditation on love and war in the early 20th
century. The work depicts the last meeting between the Trojan warrior Hector and his
wife Andromeda before he departs for his final, ill-fated battle - a poignant last moment
between two lovers during wartime which held great meaning at the end of the First
World War. Combining the mechanised aesthetic with the metaphysical space in which
the scene is taking place, the subject of this work established not only one of the mostenduring themes of de Chirico's painting, but also played a crucial role in the development of Modern Art. ADEDICATED PRESS RELEASE IS AVAILABLE ON REQUEST
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Yves TanguysDeux fois du noir(est.2 - 3 million) exemplifies the
refined and personal language with which Tanguy transformed the
boundaries of Modernist painting. In this oil on canvas, painted in
1941, Tanguy presents a brilliant hyper-reality that embodies the aims
of the Surrealist movement. He had been invited to become a member
of the Surrealist group in 1925 by Andr Breton and went on to
demonstrate his accomplishment in the oeuvre with his completecommand of a new personal Surrealist language. By the 1940s his
work had entered a new maturity, as his forms became more complex
in their refinement and the horizon lines which had supported his
earlier works gave way to atmospheric perspective.
With its richly complex interaction of fantastical figures and
potent landscape, La Comdie de la soif(est. 1.2 - 1.8 million) is
a masterpiece of Max Ernsts wartime oeuvre. The work was
executed in 1941 - shortly after his arrival in New York with a sense of
revelatory determination - and exemplifies the sense of excitement and
possibility that the artist felt in his early years in the city. Here Ernst
incorporates recognizable figures amid textured explosions of colour
in a painting that demonstrates the artists profound power of
expression and novelty of technique.
A STRONG OFFERING OF WORKS BY GERMAN ARTISTS
Ernest Ludwig Kirchners monumental Das Boskett: Albertplatz
in Dresden(est. 5 7 million) of1911 is a highly sophisticated blend of
Brcke boldness allied with cosmopolitan allure, and its unique rendering
of the cityscape secured Kirchners position as the most influential of alltheBrcke artists. Executed in the same year that Kirchner and the Brcke
group moved from Dresden to Berlin, the painting was one of the artists
last canvases to depict the topography of Dresden - a recurrent theme in
his oeuvre and the city where he came of age as an artist and as a man.
The idiosyncratic colour palette renders the painting emblematic of
Kirchners new-found voice and his confidence in the Expressionistic
idiom. The present work represents a powerful precursor of the
extraordinarily daring cityscapes which would follow in Berlin.
Emil Noldes Blumengarten, ohne Figur (est. 2 3 million) is anoutstanding example of the artists important early flower and garden
paintings and belongs amongst his most compelling works. His technique
of using thick impasto to build an almost relief-like surface marked him out
to his younger contemporaries, including Kirchner and Heckel, as a truly
innovative artist whose style greatly influenced their formative careers. In
1903 Nolde moved to a village on the island of Alsen, where he rented a
fishermans cottage and cultivated a garden which would become the
subject of some of his most important works. A fruitful, intensive phase of
creativity saw Nolde adopt a new, powerful use of colour, shown in its
maturity in this work of 1908.
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Offered for sale for the first time, Lyonel FeiningersMhle mit rotem Mann
(est. 2 3 million) comes to auction from the Estate of the artists son T. Lux
Feininger. Painted circa 1917, the work is an exceptional painting that highlights
the artists individuality. Through the use of perspective and figural distortions,
as well as eccentricities of colour, Feininger transforms the scene into a world
where the strange and the familiar are inextricably linked to exquisite effect.Further German artists featured in the sale include Otto Dix, Alexej von
Jawlensky and Max Liebermann.
FURTHER IMPORTANT SALE HIGHLIGHTS
Estimated at 1.5 - 2.5 million, Reclining Figure no. 2, Three-Piece Bridge-Prop is one of Henry Moores most
important monumental sculptures. This work, conceived in 1963 and cast in an edition of six (pictured overleaf), is
one of his most technically sophisticated and complex iterations on his dominant theme the reclining figure.
The importance of the present work is documented in David Finn'sAs the Eye Moves A Sculpture by Henry Moore,
an entire book devoted to the model.The present cast is one of only two remaining in private hands others can be
found in important public collections around the world including the Tate Gallery.
* Estimates do not include buyers premium
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