Jetzt

Art Contemporain

OVERVIEW

For the Contemporary Art Spring 2012 session, Sotheby’s Paris has the privilege and honour to present a group of works from three prestigious American collections. Among the works coming from the MoMA, the plaster Cheval à six têtes by Germaine Richier is a completely unique work. The collection of Marvin Lundy, a great Philadelphian collector, presents a coherent corpus of sculpted works with bronzes by Germaine Richier, Arman and César, including La Vénus de Villetaneuse. Coming from another public North-American institution, Les Dominos de Jean Fautrier is a work whose materiality echoes another oil on canvas by the artist presented in the Evening Sale: an inaugural and iconic Tête d’Otage. Le Batailleur by Jean Dubuffet, a botanical collage dated 1959, also counts among the rarest and freshness works to appear at auction.

An exceptional large oil on canvas by Nicolas de Staël, Composition, 1947, as powerful as it is vibrant, opens the section devoted to the Abstraction of the 1950s and 1960s wonderfully represented by Pierre Soulages and Georges Mathieu’s historic works from the Kootz Gallery as well as by emblematic works of Vieira da Silva, Bran van Velde and Simon Hantaï.

Works ranging from the abstraction of the 60s (Joan Mitchell) to the London avant-garde of 2000 (Marc Quinn), including Andy Warhol’s iconic pop art, Basquiat’s underground blues and George Condo’s figurative representation, the American and English schools are also placed at the top of the evening sale at Sotheby’s Paris.

Furthermore, Sotheby’s Paris is happy to present three works by the leaders of CoBrA, Karel Appel and Constant, dating from the leading years in the movement.

Exceptionally rich, the day sale is paced by the beautiful section of works on paper by Zao Wou-Ki and Chu The-Chun, Poliakoff’s oils on canvas, Riopelle, Hartung, Mubin and Olivier Debré, works by Dubuffet, Fautrier, Atlan and Alechinsky, sculptures by César, Arman, Niki de Saint-Phalle and a blue sponge by Klein to which we can add, among many others, works by Soto, Walasse, Ting and even Indiana.