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The Collection of A. Alfred Taubman: Modern & Contemporary Art

In the print catalogue for this sale, all lot numbers are accompanied by a "T", indicating they are from The Collection of A. Alfred Taubman. 

Spanning three centuries, the architecture of the human form is among the themes that emerge within the A. Alfred Taubman collection of Modern and Contemporary art.  The works in this sale also show the collector’s focus on exquisite draughtsmanship from some of the greatest Modern masters of line: Picasso, Matisse, Schiele, Miró, Klimt, Degas, and Manet.  Whether a large scale oil by Paul Gauguin or a sinuous Salvador Dalí nude line drawing on sandpaper, the superlative quality of the works offered transcends any one style or time period, with examples from a delicate pastel from 1856 by van Gogh's idol, Jean-François Millet, to a lushly textured Wayne Thiebaud oil just painted in 2014.  Examples of the radical shifts in art history taking place in the 1910's make for particularly fascinating comparisons and contrasts.  From Max Pechstein's bold Expressionist figures to Pierre Bonnard's brightly colored Nabis canvas of women, from Giocomo Balla's Italian Futurism to Alexander Rodchenko’s Suprematism, from Pablo Picasso's Cubism to an array of works by Egon Schiele and Gustav Klimt, many works represent the best and brightest of this most explosive decade in the history of modern art, when figuration gave way to abstraction. Modernism seamlessly transitions to Abstraction with highlights including Alexander Calder’s elegant and delicate standing mobile White Discs on the Pyramid, John Chamberlain’s bright, powerful sculpture Captain Cooke and Mark Di Suvero’s outdoor work Pasta. Themes of figuration and form reveal themselves in the Contemporary works highlighted by Tom Wesselmann’sGreat American nude, No 61, Antony Gormley’s Measure III and the deep and impressive collection of Robert Graham sculptures.