S otheby’s is excited to offer a curated selection of masterworks in a dedicated exhibition, promoted across both our London and Paris gallery spaces. Opening in London, the exhibition will run alongside our Contemporary auction previews and Frieze Art Fair before travelling to Paris to coincide with Paris+ par Art Basel and the Marquee auctions.
Offering an unparalleled collection of coveted works from Modern masters and Contemporary legends, the exhibition captures significant moments in art history ranging from Picasso’s dynamic portraits and Kandinsky’s expressionist style to Agnes Martin’s minimalist calm and the electric vibrancy oozing from Andy Warhol’s pop art canvas. The evolving aesthetic of the exhibition will shift and adapt between each city, allowing a fresh perspective for each location.
An amalgamation of captivating paintings and dramatic sculptures alike, Sotheby’s is thrilled to present such a superb group of works which champion the strength and diversity of the modern and contemporary masters of our time, at an extremely exciting moment in the art world calendar.
Locations & Hours:
Sotheby’s London | 3–9 October
34–35 New Bond Street, London W1A 2AA, UK
Monday–Friday | 9:00 AM–5:00 PM
Saturday & Sunday | 12:00 PM–5:00 PM
Wednesday 9 October | 9:00 AM–12:00 PM
Sotheby’s Paris | 12–24 October
76, rue du Faubourg-Saint-Honoré, Paris 75008, France
Monday–Friday | 10:00 AM–6:00 PM
Saturday | 11:00 AM–7:00 PM
Sunday | 2:00 PM–6:00 PM
"Art is the truth and everything else is a lie."
London to Paris: An Evolving Exhibition at Sotheby's
View Works
"Art is the elimination of the unnecessary"
- De Kooning, Untitled XIII
- Bridget Riley, Buff
- Wassily Kandinsky, Le Rond Rouge
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De Kooning, Untitled XIIIThis epic work from De Kooning’s later paintings, produced in 1983 condenses and refines his earlier lush painterly style of re-working and indiscriminate mark making into ever narrowing ribbons of colour. The artist’s sweeping brush strokes lie carefully amongst white tonal swathes in in a more precise and definite movement. This combined with his rudimentary colour palette reduces the once manic and chaotic picture planes to a more calming and romantic escape.
–David Rothschild -
Bridget Riley, BuffBuff is a captivating large-scale work from Bridget Riley’s later series of curve paintings, executed in 2003. Riley weaves a plane of intersecting arabesques in five rich pigments, fractured by equally-spaced diagonal lines creating a fluid movement of colour which hypnotizes in a dizzying sense of kinetic energy. This painting envelopes you when you are in front of it, making it a must see of the exhibition!
–Charlotte Loudon -
Wassily Kandinsky, Le Rond RougeDating from the artist’s Paris period, Le Rond rouge, conveys the viewer into the realm of pure aesthetic expression. The exquisite arrangement of the composition's forms and colours represents Kandinsky’s final phase of development and a counter response to the Surrealist movement that dominated the cultural topography of Paris at the time. The new motifs that were incorporated into his paintings in 1934 were biological: images particularly related to zoology and embryology. The present works perfectly demonstrates the artist's masterful use of colour, shape and biological morphology to achieve an abstract interpretation of figuration.
–Raffaella Gorenflos