S otheby’s is delighted to present Modernités, an exceptional sale bringing together rare masterpieces and landmark works that promise to make this a defining moment for the Paris art market. Led by František Kupka’s monumental Espace non-descriptif (estimate: €6–8 million), the largest work by the artist ever to come to auction, the sale also features compelling works by Pablo Picasso and Jean-Michel Basquiat, alongside Alberto Giacometti’s extraordinary Tête crâne(estimate: €2–4 million), a long-lost masterpiece emerging from nearly eight decades of privacy. Further enriching the sale, My Act: A Parisian Collection presents a remarkable ensemble of works by leading American artists, including Alexander Calder, Christopher Wool, Richard Prince, Donald Judd and Richard Serra, estimated at approximately €10 million.
Tucked away from view in a Parisian house, the collection MY ACT reflects the exacting standards and curiosity of its architect. Shaped by the images of its time, its culture, its memories, its encounters and its discoveries, it reveals the extent to which the collector is the eye of their era. Led by the collaborative work by Christopher Wool and Richard Prince My Act, the collection spans several generations and histories of art. The radicalism of Donald Judd’s America enters into dialogue with that of Richard Serra; the light of Pierre Soulages encounters the light, of an entirely different nature, of Wolfgang Tillmans. The materiality of Giuseppe Penone responds to that of Eduardo Chillida, while an elegant Calder mobile unfolds its poetry, meeting in the air Magritte’s celebrated Surrealist dove.
“A sculpture is not an object; it is an interrogation, a question, an answer.”
With the exception of the Bible, foundational pillar of his artistic creation, Marc Chagall was always fascinated by the universe of the circus. It was a world he had discovered as a very young child in his hometown of Vitebsk, where the arrival of these traveling performers, who journeyed across all of Russia, evoked and summoned dreams and freedom. Throughout his long life, Chagall would always retain these figures of renewal, hope, and generosity.
In the 1950s, he created a masterful series of 38 gouaches and washes that would foreshadow the publication, in 1967 by Tériade, of the great illustrated book Circus (Cirque), published by Verve. A whole universe emerges, populated by tightrope walkers, jugglers, clowns in glittering costumes, trapeze artists, and animal tamers who advocate the reconciliation between the animal world and humankind. All of this unfolds through a creative genius that sets in motion “the great play of color,” as his friend André Malraux described it—along the paths of creation and poetry.
