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Impressionist & Modern Art

Defining Modernity With Picabia, Magritte, Dubuffet and Other Masters

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As the art world converges around the FIAC in Paris, the third edition of the Modernités sale at Sotheby’s Paris is set to be a high point of the season. A reflection of modern and contemporary creation, this curated sale presents over 50 significant 20th century artworks featuring surrealist masters alongside representatives of key period movements such as Lyrical Abstraction, Art Informel and Spatialisme. Click the image above to view the slideshow.

Past Auction
Modernités
16 October 2019 | 6:00 PM CEST | Paris

Defining Modernity With Picabia, Magritte, Dubuffet and Other Masters

  • Jean Dubuffet, Barbe des Barons de Baltique, 1959. Estimate €350,000–550,000
    Executed in June 1959, this assemblage of intricately textured empreintes is certainly one of the densest and most fulfilled work of this astounding cycle. Here, the Texturologies have given way to figurative forms that break with the master’s previous works. The empreinte is no longer a mere activator of space as it previously was. Here it tells a whole new story, that could have come out of an antediluvian Scandinavian tale.
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  • Lucio Fontana, Concetto Spaziale, Attése, 1967. Estimate €800,000–1,200,000
    Forcefully pierced with one single slash on the monochrome surface, the bright surface of Concetto Spaziale, Attesa from 1967 draws the viewer into a sensation of space. The viewer is confronted with infinity through the perfect balance of the tension in the canvas and void of the blackness beyond.
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  • Hans Hartung, T 1950-3, 1950. Estimate €600,000–800,000
    T1950-3 was painted in 1950 and is undoubtedly one of the masterpieces executed by the artist, whose grandiose retrospective is now on view at the Musée d'art moderne de la ville de Paris. It has a dense, charred colour palette, an enigmatic background morphing progressively into a separate range of colours and energetic spirals invigorating the center of the composition.
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  • Francis Picabia, Médéa, circa 1929. Estimate €1,500,000–2,000,000
    A work of breathtaking virtuosity, composed of intertwined faces alongside figures of animals and vegetation, Médea depicts one of the most famous ancient myths, that of Jason and Medea. A composition of exceptional complexity, Médea stands out not only as a magnificent tribute to one of the greatest masters of the Italian Renaissance, but also as a work that provides a total immersion into Francis Picabia’s dreamlike world.
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  • René Magritte, L'Incorruptible, Estimate €1,000,000–1,500,000
    Painted in grey in 1940, L’Incorruptible is particularly revealing of Magritte’s state of mind at the very beginning of the war. Bearing witness to these troubled times, L’Incorruptible depicts the sculpted head of Georgette, the painter’s wife and muse, in a desolate landscape, echoing the artist’s torments. It is one of the last works where the reference to the war is barely concealed; the landscape depicted is reminiscent of devastated battlefields devoid of life.
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  • Pierre Soulages, Peinture 72 X 102 cm, 19 mai 1982. Estimate €650,000–850,000
    This masterful oil by Pierre Soulages, Peinture 72 x 102 cm, 19 mai 1982 is emblematic of the artist most versatile, lyrical and fluid compositions of the past decades. With his subtle plays of transparency and gestural elongated forms unifying material and color, it perfectly embodies the incredible creative energy that runs through Soulages' veins.
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  • Sam Francis, SF58-244 (Untitled). Estimate €250,000–350,000
    SF58-244 (Untitled) is undoubtedly one of the most impressive and enchanting works the painter ever realized. In 1958, the artist started a series of travels that brought him to Japan, a country that never ceased to exert an extreme fascination on him all throughout his career. He met painter Teruko Yokoi, who became his third wife, and initiated him to certain processes and practices that enriched both his artistic and spiritual life.
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  • Marc Chagall, Le Cirque mauve, 1966. Estimate €3,000,000–5,000,000
    A manifesto of his art at its peak, Chagall’s Le Cirque mauve was painted in 1966. From the streets of his native Vitebsk to the Ballets Russes where he was involved in different set designs such as Stravinsky’s ballet The Firebird and Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé in 1958, Chagall has always integrated the subject of spectacle in his work. Le Cirque mauve is a highly colourful, animated summary of this artistry of ceremony and celebration.
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  • Gino Severini, I Tulipani, 1916. Estimate €300,000–500,000
    After the Futurist experiment (1910-1915), of which Severini was one of the leading figures, he returned to Cubism in 1916, the year he painted I Tulipani. That year, he moved to Paris, met Léonce Rosenberg, the famous Cubist dealer, and also Matisse, whose expressive use of colour had a profound effect on him. These various encounters prompted the new aesthetic Severini developed, which is sometimes classified as “Futuro-Cubist”. I Tulipani is part of this synthesized approach, representing a link between Futurism and Cubism, combining the rigour of construction with the dynamism of colour.
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  • Jean Dubuffet, Paysage Désorienté, 7 juin 1957. Estimate €500,000–700,000
    Bold ode to matter, Paysage Désorienté illustrates better than any other Dubuffet's paintings from the end of the 50s his radical rupture with formalism. Flattened up, the ground plane and protagonists embedded in the pictorial matter here merge into an intellectual construct indicative of Dubuffet's poetical and strange world vision.

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  • Pablo Picasso, Nu allongé et tête d'homme, 1967. Estimate €1,200,000–1,600,000
    Painted in 1967, Nu allongé et tête d’homme attests to the expressive power of Picasso’s later works. In this painting, the two figures incorporate iconographical and compositional elements of the “painter and his model”, a key topic in the master’s oeuvre. The spontaneity of the painting’s execution coupled with the subject, which is free of any attributes, generates a direct erotic charge between the two figures.
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  • Fernand Léger, Les deux sœurs, 1932. Estimate €1,200,000–1,800,000
    Painted in 1932, Les deux soeurs shows the painter’s aspiration to magnify the human figure by emphasizing its monumentality. Painted with a sober, almost mineral palette, punctuated by primary colours, the picture reduces the subject to its pictorial essence. It brilliantly illustrates the concept of the “figure-object” that is a core part of Léger’s oeuvre : the body and face appear devoid of their sentimental value, becoming an object to be treated like any other.
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  • Joan Miró, Tête, 1974. Estimate €450,000–650,000
    Executed with a technical assurance and a pictorial economy of means typical of the last few decades of Miró's life, Tête is a work that illustrates his mature style, striking a balance between figuration and abstraction, and demonstrating his calligraphic language, which he developed throughout his career with his exquisite use of line. With its bold charcoal lines and colourful splashes, this large piece reflects the artist's expressive power.
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  • Wifredo Lam, Sans titre, circa 1965. Estimate €300,000–500,000
    Incorporating the teachings of Picasso and Matisse, the masters of Cubism, Lam built a language that was completely his own. While they still exhibit a taste for strangeness and metamorphosis, the range of the colour palette gradually narrowed, moving towards dark background tones with shades of ochre and burnt earth. These ambiguously white bodies, whose feet push the boundaries of the frame, dance in the dead of night. They are in this intermediate state between high and low, between the world of men and the world of the gods.
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  • Jean Dubuffet, Massif aux Echancres, 1971. Estimate €700,000–1,000,000
    Massif aux Echancres presents the apogee to the unparalleled and profoundly influential corpus of one of the most celebrated artists of the twentieth century. The series, which occupied Dubuffet for over a decade, represented a marked shift in his dialogue. The recurrent subjects of his life-long activity coalesced in these works, spreading and flowing into one another, contoured by black outlines and populated with a predominance of primary red and blue zones on a white ground.
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