Stories & Videos
Impressionist & Modern Art

Start Your Latin American Collection with Works by Wifredo Lam, Matta and Joaquín Torres-García

Launch Slideshow

The Impressionist & Modern Art Online sale, now open for bidding through 14 December presents an unprecedented opportunity to build a collection of Latin American masters at accessible price points. From twentieth-century giants like Matta, Wifredo Lam and Joaquín Torres-García to important modernists including Emilio Pettoruti, Armando Morales and Alfonso X. Peña, the online sale (open now for bidding) presents an excellent chance to expand your collection with works by top artists from across Latin America.

Past Auction
Impressionist & Modern Art Online
30 November–14 December 2018 | 5:00 PM GMT

Start Your Latin American Collection with Works by Wifredo Lam, Matta and Joaquín Torres-García

  • Lot 65, Matta, Herman Ecerse. Estimate $25,000–35,000.
    Executed circa 1966, Herman Ecerse is a vibrant example of Matta’s mature style. Two turbulent, sinewy, machine-like figures rise triumphantly from acidic green and blue clouds that gather across the lower composition. Following the Second World War, Matta became fascinated by the ambivalent powers of rapid advances in science and technology, both life-threatening and life-giving in nature; a passion that is evident in this stirring work.

    VIEW LOT
    View Auction
    Share
  • Lot 35, Armando Morales, Bodegón con papaya, 2001. Estimate $25,000–35,000.
    Armando Morales’ vivid still lifes are among the most desirable works in his prolific oeuvre. Here, Morales’ agitated brushstrokes and alluring colors create a brilliant, glittering, timeless effect that brings a simple scene of cut papaya out of the mundane and into the extraordinary world of magical realism; the viewer enters into a lush, otherworldly space which exists only in the Latin American imagination.

    VIEW LOT
    View Auction
    Share
  • Lot 100, Mariano Rodríguez, Caridad del Cobre (Virgen, Santa Bárbara), 1949. Estimate $20,000–30,000.
    A seminal figure in the development of Cuban modernism throughout the 1930s-40s, Mariano Rodríguez favored jewel-like, baroque compositions that embodied the diverse experience of life in his native land. In Caridad del Cobre, Rodríguez evokes the medieval aesthetics of stained glass to depict Cuba’s patron saint, Our Lady of Charity (la Virgen de la Caridad); the deep blues that traditionally symbolize the Virgin are offset here by gleaming tones of burgundy and gold, creating a meditative and awe-inspiring atmosphere.

    VIEW LOT
    View Auction
    Share
  • Lot 89, René Portocarrero, Flora, 1973. Estimate $20,000–30,000.
    One of the leading figures of Cuba’s Modernist Vanguard, René Portocarrero is known for his evocative, romantic style of painting. The present work belongs to a series of “imagined” portraits of an archetype of feminine beauty, Flora, who is based on a sophisticated woman from the artist’s childhood whose charm and refinement left a lifelong impression upon the artist. This graceful and restrained depiction of Flora is an elegant example of Portocarrero’s lyrical visual language.

    VIEW LOT
    View Auction
    Share
  • Lot 90, Francisco Matto, Constructivo Petrus, 1960. Estimate $18,000–22,000.
    Francisco Matto, born in Montevideo, Uruguay in 1911, was one of the most innovative and accomplished students of Joaquín Torres-García’s Taller (studio). Constructivo Petrus is an outstanding example of Matto’s mature style, exhibiting a complex, vibrating grid structure studded with abstract and pictographic icons that engage with both Western abstraction and ancient native American spiritual symbols. Building upon the philosophical and aesthetic foundations of Torres-García’s Universal Constructivism, Matto transforms his teacher’s visual language, creating “a marvelous grid, a storyboard without narrative…a theater of simultaneous action, a lingering vestige of primal memory that keeps surfacing over and over again.” (Robert C. Morgan, “Francisco Matto: The Persistent Force in Art” in Francisco Matto, Porto Alegre, 2007, p. 191)

    VIEW LOT
    View Auction
    Share
  • Lot 64, Wifredo Lam, Sans Titre (Oiseaux et Femme Cheval). Estimate $15,000–20,000.
    Sans titre (Femme cheval et oiseaux) belongs to a small group of works created by Wifredo Lam in Venezuela circa1956, when he (alongside other leading global modern artists including Alexander Calder and Fernand Léger) was commissioned by the Venezuelan government to create works for the national university in Caracas. Two of Lam’s most iconic symbols are present in this graphic and skillfully rendered drawing. First are the two mysterious and powerful oiseaux caraïbes, Caribbean birds whose forms draw on local mythologies. In the lower left, we see Lam’s emblematic and enigmatic femme-cheval (horse-woman), a dualistic figure who both evokes the Minotaur revered by the Surrealists and the spiritual experience of practitioners of Santería, who in religious ritual invoke and embody Orishas, or deities, and become the “horse” of the deity invoked, traversing at once the mortal and spiritual realms. (Lowery Stokes Sims, Wifredo Lam and the International Avant-Garde, 1923-1982, Austin, 2002, p. 119).

    VIEW LOT
    View Auction
    Share
  • Lot 22, Alfonso X. Peña, Mujer en la Ventana, 1945. Estimate $15,000–20,000.
    Born in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas in 1903, Alfonso X. Peña studied painting first at the prestigious Academía San Carlos in Mexico City and later in New York and Paris alongside modernist compatriots Rufino Tamayo and Miguel Covarrubias; in 1957, he was awarded a gold medal for murals executed for the International Exhibition in Paris. Like Covarrubias, Peña worked for many years as a caricaturist, and his vibrant, idealized depictions of the daily lives of Mexico’s people reflect the influence of this early graphic style on his accomplished mature painting. In the present portrait, a sophisticated woman enrobed in a rich blue dress gazes languidly out of the composition, framed by an idealized pastel landscape; this work reflects not only X. Peña’s modern sensibilities towards color and form, but also the influence of the Italian Renaissance portraits he studied in his youth.

    VIEW LOT
    View Auction
    Share
  • (Top) Lot 82, Joaquín Torres-García, Constructive Composition Ban (I) & Structure (Ii) : A Pair. Estimate $10,000–15,000. Bottom) Lot 83, Joaquín Torres-García, Couple (I) & Homme Universel (Ii): A Pair. Estimate $8,000–10,000.
    These two pairs of finely executed drawings by Joaquín Torres-García are excellent examples of the artist’s compositional mastery, all executed during the pivotal 1930s. During these years, Torres-García was defining his lifelong artistic philosophy of Universal Constructivism: a plastic language in which symbols are ordered within a cardinal grid, synthetizing divergent influences ranging from the cold abstraction of De Stijl to the emotional sensibilities of Surrealism and the deep historic and spiritual resonance of pre-Columbian sculpture and architecture.

    VIEW LOT

    VIEW LOT
    View Auction
    Share
  • Lot 116, Emilio Pettoruti, Figuras para ballet, 1918. Estimate $10,000–15,000.
    Early in his career, while living in Italy, famed Argentine modernist Emilio Pettoruti supported his artistic endeavors by working as a scenic designer for local opera and ballet companies. This charming 1918 watercolor of three ballerinas in bright costumes, bathed the warm glow of footlights, was exhibited at the 1920 Venice Biennale.

    VIEW LOT
    View Auction
    Share
/
Close