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Contemporary Art

Warhol, Soulages & Shiraga: Highlights from a Week of Contemporary Sales in Paris

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Sotheby’s Paris presents a series of three Contemporary Art sales, including an exceptional group of works from the post-war and contemporary periods by Kazuo Shiraga, Nicolas de Staël, Zao Wou-Ki, Pierre Soulages, Jean Dubuffet and Andy Warhol. Click the image above to explore the highlights.

Past Auction
Art Contemporain Evening Sale
4 December 2019 | 7:00 PM CET | Paris
Past Auction
Art Contemporain Day Sale
5 December 2019 | 2:30 PM CET | Paris
Past Auction
Contemporary Art Online ǀ Paris
2–16 December 2019 | 3:00 PM CET | Paris

Warhol, Soulages & Shiraga: Highlights from a Week of Contemporary Sales in Paris

  • Kazuo Shiraga, Tentaisei Soushiko (The Winged Tiger), 1960
    Estimate €5,000,000–7,000,000
    Shiraga's art reflects a desire to merge body and matter, medium and artistic gesture. By laying the canvas directly on the ground and using his feet to spread thick layers of paint that formed stunning impastos, Shiraga induced a new relationship to the work.
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  • Pierre Soulages, Peinture 97 X 147 Cm, 2 Février 1954
    Estimate €2,500,000—3,500,000
    This museum quality piece is one of the largest of the 26 historic canvases that Soulages painted in 1954 and marked a brilliant start to the artist’s international career. That year, the well-known New York gallerist Sam Kootz commissioned ten large paintings from Soulages. The exhibition was a huge success and eight of the ten paintings, including Peinture 97 x 147 cm, février 1954, were then displayed at the Chicago Arts Club in December of the same year, before being dispersed to some of the largest private collections.
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  • Jean Dubuffet, Rue Boissy D'anglas (Au Boudin Mystique), 1962
    Estimate €2,000,000–3,000,000
    Jean Dubuffet paintings from the early 1960s feature scenes of city life and are teaming with figures, shop signs – often with humorous names – and buildings. Rue Boissy d'Anglas (au Boudin Mystique) epitomises the vibrant urban vitality of this iconic series, Paris Circus. The work was shown for the first time by the Daniel Cordier gallery before being acquired for the collection of Jean Planque, who kept it for many years.
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  • Jean-Paul Riopelle, Automne, 1954
    Estimate €1,300,000–1,800,000
    Since 1949, the artist had relentlessly worked the surface of his paintings with a knife, filling the space with small kaleidoscopic touches meant to render the profusion of the world. But in this work, executed in 1954, unity is preserved is an inventive and masterful way. Neither figurative nor representative of a specific place, the work masterfully captures the physical experience of nature, Riopelle's "only reference", which set him apart from his abstract expressionist contemporaries, and especially Pollock, with whom he however shared a lot of creative processes, like his famous dripping technique, still visible in the back of Automne.
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  • François Rouan, Tressage/Rose Et Gris, Firenze Bleu-Jaune
    Estimate €60,000–90,000
    Braiding is François Rouan’s trademark. His influences include Matisse’s Papiers collés and Fontana’s cut paintings. Made from different painted canvases, cut and woven together, each work is created from several paintings, creating a complex and rich surface. This picture comes from the Collection of Jacques Elbaz, a passionate connoisseur who started collecting art in the late 60s and became, 30 years later, one of the most prominent yet very discreet gallerists in Paris.
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  • Andy Warhol, Monkey (Children Paintings)
    Estimate €150,000–200,000
    Most of the Children Paintings, executed in 1983 and early 1984, were designed to be viewed by children. The pictures, most of them 11 by 14 inches and done in acrylic paints in bright luminous industrial colours, have been hung at a child's eye level, three or four feet above the floor.
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  • Sean Scully, 5.27.91
    Estimate €150,000–200,000
    In the 1990s Scully embarked on his now celebrated Wall of Light paintings. Taking inspiration from a visit to Mexico in the early 1980s, Scully began to replace the precise stripes of his earlier pieces with blocks of colour, building them with increasingly loose and feathered brushstrokes into irregular structures that imply both strength and impermanence.
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  • Sam Szafran, Atelier rue de Crusol, 1971
    Estimate €100,000–150,000
    Sam Szafran is considered as a unique creative genius and the master of charcoal and pastel work. His artistic universe consists in meticulously bringing out the life in the troubling bareness and modesty of his surroundings. This particular piece gathers all the important elements of typical of a Szafran work: the woodstove, the endless rows of pastels, the rocking-chair and the window ceiling are all present in an impressively large-sized composition. Atelier rue de Crusol comes from the Collection of Jacques Elbaz.
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  • Louise Nevelson, City Space Scape III
    Estimate €12,000–18,000
    City Space Scape III is an iconic piece from Nevelson’s emblematic series of works made from collected discarded objects—namely wooden furniture parts and woodcuts— which she assembled, painted entirely in black (with occasional forays into white or gold).
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  • Tony Cragg, Mean Average
    Estimate €30,000–50,000
    Mean average is a sculpture reminiscent of both a manmade and natural landscape. Here, Tony Cragg plays with the earthly tones and reliefs to convey the depth of the sculpture’s movements and warmth of its shapes.
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  • Raymond Mason, Grand Paysage Du Midi
    Estimate €20,000–30,000
    Raymond Mason’s earlier India inks depicting urban scenes and reliefs from the 50’s laid the foundation for all of his later work, most notably allowing him to move on and experiment with the bas reliefs. In 1958, Mason bought a house in the South of France, and although the influence of this purchase was not immediate, it gave a whole other dimension to his art and was at the origin of this warm and colorful “sculptor’s landscape”. This work is from the Collection of Jacques Elbaz.
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