Picasso’s Guitar Leads Christie’s Avant-Garde Sale for FIAC

Christie’s wants to remind us all that they’ve got a special FIAC auction coming up in mid-October. We’re all used to the international auctions in London to take advantage of the art collector presence around the Frieze fairs. Christie’s wants to see if something similar can happen around FIAC even though it is so close to Frieze. Featured in the Avant-Garde sale is a work by Pablo Picasso, Guitar (above) offered with a €2m low estimate:

Christie’s is pleased to present an exceptional work of art by Picasso in the upcoming Avant-Garde auction which will be organised on 17 October. Guitare, bouteille et compotier (€2,000,000-3,000,000) realised by the Spanish master in 1922 represents the peak of Picasso’s pursuit of purity and modernity which characterised his own contribution to the prevailing movement of the time: the Rappel à l’ordre.

Adrien Meyer, Co-Chairman, Impressionist and Modern art department: “Formerly in the personal collection of Marina Picasso, this monumental painting, the largest of the series, is a statement in Picasso’s oeuvre, re-exploring cubism and flirting with abstraction. It will be presented at auction for the very first time alongside the International Contemporary Art Fair (FIAC)”.

This movement was born at the end of First World War when most of the major artists, affected by the chaos of the war, returned to reason and order resulting in very modern compositions. This painting represents the new form of cubism Picasso reached after his long period of search for modernity.

The composition possesses a syncopated energy, delivered through a highly-sophisticated sense of order and rhythm, with two dimensional forms and colours overlapping to create a geometrically constructed image. At the center of the composition lies a guitar, a recurrent motif throughout Picasso’s work of the 1910s and 1920s; the guitar for Picasso was an emblematic symbol employed to recall his Spanish homeland.