The London gallery of Milanese art dealers Matteo Lampertico and Luca
Gracis, aptly named M & L Fine Art, is showing a collection of works by Max Ernst that span his career across two continents. The exhibition opens in London on October 1st with a lecture by Professor Dawn Adès, an authority on Surrealism, who will discuss Max Ernst and his legacy.

That follows a private view held the evening before . Here’s part of the release from M & L:

M&L Fine Art presents a survey exhibition dedicated to Max Ernst (1891 – 1976), a giant of twentieth-century art and leading Surrealist artist. The show features fifteen works from an exceptional private collection, covering Ernst’s entire career and spanning from 1925 to 1971. The works were acquired largely in the1950s and 1960s by a prominent Italian collector and close friend of the artist. Characterized by its personal, domestic and intimate character, this body of works elucidates Ernst’s belief that the artist should be a diver in subterranean depths, probing the mysteries of the unconscious and the imagination.
Unseen in public for two decades, the works on display come from key periods of Max Ernst’s career and have appeared in the some of the most important exhibitions of the artist’s work, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York and Art Institute Chicago exhibitions, 1961; Palazzo Grassi, Venice, 1966; and Haus der Kunst Munich, 1979. The works’ exceptional provenance, linked to the major galleries and dealers of Ernst, Alexander Iolas and Arturo Schwarz, further underlines the scope and breadth of the collection.

This show includes works that encompass the full range of different techniques investigated by the artist, including oil on canvas and panel, frottage, collage, grattage, drawing and gesso. With this show, M&L Fine Art aims to not only represent the life and work of the artist, but also to transmit the intimate vision of the collector who assembled this significant group of works reflecting every aspect of the artist’s career. 

Ambroise Vollard was one of the great art dealers of the 20th Century. He died in a car crash shortly before World War II and the 10,000 works of art stored in his Parisian home were said to contain, “Discoveries everywhere, valuable things, never sold nor noted, discoveries under piles of canvases, priceless, surpassing all calculation…”

Among Vollard’s many legacies was a passion for print-making. An early believer in the possibilities of color lithography, Vollard worked with master printer Auguste Clot to make an album of color lithographs with artists he selected and funded. His second print project was Les Peintres-Graveurs, an edition of 100 which included a rare print of Edvard Munch’s Angst, above.

No example of the intact portfolio was known to exist until Sotheby’s recently discovered one, acquired by a French family in the 1920s, that will be offered at auction in London this September, with an estimate of £500,000 to £1,000,000.

Here’s part of Sotheby’s release on the portfolio:

Issued in Paris in 1896, his first ever multi-artist portfolio Les Peintres-Graveurs comprises 22 prints by the likes of Pierre Bonnard, Odilon Redon, Théo van Rysselberghe, Auguste Renoir, and Edouard Vuillard. A champion of unrecognised artists, Vollard took chances on international and young talent.

At the heart of his portfolio is an exceptional impression of one of Edvard Munch’s most famous motifs, Angst (or Le Soir). Produced in collaboration with the eminent Parisian printmaker Auguste Clot, the subject was the first color lithograph ever produced by Munch, who went on to become one of history’s most prolific and successful printmakers.

This complete example of Les Peintures-Graveurs comes to the market after its rediscovery in a private European collection. The present album was purchased in 1920’s Paris by the current owner’s family and has remained in their collection since, never before exhibited publicly. Initially produced in an edition of 100, its sale on September 17 will mark the first time the complete portfolio has ever appeared at auction. Even in Vollard’s lifetime, albums were split and prints were sold individually. To date, no institution or private collector has been able to obtain the full album.

A complete list of the portfolio’s contents:

Christie’s has announced a large collection from Britain’s Jeremy Lancaster will be featured in a single-owner sale of works by British Moderns, a category that has gone from strength to strength in recent years as collections from notable enthusiasts like David Bowie have pushed the market forward.

Parallel to that trend has been the strong prices achieved for works by Howard Hodgkin. Lancaster’s collection is particularly deep with Hodgkin’s work. Christie’s co-Head of Post-War and Contemporary Art, Katherine Arnold describes Lancaster’s Hodgkin holdings as “a near complete retrospective survey of Howard Hodgkin’s painting, spanning seven decades.”

Christie’s Frieze Week programme will be launched with a dedicated auction of the remarkable private collection of Jeremy Lancaster on 1 October 2019. A chorus of vivid colour, radical form and brilliant innovation, the collection showcases some of the greatest achievements in post-war British painting, complemented by a stellar selection of European and American works.

Many of the works were acquired through the gallery of Leslie Waddington, and a number have passed through notable collections such as Herbert Read, E. J. Power and Charles Saatchi. Such distinguished provenance is testament not only to a shared championship of the post-war British art scene, but also to the exchange with the European and American avant-gardes in which Waddington and his clients played such a vital role. Several of the works have been on long-term loan to museum collections and Jeremy Lancaster was a trustee at Birmingham’s Ikon Gallery of contemporary art and the Barber Institute of Fine Arts.

A frequent traveller with a keen appetite for art and knowledge, Jeremy Lancaster was in part influenced by the seminal exhibition ‘A New Spirit in Painting’. Undoubtedly a profound moment in the landscape of contemporary art it was staged by London’s Royal Academy of Arts in 1981. The direction of his collecting taste follows a similar dedication to transatlantic discourse in paintings from Frank Auerbach and Howard Hodgkin to Philip Guston, Robert Ryman and Josef Albers.

At the heart of The Jeremy Lancaster Collection is a group of paintings by Howard Hodgkin, ranging from the early figurative composition Tea Party in America (1948, estimate: £50,000-70,000), influenced by the
artist’s close friendship with Patrick Caulfield, to the distilled, concentrated beauty of mature works like Bombay Sunset (1972-73, estimate: £500,000-700,000, illustrated, page three), Lawson, Underwood & Sleep (1977-80, estimate: £400,000-600,000) and Flowerpiece (2004-05, estimate: £400,000- 600,000). He also acquired two paintings by Frank Auerbach, created 12 years apart but both depicting his lover Stella West, Head of E. O. W. (1955, estimate: £800,000-1,200,000, illustrated, page four) and Head of E. O. W. I (1967, estimate: £300,000-500,000). Two iconic paintings by Philip Guston are a highlight of the collection, including the large-scale Language I (1973, estimate: £1,500,000-2,000,000, illustrated, page one), in which individual objects – bricks, hobnailed boots, easel, sun – are presented like a hieroglyphic code to be deciphered. Robert Ryman, Andy Warhol, Lucian Freud, David Hockney and R. B. Kitaj are further artists from ‘A New Spirit in Painting’ that are represented in the collection.

As Bridget Riley celebrates a major retrospective at The Hayward Gallery this October, another highlight of the Jeremy Lancaster Collection is the majestic ‘curve painting’, Orphean Elegy 7 (1979, estimate: £1,500,000-2,000,000, illustrated above). The work demonstrates the power which Britain’s greatest living abstract artist conjures from her analytical approach to colour.

Jussi Pylkkännen, Global President, Christie’s: “The Jeremy Lancaster Collection will be a landmark sale held at the height of London’s Frieze season when the international collecting community convenes in London in October. They will witness a beautifully curated collection charting the progress of modernism across Britain, Continental Europe and America from 1920 to 2005. Jeremy Lancaster collected with a strong personal taste as well as a keen eye for paintings. These 54 works have never been publicly exhibited together before. It promises to be a revelatory show and a spirited night in the saleroom.”

Katharine Arnold, Co-Head, Post-War and Contemporary Art, Europe: “Assembled over the course of Jeremy Lancaster’s lifetime, his collection represents a private passion for art. Initially inspired by British art of his time, the collection grew to include American and modern European painters reflecting his far-reaching interests and spirit of inquiry. He was known by his friends and family as a committed exhibition goer and bibliophile, keen to keep up with new evolutions in art and history. The Royal Academy of Arts exhibition, ‘A New Spirit in Painting’ seemed to inspire a transatlantic dialogue within the collection with works ranging from Frank Auerbach and Howard Hodgkin, to Philip Guston, Robert
Ryman and Josef Albers. Other highlights include an exceptional 1979 Bridget Riley purchased in 1986. Being an intensely private individual, much of the collection has remained unknown to the public save for a handful of works generously lent from his collection to major British institutions including the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge and Birmingham City Museum and Art Gallery. Having been a friend and client of the late Leslie Waddington, the Jeremy Lancaster collection shares similarities with the great dealer’s own personal collection sold at Christie’s in 2016 and many of the works hold the illustrious provenance of the great critic Herbert Read, the private collections of Leslie Waddington, Charles Saatchi and E.J. (Ted) Power.”

Josef Albers

The Jeremy Lancaster Collection includes three important paintings by Josef Albers dating from 1939-1962. Painted in 1939, Josef Albers’ Construction in Red-Black-Blue (estimate: £180,000-220,000) is a rare, early work that testifies to the artist’s lifelong fascination with chromatic relations which were to develop into his celebrated series Homage to the Square. Study to “Affectionate” (Homage to the Square) (1954, estimate: £150,000-200,000) is a work which prefigures the painting of the same name now held in the collection of the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris. In Study for Homage to the Square: Red Tetrachord (1962, estimate: £600,000- 800,000, illustrated page three) the reds swell and combine hypnotically. The tetrachord of the title refers to a musical progression of four notes, here represented by the four tones of red.

Pablo Picasso

Originally conceived in 1958, Pablo Picasso’s playful bronze sculpture Le Jeune homme (estimate: £900,000-1,200,000) developed from the famed series of sculptural bathers the artist created during the mid-1950s, inspired by his experiences of life on the Mediterranean coast of France. As with these humorous, archetypal characters, the figure of the young man was originally constructed as a wooden assemblage, before being cast in a small edition of two bronzes by the artist.

Still Life

European still life paintings include Giorgio Morandi’s Natura morta (1946, estimate: £400,000- 600,000), Picasso’s intimate tribute to his studio L’Atelier (1958, estimate: £400,000-600,000), and Nicolas de Staël’s near-abstract Nature Morte au Fond Jaune (1952, estimate: £700,000-1,000,000). Further works include Georges Braque’s Compotier, citron et pipe (1920, estimate: £150,000-250,000), Patrick Caulfield’s Unfinished painting (1978, estimate: £150,000-250,000) and William Scott’s White and Black Pot on White Table (1955, estimate: £100,000-150,000).

The market for Zao Wou-ki’s art has been rapidly increasing over the last few years. But no sign of his market’s rise is more telling than the show of his work at Gagosian Gallery just announced for September 9th.

Here’s the press release from Gagosian:

Gagosian is pleased to present a series of paintings by the Chinese-born French artist Zao Wou-Ki (1920–2013). The exhibition pays homage to the close, enduring friendship between Zao Wou-Ki and the Chinese-American architect I. M. Pei (1917–2019).

Throughout his career, Zao Wou-Ki merged Eastern and Western aesthetic traditions in his paintings, retaining technical elements of Chinese painting styles while embracing European Modernism. As a student in China, he studied ink drawings and classical Eastern painting. In Paris, where he moved in 1948, he continued exploring Impressionism and Expressionism. Inspired by Paul Klee and his appreciation of Eastern art, Zao Wou-Ki began to seriously contemplate nature in his own work, and to incorporate traditional Chinese calligraphy into his evolving artistic language.

The earliest works in this exhibition, made in 1979 and 1980, were commissioned by Pei and served as prototypes for a series of ink works that followed. The remaining seven paintings on view—in India ink on paper mounted on canvas, and from 2006—employ the same medium, with their free-flowing brushstrokes applied in a subtle yet concentrated method.

Zao Wou-Ki’s gestures in these ink works are rapid, appearing spontaneous yet attesting to his masterful control of mark making. The entire series is untitled, removing the interplay between brushstrokes and specific ideas. Zao Wou-Ki created these works by laying the absorbent white paper flat on the floor and painting from above, allowing the thin black ink to drop, with controlled use of gravity, onto its support, and in doing so, forming a link between Abstract Expressionism and traditions of Chinese ink painting and calligraphy. In one work, gestures progress vertically across the canvas, underscoring the tenacity of each stroke, while in another the ink is concentrated toward the right side before bursting across the canvas in a flurry of vertical lines. Zao Wou-Ki’s compositions present a delicate balance, harboring moments of risk within an exploration of abstraction, exploding onto the paper at different velocities as if tracing the artist’s innermost impulses and desires.

Zao Wou-Ki was born in Beijing, China, in 1920 and died in Nyon, Switzerland, in 2013. Collections include the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC; Tate Modern, London; and Centre Pompidou, Paris. Recent exhibitions include Fondation Pierre Gianadda, Martigny, Switzerland (2015–16); No Limits (organized by Colby College Museum of Art), Asia Society Museum, New York (2016–17; traveled to Colby College Museum of Art, Waterville, ME, in 2017); Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris (2016); Musée Cernuschi, Paris (2016); and L’espace est silence, Musée d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris (2018–19). Zao Wou-Ki was awarded the Praemium Imperiale Prize for Painting in 1994. In 1993, he was named a Commandeur de la Légion d’Honneur, and he was made Grand Officier de l’Ordre de la Légion d’Honneur in 2006 by the French President Jacques Chirac. He was elected Member of l’Académie des Beaux-Arts in 2002.