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Christie’s Has $28m in Two Giacometti’s for New York

October 19, 2018 by Marion Maneker

In June, an example of Giacometti’s Cat was sold at Sotheby’s for $16.5m. The work originally came from the collection of Mrs. Sidney F. Brody whose 2010 sale did much to re-ignite the art market after the global financial crisis. During that sale, the cat was sold for $20.8m. Christie’s now brings another example of the cat from a famous collector, Johanna Lambert, with an estimate at $14m. Alongside the cat is another work by Giacometti that has never been at auction before. Femme assise from 1949-50 is also estimated at $14m.

In its November 11 Evening Sale of Impressionist and Modern Art, Christie’s will present two consummate examples by Alberto Giacometti: Femme assise, conceived in 1949-1950 and cast in 1957 ($14-18 million) from a Distinguished Private Collection, and Le Chat – “The Lambert Cat” – conceived in 1951 and cast in 1955 ($14-18 million), which was Formerly In The Johanna Lambert Collection. These works come to auction on the heels of Giacometti’s widely celebrated retrospective at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York.

Adrien Meyer, Co-Chairman, Impressionist and Modern Art, Christie’s, remarked: “Giacometti created Femme assise during 1949-1950, at the height of a breakthrough period of astonishing productivity. The subject is anchored to the ground on her throne-like chair, vulnerable yet not weak, echoing the grace of Egyptian antiquity. The present work has been in the same collection for decades and will be sold at auction for the first time ever; this cast is one of only three left in private hands.”

Olivier Camu, Deputy Chairman and International Director Impressionist & Modern Art, continued: “Alberto Giacometti had one of the most intense and penetrative gazes in all 20th century art; always fighting hard to capture the essence of reality around him. In this beautifully black patinated bronze cat – one of his rare animal sculptures, (conceived in 1951, cast in 1955 and which has never left the Lambert family since), Giacometti powerfully captures the feline nature of a domestic cat.”

Giacometti created Femme assise during 1949-1950, at the height of a breakthrough period of astonishing productivity, in which he brought forth definitive masterworks, one after another, in his newly attenuated, weightless, and visionary post-war mode. In three exhibitions, his first solo shows in nearly fifteen years—at the Pierre Matisse Gallery, New York, in 1948 and 1950, and at Galerie Maeght, Paris, in 1951—Giacometti unveiledL’homme au doigt, Homme qui marche, La Main, Trois hommes qui marchent, La Place II, La Cage, Le Chariot, L’homme qui chavire, La Clairière, and La Forêt, among other works.

Embodied within the unprecedented, radical, and extreme filiform configuration of Femme assise, thin and light, is the classic subject of the artist and his model—this full-length seated woman is nude. Giacometti could neither conceive nor sculpt her in any other way. Never before has a nude been so bare, exposed, and fleshless as she is here. Having been cast in bronze affords her figure some tensile strength; the original model—preserved today in the Fondation Alberto et Annette Giacometti, Paris—is a most precious, fragile object.

An early owner of the present Femme assise was a woman whose own life was an “astonishing adventure”—the dealer and gallerist Erica Brausen. Brausen became friends with Giacometti in the early 1930s, when they were neighbors in Montparnasse; after a stint in Majorca during the Spanish Civil War, during which she assisted numerous Jewish and socialist friends in escaping from Franco’s forces, she arrived penniless in London at the start of the Second World War. In 1947, she established the Hanover Gallery, which quickly rose to prominence as one of the most influential showcases of advanced art in Europe. Brausen gave Giacometti an exhibition in 1955 and thereafter served as his principal dealer in London.

Femme assise is being presented at auction for the very first time.

The present cast of Le Chat comes from the legendary Lambert Collection. A Belgian banking dynasty renowned for its eponymous Banque Lambert, the Lambert family has also become famed for its esteemed collection, with a love of art passed down through generations. The family’s collection was started in the late 19th Century by Baron Léon Lambert, who, with his wife, Baroness Lucie Lambert, the granddaughter of James de Rothschild, began to acquire and inherit a notable array of artworks from their families. This passion was continued by their son, Baron Henri Lambert and his Viennese wife, Baroness Johanna ‘Hansi’ Lambert. In 1956, she visited Giacometti’s studio in Paris. It was soon after this meeting that she purchased Le Chat, which has remained in the family’s collection ever since.

“In a burning building,” Alberto Giacometti declared, “I would save a cat before a Rembrandt”. There is good reason to believe the sculptor’s empathy for creatures great and small, especially on the evidence of the four sculptures that he created in 1951 of three different species of animal—two horses, a dog, and the cat offered here. As Valerie Fletcher has noted, all three were reputedly executed in plaster during a single day. Each of the sculptures is life-size or even larger—Le Chat has an exceptionally long neck. For lack of space in his cramped studio, Giacometti had to leave the huge Deux chevaux outdoors in his courtyard, where the plaster eventually broke down and dissolved in the rain. The smaller dog and cat were thankfully preserved and cast in bronze.

The plaster version of Alberto Giacometti’s Le Chat was first shown publicly in the artist’s premiere solo exhibition in Europe, at the Galerie Maeght, Paris, in 1951; it remains in the collection of the Fondation Alberto et Annette Giacometti, Paris. Casts from the bronze edition are located in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Fondation Marguerite et Aimé Maeght, Saint-Paul-de-Vence; the Museum Berggruen, Berlin; and the Stiftung Alberto Giacometti, Zürich.

Giacometti Chandelier Coming to Sothebys in London

January 26, 2018 by Marion Maneker

Sotheby’s has announced for its February 28th sale in London a chandelier by Alberto Giacometti estimated at between £6 and £8m. Given the rage for Diego Giacometti’s design objects and furniture in recent years, this work which combines elements of Alberto’s sculpture canon with a decorative object has the potential to raise design sector values:

Giacometti only produced such objects for friends, and the plaster model for Lustre avec femme, homme et oiseau was originally commissioned around 1949 by Louis Broder, a Swiss publisher based in Paris who specialised in producing printed editions of works by artists including Joan Miró and Pablo Picasso. Several years later Giacometti agreed to cast three bronzes from the plaster, of which the other two were acquired by the artist’s dealer Aimé Maeght and dealer Heinz Berggruen – who donated the plaster original to the Centre Georges Pompidou in 1983.

Sotheby’s Sells Jean Stein’s Art Collection

October 30, 2017 by Marion Maneker

It has been an extraordinary season for estates coming to market. Last week, Sotheby’s added to the cacophony of collector’s stories with the works once owned by Jean Stein, daughter of Hollywood legend Jules Stein, and major New York cultural figure until her suicide earlier this year:

Sotheby’s is honored to announce a series of sales celebrating Jean Stein – author, editor and oral historian, who chronicled the lives and work of cultural and political figures in New York, Paris, Hollywood and beyond. A cultural connector, who brought together creators in literature, theater and the visual arts, such as William Faulkner, Andy Warhol, Edie Sedgwick and others, Ms. Stein created a world that seamlessly combined her involvement in groundbreaking events in 20th century America with her intellectually curious tastes and sprawling network of friends and admirers.

Her property will be spread out among various sales. Next week, her eclectic but superior taste will be on display with works by Magritte, Richard Prince and Giacometti (above, left to right.)

  • Alberto Giacometti’s 1946 oil, Femme Assise (La Mère de l’Artiste) (estimate $4/6 million). Femme Assise was originally in Ms. Stein’s father’s collection, who had acquired it from Pierre Matisse in 1955. Ms. Stein was so enamored with the work that she, in her early twenties, purchased it from him just two years later, in 1957, for $750.
  • René Magritte’s La Voix du Sang, an enchanting gouache on paper executed in 1947 (estimate $600/900,000)
  • Ed Ruscha’s Light Leaks (estimate $1.5/2 million) was commissioned for Stein’s magazine, Grand Street, but she acquired it a year later.
  • Andy Warhol’s Flowers (estimate $150/200,000) was a gift from the artist and is dedicated on the overlap: “To Jean V Love Andy Warhol”
  • Richard Prince’s Untitled (Protest Painting), acquired from the Barbara Gladstone Gallery in New York (estimate $400/600,000)
  • John Baldessari’s Buffalo and Deer (With Void), exhibited at Sonnabend Gallery’s exhibition of John Baldessari: Laurence Sterne’s The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy (estimate $120/180,000)

Christie’s Has Giacometti & Rothko from Antoni Tapies Collection for Frieze

September 12, 2017 by Marion Maneker

Giacometti, Homme (Apollon), left, and Rothko’s Untitled (Orange and Yellow), right

Christie’s announces that it will sell works from the personal collection of Spanish artist Antoni Tàpies over the next year. A Giacometti work, Homme (Apollon) estimated at £800k-1.2m, will be featured in the up close sale of small scale works on October 3rd and a Rothko from 1969, Untitled (Orange and Yellow) estimated at £4-6m.

Tàpies first came to prominence in the late 1940s, working in a Surrealist idiom that shared much with the ideas of artists such as Paul Klee and his fellow Catalonian Joan Miró.  A scholarship to Paris in 1950-51 led to a meeting with Pablo Picasso. Informed by his interest in Zen philosophy as much as by the privation of Post-War Spain, Tàpies deliberately chose commonplace materials to infuse with new significance, invoking a transformative alchemy that prefigured the Italian movement of Arte Povera.  Following his first American exhibitions in 1953, he represented Spain at the Venice Biennale in 1958; a celebrated solo show at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum followed in 1962, and another toured Europe in 1973-74. In 1984, he created the Tàpies Foundation, which holds his archives and over 2000 of his works, and continues to this day to promote the interdisciplinary study of modern and contemporary art. Major retrospectives were held at the Jeu de Paume in Paris in 1994, at the Guggenheim in 1995, and at Madrid’s Reina Sofía Museum in 2000.

Masterworks from the Collection of Antoni Tàpies will be on view at Christie’s King Street from 29 September 2017 with highlights touring to Christie’s Rockefeller Center, New York (12 September), Hong Kong (18 to 21 September) and Madrid (19 to 20 September).

Sotheby’s Solo Imp-Mod Sale in London = £148.9m

June 22, 2017 by Marion Maneker

(Photo by Tristan Fewings/Getty Images for Sotheby’s)

This recap of Sotheby’s London Impressionist and Modern sales is available to AMMpro subscribers. The first month subscription is free. You can cancel AMMpro at any time.

Sotheby’s hybrid Evening sale of small works and Impressionist and Modern masterworks was an uneven success with some real surprises as the two sales tallied £127.9m for the Impressionist and Modern sale + £20.9m for Actual Size, the small works sale or £148.9m ($187.7m) combined. On a hammer basis, Actual Size failed to reach the low estimate while the Impressionist and Modern sale just reached the low estimate. The sell-through rates were 65% and 74% respectively for Actual Size and the Imp-Mod sale.

These numbers may reflect the state of estimates—especially when they are undergirded by actual buyers who took positions pre-sale with irrevocable bides—which are quite high and require a fair bit of work for the specialists to rally bidding interest. With estimates peaking, there are two likely outcomes for the category (Impressionist and Modern works, not small ones.) Continue Reading

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