Paris – Christie’s presents two contemporary art sales – a live sale on 6 Decemberand anonline sale from 28 November to 8 December. The two sales have a global estimate of €8,500,000 – 12,300,000. They will feature a carefully curated selection of sixty artworks for the live sale and one hundred and fifty lots for the online sale, including a large set of pieces from a prestigious French private collection.
Estimate: €350,000 – 550,000
Both auctions will present an eclectic selection of artworks by artists from all over the world: abstract paintings by Serge Poliakoff, Georges Mathieu, Josef Šíma and Zao Wou-ki, photographs by Richard Avedon, Peter Beard and Thomas Ruff, figurative paintings by Sam Szafran, Robert Combas and David Hockney, and sculptures by Germaine Richier, César and Yue Minjun, as well as a hyperrealistic painting by Richard Estes. This collection of artworks thus spans a broad artistic period, from the post-war years to the present day.
The live sale will shine a light on two unique paintings by Pierre Soulages, produced five decades apart: Peinture 54 x 81 cm, 1951 (estimate: €600,000 – 800,000) and Peinture 117 x 130 cm, 20 mai 2007 (estimate: €500,000 – 700,000). The artworks – both from private collections – will go under the hammer for the first time.
Another remarkable lot in the sale is Nos châteaux peu denses by Jean Dubuffet (estimate: €500,000 – 700,000). Painted in 1957, it was presented at the artist’s exhibitions at the Galerie Beyeler in 1965, and in the 1966 retrospective organised by the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis.
The painting Sombre croyance by Georges Mathieu (1987) is a fine example of Lyrical Abstraction. In Europe, the artist was a pioneering figurehead of this style, based on movements, emotion and spontaneity as opposed to geometric abstraction (estimate: €200,000 – 300,000).
The sale also features several works by female artists, including Maria Helena Vieira da Silva, with Construction coming from a European collection (estimate: €200,000 – 300,000), a sculpture by Germaine Richier,an abstract landscape by Etel Adnan (estimate: €60,000 – 80,000) as well as a painting by Anna-Eva Bergman depicting a cosmic landscape (estimate: €40,000 – 60,000).
A Lifetime Collection
The online sale will feature one hundred and fifty lots, combining the French art scene – with works by Bernard Frize, Georges Mathieu, Serge Poliakoff, César and Martial Raysse – and international artists such as Damien Hirst, Chiharu Shiota, Fernando Botero and Qiu Shihua.
Showcasing the prestigious collection of a great Parisian art enthusiast, this sizeable selection – dubbed A lifetime Collection – makes up half the sale, bringing together works by Richard Lindner, Robert Combas, Sol Lewitt and David Hockney.
The highlight of the collection is a piece by Richard Lindner, The Brothers (Homage to Nuremberg). The painting was displayed during his retrospective at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago in 1977 (estimate: €100,000 – 150,000).
Estimate: €100,000 – 150,000
The explosive, irreverent work of Robert Combas is presented here in the painting Pendant son voyage en Corse, Miro est poursuivi par les frères d’Angelina (Ange Leccia), (estimate: €80,000 – 120,000). Also featured is Sol LeWitt, a key figure in Minimalist and Conceptual art. The artist started producing works in the 1990s with his signature fluid brushstrokes; presented in this sale will be a very fine gouache on paper dated 2003 from the emblematic Horizontal Brushstrokes series (estimate: €60,000 – 80,000).
A decade later in the United Kingdom, David Hockney, one of the most famous and prolific artists of the 20th and 21st centuries, was creating Inside It Opens Up As Well (estimate: €50,000 – 70,000), a photographic drawing printed on paper mounted on Dibond. The piece, produced in 2018, bears the number three of an edition of twenty-five.
The sale will also present artworks from other private collections, such as a piece by Jean-Paul Riopelle from 1956, Sans titre (estimate: €40,000 – 60,000), shown at an exhibition dedicated to the artist at the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris in 1972 and a sculpture by Chiharu Shiota, State of being (estimate: €35,000 – 55,000).
