Friday, October 30, 2015

Sotheby's November 4- 5 2015: The Collection of A. Alfred Taubman - Impressionist & Modern Art


A dedicated evening auction of property from the Estate of A. Alfred Taubman will be led by a selection of rare examples of Impressionist & Modern Art, foremost among them



Amedeo Modigliani’s outstanding Paulette Jourdain,



Pablo Picasso’s exceptional Femme assise sur une chaise,



and an important pastel by Edgar Degas, Danseuses en blanc.

WILLEM DE KOONING

Estimate   25,000,00035,000,000


This distinguished collection also features stunning paintings and sculptures from the most influential figures in Contemporary and American Art: from Willem de Kooning, Mark Rothko, and Jackson Pollock, to Jasper Johns, Frank Stella, and Roy Lichtenstein, the Contemporary works in the Taubman Collection chart the course of artistic innovation in the 20th century.


MARK ROTHKO

Estimate   20,000,00030,000,000

 



Spanning three centuries, the architecture of the human form is among the themes that emerge within the A. Alfred Taubman collection of Modern and Contemporary art.  The works in this sale also show the collector’s focus on exquisite draughtsmanship from some of the greatest Modern masters of line: Picasso, Matisse, Schiele, Miró, Klimt, Degas, and Manet.

Whether a large scale oil by Paul Gauguin or a sinuous Salvador Dalí nude line drawing on sandpaper, the superlative quality of the works offered transcends any one style or time period, with examples from a delicate pastel from 1856 by van Gogh's idol, Jean-François Millet, to a lushly textured Wayne Thiebaud oil just painted in 2014.  Examples of the radical shifts in art history taking place in the 1910's make for particularly fascinating comparisons and contrasts.



Vincent van Gogh

JARDIN PUBLIC À ARLES

Estimate

1,800,0002,500,000


From Max Pechstein's bold Expressionist figures to Pierre Bonnard's brightly colored Nabis canvas of women, from Giocomo Balla's Italian Futurism to Alexander Rodchenko’s Suprematism, from Pablo Picasso's Cubism to an array of works by Egon Schiele and Gustav Klimt, many works represent the best and brightest of this most explosive decade in the history of modern art, when figuration gave way to abstraction.

Modernism seamlessly transitions to Abstraction with highlights including Alexander Calder’s elegant and delicate standing mobile White Discs on the Pyramid, John Chamberlain’s bright, powerful sculpture Captain Cooke and Mark Di Suvero’s outdoor work Pasta.


Themes of figuration and form reveal themselves in the Contemporary works highlighted by

Tom Wesselmann’s Great American nude, No 61,

Antony Gormley’s Measure III

and the deep and impressive collection of Robert Graham sculptures.