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Masterworks of the Avant-Garde at Sotheby’s

Giacomo Balla - Automobile in corsa

Giacomo Balla
Automobile in corsa
Painted in 1913.
Estimate $12/18 million

Francis Picabia - Volucelle II

Francis Picabia
Volucelle II
Ripolin on canvas
Painted in 1922.
Estimate $6/8 million

Masterworks of the Avant-Garde at Sotheby’s ‘Futur! Masterworks of the Avant-Garde’: Sotheby’s Impressionist & Modern Art Sale in New York on 6 November 2013 will open with a private collection of seminal works created between 1910 and 1930.]]>

September 18th, 2013, source: Sotheby’s

The auction features museum-quality examples by artists including Giacomo Balla, Joan Miró, Francis Picabia, Pablo Picasso and Juan Gris. Together, these works tell a compelling story of the European avant-garde, from Cubism and Futurism, through Dada, Surrealism and Abstraction. The fourteen pictures, estimated to sell for $67.2/95.1 million, represent perhaps the finest group of Modernist masterpieces to appear at auction since Sotheby’s landmark sale of the Malbin Collection in 1990.

A thundering vortex of white, gray and black, Giacomo Balla’s dynamic “Automobile in corsa” (estimate $12/18 million) exemplifies Futurist painting at its most thrilling. “Universal dynamism must be rendered in painting as a dynamic sensation,” was one of the principles of the Futurist Manifesto, and the present picture offers us the sensation of a speeding car as it appears to dematerialize while accelerating through space.

Executed in 1925, Joan Miró‘s “Bonheur d’aimer ma brune” (estimate $9/12 million) dates from the key period in Miró’s oeuvre. It belongs to a series Miró began creating in 1925 known as “poempaintings” in which poetic allusions, graphic signs, and painterly expression were interlaced on canvas. “Tabac, journal et bouteille de vin rosé” (estimate $7/10 million) epitomizes the Synthetic Cubist idiom Juan Gris developed with Picasso and Braque in the years leading up to World War I. “Volucelle II” by Francis Picabia is one of a series of optical works including “Optophone I” and “Conversation II” which stem from Picabia’s growing interest in optical games and geometric abstraction.

Sotheby’s will debut the collection in its London galleries from 12 – 17 October, before returning to New York for exhibition in its York Avenue galleries beginning 1 November. Highlights will also be shown in Hong Kong and Moscow this autumn.

Related content

Joan Miró’s ‘Peinture (Étoile Bleue)’ at Sotheby’s (news, May 2012)

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Masterworks of the Avant-Garde at Sotheby's