Sotheby’s HongKong 9th March to 3rd April Panorama: A New Perspective – a selling exhibition featuring over 40 paintings and sculptures by the foremostnamesinImpressionist,Modernand Contemporaryart – willopentothepublic from 29th March to 3rd April , alongside Sotheby’s Spring2018 HongKong SaleSeries. Theshowwillbeledby four powerful works by Pablo Picasso, spanning 50 years of the artist’s extraordinary career and all comingdirectfromthecollectionoftheartist’sgrand - daughter,MarinaPicasso.Thesewillbe presented intandemwith othermajorworksbyestablishedm asterssucha s Salvador Dalí , Marc Chagall, Pierre Bonnard , Willem de Kooning, Alexander Calder and Gerhard Richter. Together,the group of works to be exhibited carries a total value in excess of HK$ 1.6 billion / US$ 200 million. HelenaNewman,Co - HeadofImpressionist&ModernArtWorldwide,said: “ Current demandfor Picasso’s work is extraordinarily strong, as seen most recently in London when our sale of
Pablo Picasso’s Femme au béret et à la robe quadrillée (Marie-Thérèse Walter)
a fabulous 1937 painting of Marie - Thérèse Walter dominated a hugely successful fortnight for the artist."
Marina Picasso commented: “ I’m very excited to be showing a select group of works from my collection in Asia, an area of the world with which I’m passionately engaged, both at a personal level 3 and via my charitable activities. My grand - father’s work has enjoyed a global appreciation for many years now, and I ’m sure he would have been delighted by the idea that his legacy is currently the subject of such particular interest in Asia .”
FOUR WORKS FROM THE COLLECTION OF MARINA PICASSO
Pablo Picasso Homme à la pipe assis et amour signed Picasso upper left; dated 17 - 2 - 1969 on the reverse oil on canvas 195.5 by 96.5 cm.
Conceived on a grand scale and painted with extraordinary energy, Homme à la pipe assis et amour is a superb example of the creative force which characterised Picasso’s late years. This work stands as a defiant tribute to the heroic figure of the matador, a life - long obsession of Picasso’s and one of the most important themes throughout his career. The matador was one of a cast of characters deployed by the artist as a means of projecting different aspects of his own identity. By including the figure of Cupid, Picasso emphasises the matador’s potency, at a time in his life when he had begun to contemp late his own mortalilty . Large - scale late paintings by the artist, featuring matadors, rarely come to the market and are highly sought after. The last work of comparable scale and quality to be offered at auction was
Mousquetaire à la pipe, sold by Sotheby’s in New York for $30.1 million in 2013.
Pablo Picasso Enfant jouant, Claude, 1952 dated 15.4.52. on the reverse oil on canvas 65 by 54 cm. An extraordinary work that has ne ver been seen in public before and is totally fresh to the market, this painting of Picasso’s son, Claude, remained in the artist’s collection until his death in 1973 and then passed into the collection of his granddaughter, Marina Picasso. Born in 1947 to Picasso and his then lover, Françoise Gilot, Claude would have bee n five years old when this monochrome painting was produced. Picasso often drew or painted Claude and his younger sister Paloma, playing or reading together at home in Vallauris in the South of France. These tender, intimate portraits of his children are s ome of the most expressively powerful works that Picasso made during the 1950s. A painting of Paloma, dated 1954, was recently offered at auction, where it double d its pre - sale low estimate.
Pablo Picasso Femme à la robe verte (Femme Fleur) , 1946 o il on panel 101 by 81.5 cm.
Painted in 1946, Femme à la robe (Femme Fleur) belongs to a period of Picasso’s work characterised by an increasing energy and artistic freedom after the war years. The work depicts Françoise Gilot who Picasso met in 1943, during his tumultuous relationship with Dora Maar. They settled in the south of France in the year this painting was produced, and the period that followed was marked by great personal fulfilment, during which Picasso was devoted to his family, including the couple’s two children, Claude and Paloma.
Pablo Picasso Tête (Nature morte à la guitare) , 1927 - 28 oil on canvas 60 by 73 cm.
Picasso was an enormously rich and varied artist, experimenting, over the course of his long career, with a host of different painterly styles, and quickly absorbing the artistic influences of those around him. While many of his ‘styles’ were unique entirely to him, others – such as cubism, classicism and surrealism - were more obviously connected to artistic and literary movements of the moment. First fully articulated in French writer and poet André Breton’s Surrealist manifesto of 1924, the concept of Surrealism evolves ar ound irrational connections, chaos, surprise, and the heightened reality of dreams. Although Picasso never officially joined the Surrealist movement, Tête , painted between 1927 and 1928, dates from that first moment when his work begins to show signs of th e influence of the French surrealist thinkers around him. Here, a fluid surrealist line and strong concentrated imagery are set against a schematic background that harks back to Cubism. Major oils from Picasso’s Surrealist period are exceedingly rare and much sought - after on the market, as witnessed by the strong price achieved in London this season when
Figure ,of1930,made$11m against an estimate of $4 - 7m.
FURTHER HIGHLIGHTS
Salvador Dalí Las Llamas, llaman signed, dated and dedicated pour Monsieur et Madame Audrey Leray W. Berdeau affectueusement
Willem de Kooning Untitled oil on canvas 137.1 by 152.4 cm. Executed in 1977.
Marc Chagall Le cirque - l'écuyèresigned Marc Chagall and dated 1957 lower right oil on canvas 150.8 by 99.7 cm.
Gerhard Richter Karmin signed, dated 1994 and numbered 810 - 1 on the reverse oil on canvas 200 by 200 cm.
Pierre Bonnard Marthe et son chien assise devant une table signed oil on canvas 43.3 by 44.2 cm Executed circa 1930.
Josef Albers Study for Homage to the Square signedwiththeartist’smonogramanddated 72 ; stamped, titledand variouslyinscribedonthe reverse oil on Masonite 60.9 by 60.9 cm.
