Sotheby’s New York this November

THREE EXCEPTIONAL WORKS FROM THE COLLECTION OF HARRY FRANK GUGGENHEIM TO BE OFFERED AT SOTHEBY’S NOVEMBER MODERN EVENING AUCTION 

Offered during Sotheby’s Modern Evening Auction in New York will be Franz Marc’s Das Lange Gelbe Pferd (Est. $8–12 million), a striking example of Marc’s most iconic subject, completed on the eve of World War I; Alberto Giacometti’s Buste (Tête tranchante) (Diego), (Est. $10–15 million), a bust of Diego Giacometti acquired by Guggenheim soon after it was cast and lent to the artist’s first-ever museum exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum in 1955; and Paul Gauguin’s La Femme noire (Est. $700,000–$1 million), a key ceramic work showcasing the artist’s signature blend of earthy materials and bold, primal forms. It is one of the most important ceramics by the artist to ever appear at auction. 

 Franz Marc Das Lange Gelbe Pferd 1913 Estimate: $8,000,000 - $12,000,000 Franz Marc’s Das Lange Gelbe Pferd (The Long Yellow Horse) from 1913 presents a vivid interpretation of one of the artist’s most renowned subjects. Created on the eve of World War I, the painting captures Marc’s transition from German Romanticism and is one of his final works to depict his most famed subject, that of the horse, before he fully embraced abstraction. The artist's fascination with horses was deeply rooted in the work of Théodore Géricault, who often depicted horses alongside heroic cavalry officers, symbolizing courage and French nationalism. While Géricault's horses were typically shown in domesticated contexts, reflecting the Romantic ideal, in works like Das Lange Gelbe Pferd Marc omits riders and focuses on the horse’s intrinsic energy and spirituality, reflecting his belief in the superiority of animal over human essence. For Marc, these depictions were less about accurately portraying the animal and more about capturing its core spirit. He aimed to depict animals “from the inside,” believing they embodied a divine purity lost to humankind. As he reflected in 1915, “People with their lack of piety, especially men, never touched my true feelings. But animals, with their virginal sense of life, awakened all that was good in me.” Marc’s masterful use of vivid color also carries symbolic weight; “Blue is the male principle, astringent and spiritual. Yellow is the female principle, gentle, gay, and spiritual. Red is matter, brutal and heavy, and always to be opposed by the other two.” The bold palette here reflects Marc’s belief in the emotional resonance of color— the luminous paint and rich brushwork evoke a spiritual warmth, strength, and vitality suggesting hope amidst impending turmoil, as the world stood on the edge of war. 

Alberto Giacometti Buste (Tête tranchante) (Diego) Conceived in 1953 and cast by 1954 Est. $10,000,000 - $15,000,000 In 1914, Alberto Giacometti first utilized his brother Diego as a model; Diego would go on to become one of the great sculptor’s most significant subjects. By the 1950s, Diego had inspired numerous sculpturesthat bore a striking resemblance to both Alberto and Diego, lending these works a semi-autobiographical quality. For Immediate Release The sculptures featuring “knife-blade” heads, denoted by the thinness and frontal verticality of the face, are the most significant works ever created by Giacometti. As in his Grand tête mince, these iconic features are intensely encapsulated in the present work. Alberto Giacometti moved to Paris in 1920, where Diego became his trusted assistant, helping with essential aspects of his work. Over time, Alberto shifted from elongated post-war figures to more naturalistic sculptures, often working from memory. Buste (Tête tranchante) (Diego) exemplifies this shift, with its rough, expressive surfaces capturing both the artist’s hand and the complexity of human presence. Giacometti’s work continues to challenge viewers' perception, blurring the line between material and form, distance and intimacy. Soon after its conception and casting, Harry acquired Giacometti's Buste (Tête tranchante) (Diego) and lent it to an exhibition devoted to the artist’s work at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in 1955 – Giacometti’s first-ever museum exhibition, and also the Guggenheim’s first major exhibition dedicated to sculpture. It was a landmark moment for the artist’s lasting reputation in North America. 

Paul Gauguin La Femme noire 1889 Est. $700,000 - $1,000,000 Executed before the artist’s visit to Tahiti and after his tumultuous visit to Vincent van Gogh in Arles, this ceramic marks a turning point for Paul Gauguin. Gauguin visited the island of Martinique in late 1886 and by 1889, upon his return to Brittany, he created La Femme noire, a rare work in glazed stoneware that showcases the artist’s signature blending of cultural motifs from western and pre-colonial iconographies. The sculpture features a Martiniquais woman with a male head on her lap, blending references to Venus with allusions to biblical narratives, particularly the beheading of John the Baptist, as well as Gauguin’s own experience witnessing the beheading of notorious murderer Prado in Paris in late 1888. This work marks a significant shift from Gauguin’s earlier Judeo-Christian themes, instead utilizing a new, more personal symbolism whose complex motifs explore themes of death, regeneration, and spirituality. Gauguin's approach to ceramics is believed to have been inspired by French ceramicist Ernest Chaplet, who encouraged him to try the medium. He was also reacting to a revival in artisanal craft, which drove a generation to turn away from the mass-production of the French Industrial Revolution and focus on the importance of hand-facture in art and design. Coming to public sale for the first time, La Femme noire by Paul Gauguin is widely recognized as one of the most important surviving sculptures produced by the artist.

Sydell Miller Collection

Claude Monet, Nymphéas oil on canvas, circa 1914–17 Estimate on request 

Very few themes in the history of modern art are as celebrated as Claude Monet’s Nymphéas, and this exceptional example, is making its auction debut. The painting marks a radical shift in Monet’s approach to the subject that would come to be regarded as his magnum opus, and prefigures the monumental canvases housed in Paris’ Musée de l’Orangerie. Using a kaleidoscopic palette of jewel-toned purples and luscious blues, together with touches of white, pink and yellow to portray the flowers, Monet intentionally blurs the boundary between the real and the reflected within a close-cropped compositional format that marks an early, radical foray into abstraction - anticipating the origins of the large-scale gestural canvases of the Abstract Expressionists in New York thirty years later. Painted in the twilight of his life, Nymphéas can be understood as the accumulated effect of observation – not simply over the course of the sitting in which Monet painted it, but over decades spent spellbound by the beauty and artistic possibilities of his garden.

Pablo Picasso, La Statuaire oil on canvas, 1925 Estimate on request

La Statuaire depicts a seated female figure opposite a portrait bust placed atop a pedestal, the pair positioned in front of a set of French doors opening onto a balcony. As with all great works by Picasso, nothing is as simple as it may first appear. On one canvas, he brings together his wild explorations of Surrealist styles, monumentalthemed Neo-Classical imagery and the masterful elements of Cubism. In the archives of Galerie Paul Rosenberg, who first exhibited this work in 1926, a year after it was created, its title is recorded as La Femme sculpteur – alluding to the subject of the work being a female sculptor either working on an object of her own creation or examining a Classical sculpture for inspiration. This canvas is the first painting depicting a female artist in Picasso’s oeuvre. Since the year it was painted, La Statuaire has been a part of not only the most important exhibitions of Picasso’s painting, but has also belonged to some of the most distinguished collectors of modern art, including its original owner, Stephen Clark, one of the greatest American collectors of the early 20th century and a founding trustee of the Museum of Modern Art.

. Wassily Kandinsky, Weisses Oval (White Oval) oil on canvas, 1921 Estimate: $15 – 20 million

Last seen at auction more than fifty years ago, Weisses Oval (White Oval) is a celebration of Kandinsky’s lifelong fascination with the relationship between color and form. One of the final three paintings he made while living in Russia, it marks an important moment within the evolution of the artist’s singular style. Since its execution in 1921, Weisses Oval has been regarded as one of the formative examples of a pivotal period in Kandinsky’s career, when he was on the cusp of taking up his teaching post at the Bauhaus in Berlin. The painting served as a declaration of his transformative artistic vision and his belief in the inherent psychological effects of color when articulated within certain shapes. Exhibited in important early shows of Kandinsky’s work, it also featured prominently in his seminal retrospectives, including a 1952 show which traveled to Boston, San Francisco and Cleveland, among other leading American institutions. The work was acquired by New York’s Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in 1945, one of the most prestigious lines of provenance a work by Kandinsky can bear. The same year, it was exhibited in their memorial exhibition organized after the artist’s death in 1944 

Henry Moore, Reclining Mother and Child bronze, conceived and cast in 1975–76 Estimate: $8 – 12 million 8

This rare example of the Reclining Mother and Child represents the pinnacle of Henry Moore’s engagement with his two most celebrated motifs - the mother and child, and the reclining figure. His lifelong exploration of the universal themes was rooted in his childhood experiences and art historical precedents from Renaissance iconography to Pre-Columbian sculpture. This monumental, yet beguilingly tender, example suggests the profound first encounter between a mother and child, as the female figure beholds the small infant in awe. By reducing the pair to their most elemental forms, Moore underscores the fundamental humanity conveyed, in an emblem of hope and the permanent human bonds of support and compassion. Originally situated outside at her Palm Beach home, La Rêverie, the work was later brought indoors to her apartment at The Bristol, where Miller enjoyed living with the monumental sculpture and where the work could be experienced up close. 

Yves Klein, Relief Éponge bleu sans titre, (RE 28) dry pigment and synthetic resin, natural sponges and pebbles on panel, 1961 Estimate: $8 – 12 million 

Dating to the height of Yves Klein’s career, this extraordinary work encapsulates the philosophies and spirituality that sat at the heart of his output. An icon of Klein’s defiance of the existing boundaries of abstraction, and his pursuit of replicating the unique beauty of the natural world, the artist brings together velvety pigment and organic matter to create a composition reminiscent of the surface of the moon or the deep ocean floor, juxtaposing the void and the concrete, the material and immaterial. As immortalized in a series of iconic photographs, Klein used the seaside as studio for the creation of this work – made on the sunny beaches of Malibu – where he worked in proximity to the natural environment that inspired him.

Henri Matisse, Jeune fille en robe rose oil on canvas, October 1942 Estimate: $3 – 5 million

In 1942, the Second World War found Matisse ensconced in the sanctuary of his home and studio in Nice, where he remained steadfastly committed to his art, in order to stave off the feelings of hopelessness around the city’s occupation. Eschewing any reference to the outside world, intimate still-lifes and female portraits – such as this – offered a salve of beauty and hope amidst the turmoil. At the same time, the artist had miraculously recovered from a major surgery the previous year, channeling this optimism into hundreds of drawings replete with spontaneity and lyrical purity of line. He resolved to manifest the liberation achieved in his drawings within his paintings. Jeune fille en robe rose fully deploys this gestural freedom, with its joyous interplay of pigment, emphatic contours and the self-assured gaze of the radiant sitter. The work has never been at auction, having been acquired by Miller in 1998. MATISSE Henri Matisse, Jeune fille en robe rose oil on canvas, October 1942 Estimate: $3 – 5 million 

François-Xavier Lalanne, ‘Troupeau d’Eléphants dans les Arbres’ Table gilt bronze and glass, 2001 Estimate: $4 – 6 million 10