LONDON (REUTERS).- Christie's auctioneers will offer a portrait by Lucian Freud which it described as "seminal" in the career of the British artist at a sale in London on June 28."Woman Smiling," painted in 1958/9, is the only single portrait Freud made of Suzy Boyt, the woman who mothered five of his children. The painting, identified by experts as the turning point in the 88-year-old artist's career from flatness to thick brush strokes and swathes of impasto, is expected to fetch 3.5-4.5 million pounds ($4.5-7.2 million). The work will be shown at an exhibition in Moscow on April 2 and 3 which the auctioneer said would be the first "significant" exhibition of works by Freud in Russia. It may also be targeting wealthy Russian art collectors who, along with the Chinese, have helped drive art market prices sharply higher in recent years. It is widely reported, but not officially confirmed, that Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich bought another work by Freud, "Benefits Supervisor Sleeping," for $33.6 million in New York in 2008, a world record auction price for a living artist.
Mickey Mouse Poster Brings $35,000+ to Lead Movie Poster Event at Heritage Auctions. DALLAS, TX.- A stunning never-before-auctioned 1932 Mickey Mouse three sheet stock poster from United Artists, scarcely four years removed from Mickey's creation by Walt Disney, brought $35,850 from a determined bidder on Saturday, March 26, to lead Heritage Auctions' $1,500,950 Signature(r) Vintage Movie Poster Auction. "Overall we're very pleased with the results," said Grey Smith, Director of Vintage Movie Posters at Heritage. "We've seen prices realized on the top examples steadily rising over the last few months and holding strong the deeper you go into the catalog." The auction realized a more than 86% sell through rate by value on 1,258 lots with 1,249 bidders competing for the offerings.
The Contemporary Jewish Museum Presents Charlotte Salomon: Life? or Theatre?SAN FRANCISCO, CA.- In the early years of World War II, Charlotte Salomon, a 23-year-old Jewish artist from Berlin, fled to the south of France where she shut herself into a hotel room and spent two years feverishly painting the history of her life. She called it Life? or Theatre?: A Play With Music, an astounding body of over 1300 powerfully drawn and expressively colored gouache paintings conceived as a sort of autobiographical operetta on paper. On one numbered page after another, Salomon used an inventive mixture of images, dialogue, commentary and musical cues to tell a compelling coming-of-age story set amidst family suicides and increasing Nazi oppression. This singular creation would be Salomon’s only major work. Just one year after she completed Life? or Theatre?, the pregnant 26-year-old was transported to Auschwitz and killed.
No comments:
Post a Comment