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New York – Following a record breaking
year for the category, Christie’s Latin American Sale
will continue the momentum by staging its largest sale yet
on May 28-29 in New York, expected to realize in excess of
$30 million. With more than 320 paintings and sculptures included
in the two-day auction, the sale is particularly strong covering
Mexican and Cuban schools, and major artists including, Diego
Rivera, Rufino Tamayo, Fernando Botero, Leonora Carrington,
Claudio Bravo, Alfredo Ramos Martínez, Mario Carreño
and others.
“We are proud to present our most comprehensive and
most valuable Latin American Sale to date. With over 145 artists
and 14 countries represented, this season features a stellar
selection across various categories including colonial, modernist,
surrealist and contemporary works of art — many never
offered before at auction,” commented Virgilio
Garza, Head of Latin American.
Leading this season’s sale is Rufino Tamayo’s
Trovador (The Troubadour), 1945, an iconic work by
the artist combining the ideal subject matter of the guitarist
with the artist’s signature brilliant palette and scale
(estimate: $2-3 million). Trovador has the potential
to break the current world auction record for Tamayo, which
was set at Christie’s in 1993 with the 1955 painting,
America (Mural).
In the 1946 ARTnews review of Trovador at
the Valentine Gallery in New York, the critic placed Tamayo
at the height of his powers and hails the work’s “unbelievable
color and supreme intensity of focus” and further adds
that the magnificent painting “could successfully hang
alongside Picasso’s Three Musicians.”
Trovador (The Troubadour) was acquired by the legendary
American collector Stephen C. Clarke who gifted it to the
present owner 60 years ago. Rarely exhibited and known to
the general public only through a black and white illustration
in Robert Goldwater’s monograph, Trovador has
not been seen in the context of other Tamayo works in more
than 40 years.
Painted in 1956, the year before his death, Diego Rivera’s
Niño soviético depicts a Soviet boy
pulling a sleigh (estimate: $500,000-700,000). Upon his return
from a visit to the Soviet Union where he had received medical
treatment for cancer, Rivera painted a series of children’s
portraits of campesinos and Soviet children. This
tender and expressive portrait exudes the warmth and innocence
of the young boy, bundled in a hat, mittens and red scarf.
Representing the surrealist school is a highly detailed work
by Leonora Carrington, Juggler (El Juglar) (estimate:
$600,000-800,000). Painted in 1954 during Carrington’s
artistic prime and most desirable period for collectors, this
is the first time this painting will be offered on the market.
The juggler is a foil for Carrington’s interest in exploring
dimensions of reality, as the juggler performs and dazzles
his audience, he also blurs the truth. The painting was originally
owned by Edward James, an English eccentric who was responsible
for bringing Carrington together with gallery owner Pierre
Matisse, who organized her first one-woman exhibition. James
then left the painting in care of artist Kati Horna.
Two California period paintings by Alfredo Ramos Martínez
are highlights in the sale. La india, shows a warm-toned
female figure with braids framing her face and a basket of
lemons framing her forehead (estimate: $800,000-1,200,000).
The recurring image of the flower bearer is depicted in Vendedora
de flores, 1934, although here she is empowered, gazing
straight-on at the viewer, carrying the gigantic flowers on
her back with steady poise (estimate: $600,000-800,000).
Emiliano di Cavalcanti’s Mulheres no cais (Women
at the Dock) painted in 1955, shows the artist’s
interest in typifying the traditional person born in Rio de
Janeiro, known as carioca (estimate: $500,000-700,000).
At the forefront of the group workers, a sensual barefoot
woman carrying a basket of fish, stands out amongst the crowd
through the artist’s attention to color and composition.
Fernando Botero is represented in the sale with a monumental
bronze sculpture, Donna in Piedi (Standing Woman),
executed in 2007 and formerly displayed outside Milan’s
Palazzo Reale (estimate: $1,200,000-1,800,000). This grand
sculpture of a nude woman twisting her head and arranging
her long hair towers at nearly 12 feet high — the largest
sculpture by Botero ever offered at auction.
Works by the Cuban artist Mario Carreño portray a range
of styles throughout his prolific and evolving career representing
his neo-classical style (1937- early 1943), organic-geometric
(1945- 1952), and finally a synthesis of the both in his late
paintings, post 1960. Included in the sale is Fuera del
batey, 1943, one of the artists most iconic works showing
the struggle of man and nature (estimate: $500,000-700,000);
The Promenade, 1947 shows Carreño’s
shift in style and Parisian influence (estimate: $100,000-150,000);
and Ausencia del poeta, 1970, is an ephemeral and
conceptual, which references Magritte (estimate: $60,000-80,000).
Rounding out the strong selection of Cuban artists featured
in the sale are the contemporaries of Mario Carreño,
Mariano Rodríguez and Cundo Bermúdez, who together
collectively belonged to the literary group Orígenes.
Rodrigez’s Juego, 1943, depicts two females
wrestling, one flesh colored and the other blue, and is evocative
of the artist’s growing concern with expressive color
and texture (estimate: $300,000-400,000). Bermúdez’s
Columnas is a large scale recent work showing two
column-like figures, simplified to block-like forms with no
visible limbs (estimate: $80,000-120,000).
Leading the important works offered by Claudio Bravo is Annunciation,
a large scale diptych reflecting the artist’s fascination
with spirituality (estimate: $800,000-1,200,000). Bravo creates
a harmonious conceptual work of intense blue and green expansive
fabrics, evoking an ancient classical drapery. Two wrapped
package works are offered – which elevate the ordinary
objects to both a study of optical play, with precisionist
detail, and serve as a preoccupation of minimal abstraction;
White and Yellow Package (estimate: $350,000-450,000)
and Paquete verde (Green Package) (estimate: $500,000-700,000).
Auction:
Latin American Sale
28
May at 6:30pm
29 May at 10:00am
Viewing: Christie’s Rockefeller Plaza
23 – 28 May
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Click on images
to enlarge
Alfredo Ramos Martínez
(Mexican 1872-1946)
Vendedora
de flores
signed 'RAMOS
MARTÍNEZ'
(lower right)
oil on canvas
32 x 28 in.
Painted circa 1934
$600,000 – 800,000
©Alfredo Ramos Martinez
Research Project,
reproduced by permission.
Mario Carreño
Fuera del batey
Painted in 1943
$500,000-700,000
© By permission,
Carreño Family Heirs
Fernando Botero
Donna in piedi
(Woman Standing)
Executed in 2007
$1,200,000-1,800,000
© Fernando Botero,
reproduced by permission.
Mario Carreño
The Promenade
Painted in 1947
$100,000-150,000
© By permission,
Carreño Family Heirs
Mariano Rodríguez
Juego (Mujeres jugando)
Painted in 1943
$300,000-400,000
© By permission,
Mariano Rodríguez
Estate.
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