Second exhibition at Dominique Levy London unites artists working with abstract white relief

Mots-clefs

1936 (white relief), 2009, Attese, Ben Nicholson, Composition schématique, Concetto Spaziale, Günther Uecker, Jean Arp, Lucio Fontana, Mira Schendel, Sergio Camargo, Tempera Sobre Eucatex (XII), Untitled, Untitled (288), Wind

LONDON.- Dominique Lévy Gallery presents Sotto Voce, the second show at its new London space. This exhibition connects artists from around the world, united by a common medium: the abstract white relief. From the earliest unfoldings of figuration by Henri Laurens produced in Paris to the harmonious constructions of the Brazilian Sergio Camargo, Sotto Voce maps the progression of the abstract white relief geographically and through time, with a focus on the 1930s to 1970s.

Lucio Fontana, Concetto Spaziale, Attese, 1965 © Dominique Lévy Gallery.

Alongside Laurens and Camargo, the exhibition will feature works by Jean Arp, Ben Nicholson, Lucio Fontana, Piero Manzoni, Enrico Castellani, Fausto Melotti, Günther Uecker, Luis Tomasello, and Mira Schendel, amongst others. While the white palette may give the works a soft voice, their messages are loud and clear, whether they may be a cry of hope, an attempt at nothingness, an expression of aesthetic idealism, or a surge towards transcendence. Sotto Voce will demonstrate how this subtle yet forceful dialogue was carried out internationally through the language of the white relief by artists at the forefront of their respective movements, ranging from Surrealism to the Zero Group, Spatialism to Minimalism, and Conceptual Art to Constructivism.

Lucio Fontana, Concetto Spaziale, 1964 © Dominique Lévy Gallery.

Sotto Voce will be accompanied by a scholarly exhibition book featuring an essay by Dr James Fox of Cambridge University, who specialises in the cultural history of colour. Among numerous media appearances, in 2013 he presented the acclaimed BBC series ‘A History of Art in Three Colours,’ which dedicated an episode to white.

Fausto Melotti, La Famiglia del Boscaiolo, 1979 © Dominique Lévy Gallery.

Highlights include Arp’s ‘Composition schématique’ from 1943. Arp created his earliest reliefs at the height of Dadaism during the 1910s, and produced his first monochromatic white-on-white reliefs in the 1920s, developing them further in the 1930s. The present work lies in sharp contrast with his earlier, dreamlike, Surrealist reliefs, with its geometric composition filled with angularity. It dates from the year his beloved wife Sophie Taeuber-Arp tragically died of asphyxiation from the fumes of a coal stove. In his grief Arp slowed down his activities, and indeed ‘Composition schématique’ is one of only a handful of works created during this period. With its forms echoing those of other reliefs made as a monument to his wife, the present work in marble also celebrates the beauty of the Mediterranean, a constant inspiration for Arp.

Jean Arp, Composition schématique, 1943. Marble, 9 ¼ x 11 ¾ inches (23.6 x 29.7 cm) © DACS 2015

Ben Nicholson also stands out as an innovator of the abstract white relief; he will be represented in Sotto Voce by ‘White Relief’ (1936) a perfect example from his iconic series. Inspired by European schools of thought such as Abstraction-Création, Bauhaus and De Stijl, as well as his British contemporaries, Nicholson’s white reliefs are a geometric foil to the organic shapes created by Arp, whom Nicholson befriended in France. In the present work, two circles of slightly different sizes peer out from raised rectangles almost of the golden ratio, held up by yet another such rectangle. The gentle echoing of forms creates a pleasing balance. There is a softness to the composition which could not have been achieved with perfect symmetry, and the pure white palette imbues the relief with a level of enlightenment.

Ben Nicholson, 1936 (white relief), 1936. Oil on carved mahogany on plywood (in artist’s frame) 66 x 83.8 cm © Angela Verren Taunt 2015. All rights reserved, DACS

The gallery is also delighted to exhibit Manzoni’s ‘Achrome’ from 1958, a fantastic example of his first series of “achromes” created through the marriage of wet kaolin and canvas, which, as they crystallised and hardened, resulted in folds. The final appearance was thus determined solely by the internal energies of the materials, completely independent of the artist’s hand. Our work emanates a primal, “virgin” state of the crude medium, and its colourlessness is integral to the artist’s investigation into nothingness and his aim to create a radical tabula rasa.

At around the same time that Manzoni was producing his achromes, Günther Uecker joined the Zero Group and developed his iconic nail paintings. Sotto Voce will feature his ‘Untitled’ from 1967, a wonderful work in white, which was not only Uecker’s preferred tone but also an essential colour to the Zero Group’s aim of finding purity, newness, and positivity, and a perfect platform to demonstrate the power of light in art. ‘Untitled’, with its neat rows of painted nails quietly lined up, is an ever-changing spectacle for the viewer, leaving him or her transfixed in an optimal performance. Pure and simple yet entrancing, the painting vibrates with a gentle energy and stillness.

Günther Uecker, Untitled, 1967. Painted nails and canvas on board 43 x 43 cm © Günther Uecker. All rights reserved. DACS 2015

Günther Uecker, Wind, 2009. Oil on nails and canvas mounted on board, diptych Each panel: 150 x 120 cm © Dominique Lévy Gallery.

Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, art historical progress in Europe was making a mark in South America. Brazilian Sergio Camargo studied under Lucio Fontana at the Academia Altamira in Buenos Aires, and later travelled to Paris where he was strongly influenced by the works of Jean Arp, Henri Laurens, and Constantin Brancusi. His experimentations with abstraction led to the creation of his archetypal white reliefs, comprised of painted wooden cylindrical elements. ‘Untitled (288)’ (1970) is a fantastic example from this series, with its flowing spirals filling up the frame, evoking a movement from the individual part to the multiple whole, floating in a dimension between painting and sculpture, in a constant otherworldly trance.

Sergio Camargo, Untitled (288), 1970. Painted wood, 120 x 100 cm © Galeria Raquel Arnaud – Estate of Sergio Camargo

Mira Schendel, Tempera Sobre Eucatex (XII), 1986 © Dominique Lévy Gallery.

‘Paul Delvaux, A Walk with Love and Death’ at Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, 24 February to 7 June 2015

Mots-clefs

Crucifixion, Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Palace in Ruins, Paul Delvaux, Pygmalion, The Dream, The Sleeping Venus, The Viaduct, Woman at the Mirror

MADRID – This February, the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza is presenting an exhibition on the Belgian painter Paul Delvaux (1897-1994), an artist represented in both the Museum’s Permanent Collection and the Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection. Organised in collaboration with the Musée d’Ixelles and curated by Laura Neve, that institution’s academic advisor, Paul Delvaux: A Walk with Love and Death will present a thematic survey featuring more than 50 works loaned from public and private collections in Belgium, in particular that of Nicole and Pierre Ghêne, which constitutes the nucleus of this project and is represented by a loan of forty-two works. Fascinated since 1962 by the work of Delvaux, Pierre Ghêne began his collection in the early 1970s. Since that time it has continued to grow and now numbers hundreds of them, most of which are in the Musée d’Ixelles.

Following his experiments with realism, Fauvism and Expressionism, Delvaux discovered the work of Magritte and Giorgio de Chirico. Surrealism was a crucial revelation for the artist, although he never considered himself a Surrealist painter in a strict sense. Delvaux was more interested in Surrealism’s poetic, mysterious facet than its iconoclastic battles, leading him from the 1930s to create his own, unique universe, free of the rules of universal logic and located between classicism and the modern world and between dream and reality. Notable for its stylistic unity, Delvaux’s output is characterised by a strange, enigmatic atmosphere. The principal motifs, ranging from women to trains and including skeletons and buildings, are part of that universe: isolated, self-absorbed, almost somnambulist beings, often located in nocturnal settings and apparently unrelated to each other, the only link between them being the artist’s own experiences.

The exhibition focuses on the five principal themes in Delvaux’s iconography, all revolving around love and death: Reclining Venus, a recurrent motif in his work which refers to his unconditional love for women; The Double (Couples and Mirrors), which focuses on seduction and the relationship with the alter ego; Architectures, which focuses on the omnipresent buildings in his oeuvre, particularly classical ones but also examples from WatermaelBoitsfort (Brussels, Belgium) where he lived; Train Stations; which are essential to the construction of his pictorial personality; and finally, The Skeleton of Life, which analyses Delvaux’s fascination with that motif, which he used as substitutes for live figures engaged in everyday activities.

Born into a family of lawyers, Delvaux received his father’s permission to attend the Academy of Fine Arts in Brussels where, after briefly studying architecture, he opted for decorative painting and graduated in 1924. His early works reveal the influence of the Flemish Expressionists such as Constant Permeke and Gustave de Smet, who represented the Belgian avant-garde of the time. At this early date Delvaux began to reveal an interest in depicting the human form, particularly women, which would remain a constant artistic concern throughout his career.

Born into a family of lawyers, Delvaux received his father’s permission to attend the Academy of Fine Arts in Brussels where, after briefly studying architecture, he opted for decorative painting and graduated in 1924. His early works reveal the influence of the Flemish Expressionists such as Constant Permeke and Gustave de Smet, who represented the Belgian avant-garde of the time. At this early date Delvaux began to reveal an interest in depicting the human form, particularly women, which would remain a constant artistic concern throughout his career.

Reclining Venus

Delvaux’s interest in the motif of the sleeping Venus began in 1932 when he visited the Spitzner Museum, one of the principal attractions at the Foire du Midi in Brussels, which displayed wax figures showing surgical innovations, illnesses and physical deformations, together with specimens preserved in formaldehyde. Delvaux was above all struck by an exhibit entitled The Sleeping Venus and that same year painted his first canvas on this subject, subsequently reinterpreting it on numerous occasions and with striking variations.

The version of 1932 included in the present exhibition is particularly original in its execution. At this period Delvaux was close to Expressionism and his work reveals the influence of James Ensor, particularly in the use of the grotesque and in the strange atmosphere that pervades the work. The artist had not yet created his Surrealist universe but already made use of some of its key elements such as the woman, the skeleton, the unexpected, angst, etc.

Two years later Delvaux admired De Chirico’s work in the exhibition Minotaure held in Brussels in 1934, and his painting The Dream (1935) already reveals new aesthetic ideas in which a dreamlike reality prevails over an objective one. The principal figure in this canvas does not directly refer to Venus but rather to the woman in general, as representative of the female sex. Probably due to the fact that Delvaux’s relations with the opposite sex were never easy (he had a domineering mother, a platonic affair and an unsuccessful marriage), the theme of the woman was one of his obsessions and is expressed in his oeuvre in the form of mysterious and beautiful but, to the artist, unobtainable young women.

The Double (Couples and Mirrors)

Another recurring concept in Delvaux’s oeuvre is that of seduction. From the early 1930s onwards he painted both heterosexual and lesbian couples, fascinated by the latter relationship given that it pertained to the realm of female intimacy and representing it in a much simpler and more intimate and spontaneous way. His visit to a brothel around 1930 may lie at the origins of this theme of “female friends”, which began to reappear in his work. Over the following months Delvaux depicted numerous embracing women in sketches and studies characterised by an enormous freedom of expression. Livelier and more expressive than his canvases, these drawings allowed him to give free range to his imagination and to explore various taboos.

Some experts consider that Delvaux made use of lesbianism to convey his disappointment with heterosexual relations, which he tended to stigmatise in his works, condemning his figures of opposite sexes to a lack of contact and dialogue. In Pygmalion (1939), represented in the exhibition by a preliminary study, the female character prefers a stone sculpture to a man, inverting the original myth in which the sculptor fell in love with the statue he had carved. In the painting the two members of the couple have their alter egos in the background. This represents the theme of the double, which is notably present in Delvaux’s work and is associated with his use of mirrors as another important element in his paintings. All entitled “Woman at the Mirror”, examples of this theme such as the one of 1936 in the Museum’s Permanent Collection, endow the mirror with an active role and favour the specular image rather than the tangible one.

A separate area within this section is devoted to The Conflagration (1935). It has recently been discovered that this is only the right-hand half of a larger canvas that was cut in two by Delvaux before he exhibited it at the annual Salon in Antwerp that same year. At a later date the collector Pierre Ghêne acquired the rediscovered lost half, which he subsequently donated to the Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique. The two parts could be seen together for the first time last year at the Musée d’Ixelles and will also be present in this exhibition.

Architectures (Acropolis)

Architecture occupied a prominent position in Delvaux’s work from the mid-1930s onwards. Fascinated by classical mythology as a child, he drew battles inspired by the ones he had read about in the Iliad and the Odyssey. Delvaux’s first mythological canvas, The Return of Ulysses, dates from 1924 to 1925 and heralds the importance that the classical world would have in his work, even though the subject is treated in a relatively literal manner. The artist was not convinced by the results and abandoned classical subjects in favour of Expressionism, returning to them, however, in 1934.

De Chirico’s influence is evident in this return to classical culture, which was fundamental to Delvaux’s iconography and is expressed not just through architecture but also through mythology and the clothing of his female figures. For the artist, antiquity represented a means of escape from everyday reality and a comforting way of liberating his imagination.

Delvaux’s works acquired a theatrical, even cinematic character due to the importance of the settings, the structuring of the compositions into successive planes and the hieratic poses of the figures. In some cases classical antiquity is suggested by architectural details that become part of the setting. In other works Delvaux painted entire classical panoramas; whole cities in which he nonetheless included anachronistic elements and combined different styles, giving the scenes an absurdist character. Palace in Ruins (1935) was his first authentically Surrealist work and paved the way for the development of his subsequent style, characterised by a mood of poetic mystery in which silence prevails.

The buildings that appear in Delvaux’s canvases are precisely painted. The artist researched and documented each element through models and photographs with the aim of faithfully reproducing reality. His depictions of classical architecture became increasingly accurate, particularly after his visits to Italy in 1937 and 1939 and Greece in 1956. The motif of the ancient city increasingly replaces the depiction of ruins, with references to real buildings and partly surviving monuments. During this period Delvaux’s chromatic range became lighter and he placed new emphasis on colour.

Train Stations

From a very early age Delvaux was interested in the world of railways, which for him represented a fascinating symbol of incipient modernity. By the 1920s the Luxembourg Station in Brussels was already one of his favourite sources of inspiration and he would paint there outdoors. Delvaux produced a dozen large-format canvases in which he depicted the station’s bustling life, its wintry atmosphere and the conditions of the railway workers, in a continuation of the social realism initiated in Belgium by Constantin Meunier.

Delvaux subsequently abandoned the world of trains but returned to it, better prepared academically, in the 1940s and from then on it would be indissolubly linked to his pictorial identity, to the point where he was known as the “painter of stations”. Without referring to their actual destinations, Delvaux located trains and trams in contemporary settings or in classical cities in scenes peopled by women on the platforms or in the waiting rooms prior to a rendez-vous or to the start of their journeys.

With regard to the artist’s childhood memories, in 1950 he embarked on a series of nocturnal scenes in which young girls wait in empty stations, reflecting his fears provoked by the adult world. The erotic tension of the 1940s now gives way to tranquillity and calm, as in The Viaduct (1963), in which everything is frozen, seemingly for an event that never actually happens.

The Skeleton of Life

Delvaux’s fascination with skeletons dates back to his years at school when he paid close attention to the skeleton in the biology classroom, which both frightened and fascinated him. From 1932 onwards the skeleton became an element in his visual vocabulary and one of particular expressivity. On occasions, skeletons substitute the principal figure and thus reinterpret the narrative in the manner of an alter ego. When not the principal figure they appear in the background, blending in with the setting and playing a secondary but no less important role in which they behave in the manner of humans.

In the 1950s Delvaux executed a series on “The Passion of Christ” (the Crucifixion, Descent from the Cross and Burial), also featuring skeletons, which he exhibited in 1954 at the Venice Biennial, the theme of which that year was The Fantastical in Art. They provoked a scandal (unintentional on the artist’s part) and were condemned as heretical by Cardinal Roncalli, the future Pope John Paul XXIII.

Applicat-Prazan at TEFAF 2015 Modern (13-22 March 2015)

Mots-clefs

Agrigente, Applicat-Prazan, Nicolas de Staël, Pierre Soulages, TEFAF 2015 Modern

Pierre Soulages (Rodez, 1919), Peinture. Oil on canvas, 73 x 54 cm. Signed lower left, 1957. Applicat-Prazan (stand 444). TEFAF 2015 Modern (13-22 March 2015)

Provenance: Kootz Gallery, New York, 1957; Mrs F.R. Rose, USA; Mr Kold Christensen, Copenhagen, 1959; Bo Fornsted Gallery, Stockholm; Private collection, Italy

Literature: Pierre Encrevé, Soulages, l’oeuvre complet, Peintures, Vol. I. 1946-1959, Seuil, Paris November 1994, no. 305, ill. col. p. 234

Exhibitions: New York, Kootz Gallery, Soulages, 13-30 Nov. 1957, cat.

Nicolas de Staël (St. Petersburg 1914-1955 Antibes) Agrigente. Oil on canvas, 60 x 81 cm, 1954. Applicat-Prazan (stand 444). TEFAF 2015 Modern (13-22 March 2015)

Provenance: Galerie Jacques Dubourg, Paris; Private collection, Paris; Galerie Georges Moos, Geneva; Ms Edmée Maus, Cologne; Private collection, Europe

Literature: Lando Landini, Paragone, La mostra di de Staël a Parigi, Florence, no. 79, 1956, ill. pp.70-78; Frank Bridel, ‘Le peintre Nicolas de Staël révélé au public suisse’ in Tribune de Genève, Geneva, 1957, p. 1; L’Oeil, n° 65, 1960, Lausanne, ill. col. cover (detail); Jacques Dubourg, François de Staël, Nicolas de Staël, Catalogue raisonné des peintures, Les Editions Le Temps, Paris 1968, no. 721, ill. p.307; Le Nouveau Quotidien, 19 May 1995, p.23, ill. col.; Françoise de Staël, Nicolas de Staël, Catalogue raisonné de l’œuvre peint, Ides et Calendes, Neuchâtel 1997, no. 747, ill. p. 489; Gala, 17 Aug.1995, no. 114, pp.70-71, ill. col.; Le Matin, 13 June 2010, p.60, ill.; Le Temps, 22 June 2010, ill.; Le Figaro, 7 Sept. 2010, p.31, ill.; Tribune des Arts, Jul. 2010, p.37, ill.; Connaissance des Arts, July-Aug. 2010, no. 684, cover and p.5, ill.

Exhibitions: Paris, Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Nicolas de Staël 1914-1955, 22 Feb.-8 Apr. 1956; Edinburgh, Royal Scottish Academy Galleries, 62nd Exhibition of Paintings, Sculpture, Drawing, Applied Art and Architecture, Society of Scottish Artists, 6 Oct.-11 Nov. 1956; Bern, Kunsthalle, Nicolas de Staël, 13 Sept.-20 Oct. 1957; Paris, Maison de la Pensée française, Artistes russes de l’Ecole de Paris, 21 June-1st Oct. 1961; Parma, Fondazione Magnani Rocca, Mamiano di Traversetolo, Nicolas de Staël, 10 Apr.-17 July 1994; Martigny, Fondation Pierre Gianadda, Nicolas de Staël, 19 May – 5 Nov. 1995; Martigny, Fondation Pierre Gianadda, Nicolas de Staël, 1945-1955, 18 June-21 Nov. 2010

Since its creation, Applicat´s vocation has always been to exhibit and support the Paris School of the 50s and more especially the Abstract, Cobra and Surrealist movements. Due to its action outside the Parisian gallery, it has contributed towards reviving unquestionably new ideas, but that the last two decades had unfortunately forgotten. Today, that period of the history of Art has rightfully found its place: an essential place.

Applicat-Prazan. Director: Franck Prazan. T  +33 1 43 25 39 24 – M   +33 6 80 04 05 87 – F  +33 1 43 25 39 25

Sotheby’s London to offer rare Francis Bacon double self-portrait at auction of Contemporary art

Mots-clefs

1977, circa 1659, circa 1665, Francis Bacon, Jorge Lewinski, Leaf from book Rembrandt’s Selbsbildnisse, Rembrandt van Rijn, Self Portrait, Two Studies For a Self Portrait, Wilhelm Pinder

Francis Bacon, Two Studies For a Self Portrait, 1977. Est. £13-18m. Photo: Sotheby’s.

LONDON.- Francis Bacon’s (1909-1992) haunting self-portraits have become inseparable from how we remember the turbulent life of one of the great painters of the 20th-Century. On 10 February 2015, as part of its flagship auction of Contemporary Art, Sotheby’s London will offer Bacon’s hugely rare Two Studies for Self-Portrait, 1977, (est. £13-18m) one of only three self-portraits in this dual format to have been painted by the artist.

In the years that followed the tragic suicide of his lover George Dyer in 1971, Bacon’s work became increasingly concerned with the dark psychological depths of his own psyche. Painted in 1977, on an almost 1:1 scale, Two Studies for Self-Portrait is a profoundly intimate portrait, starkly evoking the artist’s inner turmoil at a moment when he was at the height of critical acclaim during his lifetime.

Oliver Barker, Sotheby’s Deputy Chairman, Europe, said: « Of all the subjects he depicted, it is the self-portraits – painted with an almost obsessive intensity – that bring us closest to the artist. It’s this extraordinary intimacy and power, together with their rarity, that make Bacon’s self-portraits so irresistible to collectors. »

Unparalleled Self-Portraiture
Self-portraiture played a role of unparalleled importance in the work of Francis Bacon. “He was never more brilliant, more incisive or more ferocious when it came to depicting himself. In this he helped revive a genre, and Bacon’s Self-Portraits can now be seen as among the most pictorially inventive and psychologically revealing portraits of the Twentieth Century”, wrote the renowned art historian Michael Peppiatt in 2009. For this reason, they are the most sought after of the artist’s works among collectors; regularly achieving prices well in advance of their estimates when they make a rare appearance at auction. A 1978 self-portrait, estimated at £812m, more the doubled its low estimate when it sold for £21.6m at Sotheby’s London in 2007, while a 1969 example, offered at Sotheby’s New York, also in 2007, fetched $33.1m.

More so than any artist since Rembrandt, Bacon’s self-portrayals tell of the existential ups and downs of an extraordinarily dramatic life, starkly punctuated by tragedy. From the suicide of his friend John Minton in 1957 to the death of his decade-long lover Peter Lacy in 1962; the tragic suicide of his lover George Dyer in 1971 and the death of his mother, Winnie Bacon, in the same year. Summoning a lifetime’s worth of memories, Two Studies for Self-Portrait, 1977, shows Bacon at his most self-reflective and at the peak of his of his powers as a painter.

In one of his celebrated interviews with the art critic David Sylvester, Bacon was brutally honest about his increasing propensity toward self-portraiture: « People have been dying around me like flies and I’ve had nobody else to paint but myself… I loathe my own face. One of the nicest things that Cocteau said was ‘Each day in the mirror I watch death at work.’ This is what one does to oneself.”

Seeing Double
Bacon only ever made three self-portrait diptychs in this format (35.5cm by 30cm), of which this is the only example to have ever appeared at auction. The immediacy and intimacy of Bacon’s smaller scale (almost 1:1) portraits ensures that they are hugely coveted by collectors. This was most recently in evidence when a new record for any small-scale portrait by Bacon was set in June 2014. The triptych, Three Studies for Portrait of George Dyer, sold at Sotheby’s London for £26.7m, well in excess of its high estimate of £20m.

Francis Bacon, Two Studies For a Self Portrait, 1977. Est. £13-18m. Photo: Sotheby’s.

left panel: signed, dated 1977 and inscribed Self portrait, Diptych, Front left Panel on the reverse – right panel: signed, dated 1977 and inscribed Self portrait, diptych, Front right panel on the reverse – oil on canvas, in two parts – each: 35.5 by 30.5cm.; 14 by 12in.

AUTHENTICATION: This work will be included as number (77-02) in the forthcoming Francis Bacon Catalogue Raisonné, being prepared by the Estate of Francis Bacon and edited by Martin Harrison.

PROVENANCE: Private Collection, Switzerland (acquired directly from the artist)
Sale: Sotheby’s, London, Contemporary Art: Part I, 2 December 1993, Lot 32
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner

EXHIBITED: Madrid, Fundación Juan March; and Barcelona, Fundació Joan Miró, Francis Bacon, 1978, n.p., no. 13, illustrated in colour
Tokyo, The National Museum of Modern Art; Kyoto, The National Museum of Modern Art; and Nagoya, Aichi Prefectural Art Gallery, Francis Bacon, Paintings: 1945-1982, 1983, p. 69, no. 36, illustrated in colour
London, Marlborough Fine Art Ltd., Francis Bacon, 1985, p. 29, no. 12, illustrated in colour
London, Ordovas, Irrational Marks: Bacon and Rembrandt, 2011, pp. 45, 69 and 82, illustrated in colour

LITERATURE: Michael Leiris, Francis Bacon: Full Face and in Profile, Oxford 1983, n.p., no. 111, illustrated in colour
Milan Kundera, Bacon: Portraits and Self-Portraits, London 1996, pp. 74-75, illustrated in colour

NOTE: Francis Bacon lived with the deepest commitment to seizing the vulnerable, vital and violent conditions of human existence; he was an artist for whom painful reality was itself life’s purpose. Nowhere is this more forcefully evident than in the haunting opus of self-portraits that weave an autobiographical thread through a lifetime enlivened by drama and blighted by tragedy. Executed in 1977 when Bacon was 68 and at a height of critical repute and international acclaim, Two Studies for Self-Portrait evinces both mournful rumination and fierce effacement. Following the unexpected (though unsurprising) suicide of George Dyer in 1971 – on the very eve of his retrospective opening at the Grand Palais – Bacon launched into a period of production that would become the most emotionally fraught, inventive, self-flagellating and ambitious of his career. In 1977 Bacon’s tremendous outpouring of pain and melancholia, fused with grand poetic and painterly ambition, culminated in the hugely successful one-man-show at Galerie Claude Bernard in Paris. Providing the introverted counterpart to the cycle of extroverted and elaborate triptychs executed during this period and exhibited in the ‘77 exhibition, are the small portrait studies. Operating on an almost 1:1 scale, these works represent the most immediate and all-too-human aspect of Bacon’s practice: drama and brutality are enacted within the vicissitudes of an existential physiognomy. In this regard, the self-portraits can be viewed as the most revealing and ruthless of Bacon’s oeuvre, prepared as he was to masochistically inflict more violence upon his own likeness than to ‘insult’ anyone else. Scuffed, scraped, contorted and dissolving in confused movement, the present work forms an enigmatic and rare doubling of Bacon’s photo-booth styled headshots. Indeed, only two other self-portraits in this dual format were created in comparison to the 14 single panels and 11 triptych self-portrait studies in the 14 by 12inch canvases. Exhibited widely across Europe and Asia during Bacon’s lifetime, this striking dual image bears the signature features of the artist’s famous face: the carefully arranged forelock of hair and plump rounded features are idiosyncratically present. Plagued by death, guilt, bereavement and excruciating self-analysis, the self-portraits form the most enduring and imaginative exercise of Bacon’s later practice.

Portrait of Francis Bacon by unknown photographer, circa 1972. The Estate of Francis Bacon Collection © The Estate of Francis Bacon. All rights reserved, DACS 2015. Photo: Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd.

In Two Studies for Self-Portrait Bacon appears as a double death mask of translucent and scumbled marks; air-like apparitions of an ephemeral spirit dissolving into the black ether of an enveloping void. The pink and purple colouration and effervescence of paint handling somewhat recall the artist’s much earlier animations of William Blake’s life mask from 1955. Appearing to wear a turtleneck jumper in these portraits, Bacon’s head and neck are similarly disembodied, with heavy eyelids and unseeing eyes closed shut by the corrugated scrape of textured fabric. Intriguingly the left panel seems to echo the earlier Self-Portrait with Injured Eye from 1972 in which Bacon’s battered eye socket is portrayed as triumphantly swollen, purple and enlarged. Herein this bruised palette is in keeping with the very best works from this decade, in which pink, purple and accents of orange, yellow and blue feature heavily. In both portraits the mouths are the site of further violence and incredible painterly invention. The ellipses and circular outlines telescope our attention on the elongated and mangled jaw-line in both pictures, with heightened confusion occurring in the right panel. Oval voids and shadows eat away at painted flesh whilst circular windows reveal a jumble of blurred masticatory movement. Whether tooth-bearing and screaming as in his earlier work (most notably the corpus after Velazquez’s Pope Innocent X) or as a muddle and mess of lips as in the present self-portraits, Bacon maintained an abiding obsession with mouths throughout his lifetime. Prior to the execution of Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion in 1944, Bacon had studied a nineteenth-century book on diseases of the mouth for its explicit and viscerally colourful hand-painted illustrations. In the present work, the lasting influence of this book, paired with Bacon’s erotic fascination with the mouth, is formalised by compositional elements that echo the diagrams in K.C. Clark’s Positioning in Radiography (London 1939) – another highly influential source for Bacon owing to its encyclopedic illustration of X-ray photography. These medical and biological fascinations paired with a revelling of the moribund and violent all form a part of how Bacon existentially dissects what it is to be human, that existence is purely flesh and physicality; in his paintings he flays and undoes corporeal boundaries and pokes at our fleshy make-up with his brush, transcribing, dissecting and pinning it back in place. In full consciousness of the waning years Bacon here paints himself in the dim-light of inexorable transience: “I myself want to go on living as long as I can… After all, there’s nothing else… we can just go on living, even though we know something terrible will happen” (Francis Bacon quoted in: Francis Bacon: Anatomy of an Enigma, London 2008, p. 309). Nihilistic and resolved to the inevitable oblivion of mortal flesh, Bacon stoically transcribed the psychological wounds of his life through his extraordinary opus of self-portrait studies.

Francis Bacon, Self-Portrait, 1969. Private Collection. Artwork: © The Estate of Francis Bacon. All rights reserved, DACS 2015

The very first self-portrait created in this intimate 14 by 12 inch format was painted in 1962 directly in response to the death of Peter Lacy, the object of Bacon’s first major love affair. A former RAF pilot with a self-destructive nature prone to furious outbursts, Lacy embodied a magnetic force for Bacon whose finely-tuned and masochistic proclivity for violence drove all aspects of his life. By the mid-1950s the tempestuous relationship had ended and Lacy and moved to Tangier, where he began to slowly and surely drink himself into oblivion. Upon hearing of Lacy’s death the grief-stricken Bacon painted his own self-portrait flanked by Lacy’s emanation as a commemorative act of resuscitation and atonement. The triptych, Study for Three Heads (1962) powerfully lays bare the harrowing introspective quality intrinsic to the intimately scaled canvases: struggling to the surface of the outer panels, Bacon’s phantasmal memory of Lacy is here comingled and conjoined with the artist’s own self-image in the central canvas. Indeed, it was this first major tragedy in Bacon’s life that precipitated the first acknowledged self-portraits. That tragedy had the power to induce a mode of self-reflection in Bacon’s work was made emphatically clear following the artist’s second profound trauma: the death of George Dyer. Ten years following Lacy’s demise, and on the eve of Bacon’s retrospective opening at the Grand Palais in 1971, George Dyer – Bacon’s companion, lover and principle artistic subject since 1964 – was found dead. Marred by progressive alcoholism, suicidal desperation and a waning sense of purpose in Bacon’s shadow, Dyer’s eight-year relationship with the artist was as fractured as it was passionate. A compelling force in life, in death, Dyer’s absent-presence took on the weight of Bacon’s loss and melancholic regret; a profound grief that resonates throughout Bacon’s post-1971 opus and specifically the elegiac late paintings of himself. As evinced in the present work, Bacon’s searching and intensely haunting self-images at once exorcise accusatory demons whilst offering deeply mournful inquiries in the face of profound bereavement: today the suite of heart-rending self-images executed following Dyer’s death stand among his very best works. These harrowing epic eulogies powerfully speak of the intense loss and guilt that eternally remained with the artist.

Francis Bacon, Two Studies for a Self-Portrait, 1970. Private Collection. Image/Artwork: © The Estate of Francis Bacon. All rights reserved, DACS 2015. Photo: Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd

“I loathe this old pudding face of mine… but it’s all I’ve got left to paint now” (Francis Bacon quoted in: ibid., p. 307). From the suicide of his friend John Minton in 1957, the aforementioned deaths of Peter Lacy and George Dyer, the death of his mother, Winnie Bacon, in 1971, through to the demise of his longstanding friend John Deakin in 1972, by 1977 Bacon’s life had been starkly punctuated and beset by loss. Echoing the narrative traits of a Greek Tragedy, this trend would continue for the rest of his life: in 1979 Bacon witnessed the death of his good friend and owner of the beloved Colony Room drinking den, Muriel Belcher, while his youngest sister, Winifred, died in 1981 following a long battle with Multiple Sclerosis. Though he had suffered with chronic asthma since childhood and having been a dedicated drinker and lover of excess, Bacon lived into his ninth decade until he died in 1992. Feeling as if death had stripped him of all his friends, during the 1970s Bacon increasingly turned the brush on himself; in these works his visage can be viewed as a ghostly sentinel to the misfortune and loss of those closest to him.

Francis Bacon Two Studies for a Self-Portrait, 1970. Private Collection. Image/Artwork: © The Estate of Francis Bacon. All rights reserved, DACS 2015. Photo: Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd

While the intensity of Bacon’s self-portrait practice undoubtedly deepened following the death of George Dyer, Bacon had maintained an abiding fascination with his own appearance throughout his life and knew his own features intimately. He wore make-up and was a keen subject of the photographers lens; indeed, the artist had quickly learned the nuances of re-invention and self-presentation from a young age, spending hours scrutinising and tracing the particulars of his own appearance in the mirror. Such is the power of the small portrait studies; to quote William Feaver: “this is how we see what we feel like in the morning, examining the image in the mirror that corresponds so remotely with the sense we have of ourselves. This is the face that gets worse (more ‘lived in’) over the years, the face that betrays. These heads are what we are stuck with: unsentimentally ours. Bacon dealt with his… knowing that the best he could do was to effect a phantom, a rasping whoosh of characteristics” (William Feaver, ‘That’s It’, in: Exhibition Catalogue, London, Marlborough Fine Art Ltd., Francis Bacon 1909 – 1992 Small Portrait Studies, 1993, p. 6). Two Studies for Self-Portrait witnesses Bacon conjure the traits of his own appearance with facility and aplomb: the wide moon-like face and the deeply set yet extraordinarily round eye sockets are here framed by the quintessential fringe of hair swept across his forehead. Moving from one image to the next Bacon’s visage begins to waste and disappear; in the second canvas the idiosyncratic roundness is replaced by a wraith-like apparition, as wispy emanations cipher matter into the encroaching darkness that consumes the right-hand side of the artist’s face.

Francis Bacon, Two Studies for Self-Portrait, 1972. Private Collection. Image/Artwork: © The Estate of Francis Bacon. All rights reserved, DACS 2015. Photo: Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd

When asked by David Sylvester in 1979 why there are so many self-portraits, Bacon explained: “People have been dying around me like flies and I’ve had nobody else to paint but myself… I loathe my own face and I’ve done self-portraits because I’ve had nothing else to do” (Francis Bacon quoted in: David Sylvester, Looking Back at Francis Bacon, London 2000, p. 129). Although somewhat true, Bacon’s purported reluctance to paint his own image is largely trivialising. The artist had very rarely painted from life and did not require the presence of sitters to translate a likeness in paint, instead relying upon memory and the detritus of photographs and books famously strewn across his South Kensington studio as aesthetic triggers. Alongside the countless pictures of friends taken by John Deakin, hundreds of photographs of himself comprised a core visual compost for his pictorial imagination.

Francis Bacon, Two Studies for Self-Portrait, 1972. Private Collection. Image/Artwork: © The Estate of Francis Bacon. All rights reserved, DACS 2015. Photo: Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd

The subject of major international retrospectives and studies across the globe by the 1970s, Bacon was all too aware of his prominent status. When added to the cumulative impact of time on his own appearance, these factors clearly compounded a desire to not only indelibly inscribe his own likeness within the annals of art history but also to challenge its champions. Successor to a genre perfected by revered masters from Rembrandt to Picasso, Bacon was undoubtedly driven by an incessant compulsion to forge a personal mythology for the experience of his time. As a genre, self-portraiture purportedly reveals the private side of a public profession; nowhere can this be understood with such forthright candour than in Bacon’s oeuvre as viewed in the light of Rembrandt’s legacy. Rembrandt was the very touchstone of Bacon’s inventiveness in these small scale canvases; the endless variety and successive permutations of his own visage, which meld into almost abstract dissolving matter towards the end of his life cast Rembrandt’s late self-portraits as a striking parallel to, and even art historical blue-print for, the present work. Bacon believed Rembrandt’s self-portraits to be “formally the most extraordinary paintings. He altered painting in a way by the method by which he dealt with himself and perhaps he felt freer to deal with himself in this totally liberal way” (Ibid., p. 241). He would undoubtedly have intimately known the two self-portraits in the National Gallery’s collection and was familiar with the most ambitious self portrait of Rembrandt’s career Self Portrait with Two Circles (1665-69) in the collection of Kenwood House in North London – an interesting visual comparison to the present work for its prominence of circular elements – while his own celebration of the Aix-en-Provence self-portrait speaks for itself: “… if you think of the great Rembrandt self-portrait in Aix-en-Provence, for instance, and if you analyse it, you will see that there are hardly any sockets to the eyes, that it is almost completely anti-illustrational. I think that the mystery of fact is conveyed by an image being made out of non-rational marks… what can happen sometimes, as it happened in this Rembrandt self-portrait in Aix-en-Provence, is that there is a coagulation of non-representational marks which have led to making up this very great image. Well, of course, only part of this is accidental. Behind all that is Rembrandt’s profound sensibility, which was able to hold onto one irrational mark rather than onto another” (Francis Bacon quoted in: Exhibition Catalogue, London, Marlborough Gallery, Francis Bacon: Recent Paintings, 1967, p. 28). In this description of the Aix-en-Provence Self-Portrait with Beret (1659), it is almost as though he is describing the very nuances, subtleties and techniques employed in the execution of the present work. When viewed up close Rembrandt’s heads seemingly disband into a mass of non-representational marks that were doubtless an inspiration to Bacon’s own savage expressivity. Like Rembrandt tallying his aged, lined and weary features with a congruent painterly treatment of disbanded corporeality, in the present work the vaporous dissolution of Bacon’s likeness tempers exigent facture with an intense yet reposed response to the concrete fact of mortality.

Francis Bacon, 1971. Photo:  Jorge Lewinski. Private Collection. Image: © The Lewinski Archive at Chatsworth / Bridgeman Images

Bacon once mentioned to David Sylvester: “Life is all we have. I mean we are here for a moment” (Francis Bacon quoted in: David Sylvester, op. cit., p. 231). Indeed, where Bacon translates this eschatological communion most powerfully is in the astounding body of self-portraiture that punctuates the most exceptional moments of his oeuvre. As outlined by Michael Peppiatt: “…he was never more brilliant, more incisive or more ferocious when it came to depicting himself. In this he helped revive a genre, and Bacon’s Self-Portraits can now be seen as among the most pictorially inventive and psychologically revealing portraits of the Twentieth Century” (Michael Peppiatt in: Exhibition Catalogue, Rome, Galleria Borghese, Caravaggio Bacon, 2009-10, p. 210). Ethereally effervescent and partly enshrouded in shadow, de-formulation and re-formulation of likeness moves between these two remarkable visages; these depictions glow like votive icons of an artist who is today considered an icon of his age.

Francis Bacon, Self-Portrait, 1973 Private Collection © The Estate of Francis Bacon. All rights reserved, DACS 2015. Photo: Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd

Leaf from book Rembrandt’s Selbsbildnisse, by Wilhelm Pinder. RM98F108:33. Collection: Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane. ©The Estate of Francis Bacon All rights reserved, DACS 2015. Photo: Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd

Rembrandt van Rijn, Self Portrait, circa 1659. Musée Granet, Aix-en-Provence

Rembrandt van Rijn, Self Portrait, circa 1665. Iveagh Bequest, Kenwood House, London Image: © English Heritage Photo Library / Bridgeman Images

Exhibition displays together for the first time Man Ray’s photographs and paintings with the mathematical objects that inspired them

Mots-clefs

Aline et Valcour, c.1900, Julius Caesar, King Lear, Main Ray, Man Ray, Mannequin with Cone and Sphere, Mathetical Object, Merry Wives of Windsor

Man Ray, Julius Caesar (1948). The Rosalind & Melvin Jacobs Collection, New York. © Man Ray Trust / Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY / ADAGP, Paris 2014

Washington, D.C.—On February 7, 2015, The Phillips Collection introduces Man Ray—Human Equations: A Journey from Mathematics to Shakespeare, an exhibition exploring the intersection of art and science that defined a significant component of modern art on both sides of the Atlantic at the beginning of the 20th century. Highlighting the multimedia work of the legendary Surrealist artist, Man Ray—Human Equations is on view through May 10, 2015.

Man Ray, MATHEMATICAL OBJECT, Real Part of the Function w=e  (c. 1900). Brill-Schilling Collection. Institut Henri Poincaré, Paris. Photo: Elie Posner

Working in Hollywood in the late 1940s, Man Ray (American, 1890–1976) created his Shakespearean Equations, a series of paintings that he considered to be the apogee of his creative vision. Drawing upon photographs of 19th-century mathematical models he made in the 1930s, the series was a culmination of 15 years of multimedia exploration. Featuring more than 125 works, Man Ray—Human Equations displays side-by-side for the first time the original plaster, wood, papier-mâché, and string models from the Institut Henri Poincaré (IHP) in Paris, Man Ray’s inventive photographs of these unusual forms, and the series of Shakespearean Equations paintings they inspired.

Man Ray, Merry Wives of Windsor (1948). Private Collection, Courtesy Fondazione Marconi, Milan. © Man Ray Trust / Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY / ADAGP, Paris 2015

“Although nearly every significant Man Ray exhibition since 1948 has included at least one of the Shakespearean Equations, no publication or exhibition has ever brought all three components together for an in-depth study,” says exhibition curator Wendy Grossman. “In fact, Man Ray never witnessed the triangle of mathematical object, photograph, and painting displayed as an ensemble. Placed in context with his other paintings, photographs, and objects, these works illustrate the artist’s proclivity to create art across media that objectifies the body and humanizes the object, transforming everyday materials into novel forms of creative expression.”

Man Ray, MATHEMATICAL OBJECT. Imaginary and Real Part of the Derivative of the Weierstrass ℘–Function (c. 1900). Brill-Schilling Collection. Institut Henri Poincaré, Paris. Photo: Elie Posner

The exhibition’s diverse works—including 70 photographs, 25 paintings, eight assemblages or modified “readymades,” and 25 original mathematical models—juxtapose Man Ray’s Surrealistinspired photographs of mathematical models and the associated Shakespearean Equations paintings within the larger context of the role of the object in the artist’s work. This is evidenced by other canvases, photographs, and objects—both celebrated and little-known—linking his wider artistic practice with the Shakespearean Equations project and casting these accompanying works in a new light.

Man Ray, All’s Well That Ends Well(1948). Courtesy of Marion Meyer, Paris. © Man Ray Trust / Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY / ADAGP, Paris 2015

Man Ray—Human Equations sheds light on the development and appreciation of new art forms at the heart of the art/science matrix and the growing acceptance of photographs
as works of art in their own right. The exhibition investigates the journey crossing two decades and two continents that brought the artist from mathematical models to human equations and, ultimately, to the translation of Shakespeare’s plays into an amalgamation of these elements.

Man Ray, Mathematical Object (1934-35). Courtesy of Marion Meyer, Paris. © Man Ray Trust / Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY / ADAGP, Paris 2015

FROM PHOTOGRAPH TO PAINTING

In 1934, Man Ray, already established as a leader of the Dada and Surrealist movements, visited the Institut Henri Poincaré in Paris to see a collection of three-dimensional mathematical models, made in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to illustrate geometrical properties for the investigation and teaching of algebraic equations. Man Ray accepted a commission from art historian Christian Zervos to take a series of photographs in preparation for an issue of Cahiers d’Art devoted to the “Crisis of the Object.” In so doing, he transformed their appearance through innovative lighting and composition, highlighting forms that would be intriguing, dramatic, suggestive, and disturbing to the observer. His photographs exploited the viewer’s propensity to seek out readily recognizable human forms, emphasizing human and anatomical associations.

Man Ray, MATHEMATICAL OBJECT, Algebraic Surface of Degree 4 (c. 1900). Made by Joseph Caron. The Institut Henri Poincaré, Paris, France. Photo: Elie Posner

Man Ray’s photographs captivated his Surrealist colleagues and art historians and contributed to the debate regarding the importance of the Object that was becoming increasingly integral to recent developments in Surrealism. In 1936, 12 photographs were illustrated in Cahiers d’Art and his original photographs were displayed in major Surrealist exhibitions, including the International Surrealist Exhibition in London, and Fantastic Art, Dada and Surrealism at The Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Man Ray, Aline et Valcour (1950). Private Collection.

In 1937, Man Ray published La Photographie n’est pas l’Art, L’Art n’est pas de la Photographie, a manifesto that would signal his abandonment of photography as his major artistic and commercial endeavor. This new direction reflected his renewed interest in painting in France and later engagement with object-making in Hollywood. At the start of World War II, Man Ray fled France and returned to the United States, eventually settling in Hollywood in late 1940.

Man Ray, Untitled (Mannequin with Cone and Sphere) (1926). The Bluff Collection. © Man Ray Trust / Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY / ADAGP, Paris 2015

Having been forced to leave the majority of his work behind, he set about repainting some of his most emblematic Surrealist paintings of the late 1930s. Even without having his photographs of the mathematical objects in his possession, the influence of geometry and mathematics remained prominent in Man Ray’s work.

Man Ray, Main Ray (1935). The Vera and Arturo Schwarz Collection of Dada and Surrealist Art in the Israel Museum, B03.0076. 

During a brief trip to France in 1947, Man Ray retrieved much of his pre-war artistic output and shipped many works back to the United States. These included his photographs of the mathematical models that would inspire an ambitious series of new paintings, signaling a return to figurative “non-abstraction” painting. Ultimately dissatisfied by the typically Surrealist titles that André Breton suggested in 1936 for the corresponding photographs, Man Ray instead assigned the title of a celebrated play to each canvas and named the series Shakespearean Equations. Man Ray considered this series his “final realization of the mathematical equations.” Indeed, these 20 canvases arguably comprise the final important series of paintings by the artist and clearly reflect his affinities with Surrealism.

Man Ray, Shakespearean Equation, King Lear, 1948. Oil on canvas, 18 1/8 x 24 1/8 in. Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC. Gift of Joseph H. Hirshhorn, 1972 © Man Ray Trust / Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY / ADAGP, Paris 2015. Photography by Cathy Carver

Man Ray—Human Equations is organized by The Phillips Collection and The Israel Museum, Jerusalem. The exhibition will also be on view at the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen, June 11–September 20, 2015, followed by The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, October 20, 2015–January 23, 2016.

« La couleur et moi. Augusto Giacometti » au Kunstmuseum Bern

Mots-clefs

Adolf Hoelzel, Augusto Giacometti, Jerry Zeniuk, Kunstmuseum Bern

Augusto Giacometti, Selbstbildnis, 1910. Öl auf Leinwand, 41 x 31 cm. Bündner Kunstmuseum Chur © Bündner Kunstmuseum Chur / Erbengemeinschaft Nachlass Augusto Giacometti

BERNE – Le peintre suisse Augusto Giacometti (1877–1947) fit de la couleur le moteur de création de sa peinture. L’exposition présente un panorama de l’œuvre de ce pionnier de l’abstraction tout entière magnifiée par la couleur. Elle réunit près de 130 œuvresprovenant de musées prestigieux, suisses et étrangers, de collections privées, dont les tableaux sont exposés ici pour la première fois, et de la collection du musée.

Toute l’oeuvre picturale d’Augusto Giacometti repose sur son exploration de la couleur comme moyen d’expression et comme outil de création. Ce maître de la couleur montra dès ses premières oeuvres, où se lit encore l’influence de l’Art nouveau, un indéniable talent de coloriste. C’est finalement en pionnier de l’abstraction qu’il achèvera son parcours.

Une dynastie de peintres de la vallée de Bregaglia
Augusto Giacometti appartenait à la célèbre dynastie de peintres originaire du village de Stampa du Val Bregaglia. Il était cousin au deuxième degré de Giovanni Giacometti, le père d’Alberto Giacometti. Giovanni se forma à Munich, Augusto à l’Ecole d’arts appliqués de Zurich. Tandis que Giovanni, de neuf ans l’aîné d’Augusto, revint dans le Val Bregaglia après ses études et y oeuvra sa vie durant, Augusto suivit une autre voie : après des années parisiennes d’une grande fécondité, il travailla à Florence jusqu’à la Première Guerre mondiale et s’établit pour finir à Zurich. Son village natal jouera cependant un rôle essentiel dans sa peinture jusque dans les dernières années.

Un peintre suisse hors tendances de dimension européenne
Réunissant près de cent trente peintures, l’exposition présente un panorama de l’oeuvre de Giacometti où toutes les périodes de création de ce virtuose de la couleur sont représentées, des oeuvres abstraites pionnières aux natures mortes magnifiées de couleurs radieuses et aux peintures de paysage et de ville de l’oeuvre tardive. Ce panorama inclut de surcroît les créations de vitraux où la lumière et la couleur se manifestent dans leur plus parfaite authenticité : les vitraux de la cathédrale de Zurich y sont notamment filmés en webcam au coeur de l’exposition. Enfin, le dialogue dans l’exposition de cette oeuvre inclassable avec celles d’autres artistes de la couleur, de Paul Cézanne à Jerry Zeniuk, atteste la dimension incontestablement européenne de la peinture de Giacometti.

Des prêteurs de renom et des oeuvres exposées pour la première fois
Les expositions monographiques dédiées aux artistes suisses de la période moderne sont une tradition bien établie au Musée des Beaux-Arts de Berne. Durant ces dernières années, on a pu y admirer, parmi d’autres, des expositions de Giovanni Giacometti, Ferdinand Hodler, Otto Nebel, Meret Oppenheim et Félix Vallotton. Prenant pour point de départ les oeuvres de la collection du musée, la présente exposition d’Augusto Giacometti réunit des oeuvres en provenance de musées suisses de renom, tels que le Musée des Beaux-Arts des Grisons et le Kunsthaus de Zurich, mais aussi du Museum of Modern Art de New York. Nombre des tableaux appartenant aux collectionneurs privés connaissent ici leur première exposition publique et leur première publication dans un catalogue qui contient par ailleurs des éléments inédits sur l’oeuvre et la vie de Giacometti. Y est notamment reproduit le manuscrit original de la conférence radiophonique « Die Farbe und ich » (La couleur et moi) dans laquelle Giacometti exposa en 1933 les grandes orientations de sa réflexion sur les lois et les possibilités de la couleur.

Augusto Giacometti, Selbstbildnis, 1922. Öl auf Leinwand, 41,5 x 35,7 cm. Stiftung für Kunst, Kultur und Geschichte, Winterthur © Erbengemeinschaft Nachlass Augusto Giacometti

BERN.- The Swiss painter Augusto Giacometti (1877–1947) made color the focus of his art. In a magnificent display of color with some 130 exhibits, the Kunstmuseum Bern is mounting an overview of the work of this pioneer of abstraction. On show are loans from leading Swiss and international museums, artworks from private collections that have never been on public view before, as well as pieces from the Kunstmuseum Bern Collection.

The real focus of Augusto Giacometti’s art is his preoccupation with color as a medium for expression and design. His talent for colors is very conspicuous already in his early works, which were still largely art nouveau in style. And this master of color was to ultimately become a pioneer of abstraction in art.

A Dynasty of Artists from Val Bregaglia
Augusto Giacometti is one of the famous Giacometti dynasty of artists from Stampa Village in Val Bregaglia. Alberto Giacometti’s father, Giovanni Giacometti, was a second cousin. Giovanni completed his artist’s training in Munich, while Augusto studied at the College of Applied Arts in Zurich. Nine years his senior, Giovanni returned to Val Bregaglia after completing his studies and worked there for the rest of his life, whereas Augusto pursued a very different artistic career. After spending pivotal years in Paris, he worked in Florence until the First World War and then moved to Zurich. However, his home village played a key role in his art as a motif right into his late years.

An Independent Swiss Painter of European Importance
The show is mounting some 130 exhibits, presenting an overview of all the phases of Augusto Giacometti’s artistic career. The museum is showing his trail-blazing pieces of abstraction as well as the magnificently colored flower still lifes, landscapes and cityscapes executed by the master of color later on in his career. And, not least, the exhibition is bringing Giacometti’s glass-window painting as a direct and pure medium for handling light and color. Among other pieces, Giacometti’s glass windows from the “great minster,” Grossmuenster Zurich, are on show via livestream video. The presentation also palpably conveys the message of how important Giacometti was as a painter in a pan-European context. The show additionally highlights the independent path he pursued in art by comparing it to a selection of works by other masters of color, ranging from Paul Cézanne to Jerry Zeniuk.

Renowned Lenders and Never-yet-been-shown Works
The Kunstmuseum Bern cultivates a long tradition of monographic exhibitions of modernist Swiss artists of both genders. In the same vein they have presented a whole series of solo exhibitions in the last years for artists such as Giovanni Giacometti, Ferdinand Hodler, Otto Nebel, Meret Oppenheim and Félix Vallotton. Taking works from their own collection as the basis, they were able to enhance this selection with loans not only from leading Swiss museums, such as the Buendner Kunstmuseum and the Kunsthaus Zurich, but also the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Many of the pieces from private collections have never been on show to the general public before. They too have been reproduced for the first time in the catalogue, which likewise contains the latest findings in scholarly research on the life and work of Augusto Giacometti. For example, it is publishing the original manuscript for Giacometti’s radio lecture that was entitled “Color and I”, wherein, in 1933, the artist formulated his reflections on the fundamental principles and the potential of color.

Augusto Giacometti, Selbstbildnis, 1910. Öl auf Leinwand, 41 x 31 cm. Bündner Kunstmuseum Chur © Bündner Kunstmuseum Chur / Erbengemeinschaft Nachlass Augusto Giacometti

Augusto Giacometti, Regenbogen (1916). Öl auf Leinwand, 132 x 150 cm. Kunstmuseum Bern © Erbengemeinschaft Nachlass Augusto Giacometti)

Augusto Giacometti, Selbstbildnis, 1910. Öl auf Leinwand, 41 x 31 cm. Bündner Kunstmuseum Chur © Bündner Kunstmuseum Chur / Erbengemeinschaft Nachlass Augusto Giacometti

Augusto Giacometti, Selbstbildnis, 1910. Öl auf Leinwand, 41 x 31 cm. Bündner Kunstmuseum Chur  © Bündner Kunstmuseum Chur / Erbengemeinschaft Nachlass Augusto Giacometti

Augusto Giacometti, Die Bar Olympia, 1928. Öl auf Leinwand, 170 x 222,5 cm. Legat des Künstlers © Bündner Kunstmuseum Chur © Erbengemeinschaft Nachlass Augusto Giacometti

Augusto Giacometti, Abstraction after a picture by Giotto, 1903 © Grisons Art Museum and Heritage Community © Estate Augusto Giacometti

Augusto Giacometti, Sommernacht, 1917. Öl auf Leinwand, 67,2 x 65 cm. The Museum of Modern Art, New York, Louise Reinhardt Smith Fund, 1967 © Erbengemeinschaft Nachlass Augusto Giacometti

Augusto Giacometti,  Portrait of Felix Moeschlin, 1919  © Community Heritage Estate Augusto Giacometti

Augusto Giacometti, Selbstbildnis, 1910. Öl auf Leinwand, 41 x 31 cm © Bündner Kunstmuseum Chur © Erbengemeinschaft Nachlass Augusto Giacometti

Augusto Giacometti, Landschaft (Baum), 1911. Öl auf Leinwand, 70 x 69 cm. Privatbesitz © Erbengemeinschaft Nachlass Augusto Giacometti

Adolf Hoelzel, Abstraktion, rond 1912, 50,5×40,7 cm, olieverf op karton

Jerry Zeniuk, Untitled Number 329, 2013. Öl auf Leinwand, 160 x 160 cm Besitz des Künstlers. Courtesy Bernhard Knaus Fine Art, Frankfurt

Master Drawings in New York announces highlights at the 2015 edition

Mots-clefs

Abromson Ltd, Aert Schouman, Barbara Mathes Gallery, Claudio Bravo, Crispian Riley-Smith Fine Arts Ltd, Daniel Dumonstier, David Tunick, Diana at her Bath, Dionysius Aeropagites, Edward Lear, Elena Climent, Emil Nolde, Fernand Léger, Francesco Fontebasso, Francis Towne, Gaetano Gandolfi, Giorgio Morandi, Giovanni Battista Baiardo, Giovanni Costetti, il Guercino, Indian Elephant, Jacobus van Looy, James Ward, Jan Dibbets, Joan Miró, Joseph Mallord William Turner, Josephus Augustus Knip, Joshua Reynolds, L’Antiquaire and The Connoisseur, Leonard Hutton Galleries, Les Constructeurs, Les Enluminures, Lowell Libson, Margot Gordon Fine Arts, Martyn Gregory, Mary-Anne Martin Fine Art, Mattia e Maria Novella Romano, Merce Cunningham, Mia N Weiner, Mireille Mosler, Nicolaas Struyk, Nicolas II Huet, Nissman, Octavianus Monfort, Olivetan Master, Pandora Old Masters, Pierre Bonnard, Pietro Antonio Novelli, Raphaël, Robert Rauschenberg, Samuel Palmer, Sigrid Freundorfer Fine Art, Stephen Ongpin Fine Art, The Cedars of Lebanon, Thomas Gainsborough, Van Doren Waxter

Joshua Reynolds, Dionysius Aeropagites. Oil on canvas, 30 x 25 inches, circa 1772. Photo: Courtesy of Lowell Libson.

NEW YORK, NY.- The tenth edition of Master Drawings in New York January 24 – February 1, 2015 promises to be the best ever. More than thirty of the world’s leading dealers are coming to New York City to offer for sale master art works in pencil, pen and ink, chalk and charcoal, as well as oil on paper sketches and watercolours, created by iconic artists working in the 16th to 21st centuries. Each exhibition is hosted by an expert specialist and many works on offer are newly discovered or have not been seen on the market in decades, if at all.

In addition, Margot Gordon and Crispian Riley-Smith, co-founders of Master Drawings in New York, announced that John Marciari, the new head of the Department of Drawings and Prints at the Morgan Library & Museum in New York, will provide the introduction for the 2015 Master Drawings in New York brochure.

Highlights at the 2015 edition of Master Drawings in New York include….

A major rediscovered masterpiece by Sir Joshua Reynolds, listed as missing since 1905, and a star attraction at the exhibition of London gallery LOWELL LIBSON LTD. “’Dionysius Aeropagites’ has only been known from an 18th century engraving,” according to Libson. It depicts Reynolds’ favorite model, a street mender from York, George White. The painting perfectly communicates Reynolds’s ambitions as a history painter shortly after the founding of the Royal Academy.” Painted in emulation of an Italian old master, the powerful head was published shortly after its completion and given the title identifying the sitter as a follower of St. Paul. Libson is also featuring works by William Blake, John Singleton Copley, Thomas Jones, Samuel Palmer, Simeon Solomon and a fascinating group of British portrait drawings of the 1830s and 1840s depicting Queen Victoria, Talleyrand, Chopin and Paganini. Plus Sir Thomas Lawrence’s portrait of the Duke of Wellington’s nieces and J.M.W. Turner’s Alpine tour watercolor, The Val d’Aosta looking towards Sallances.

Thomas Gainsborough RA (1727-1788), A Family Outside a Cottage Door, circa 1775-6. Pen and ink, grey and pink washes over pencil, 7⅝ x 9 ¾ in (194 x 247 mm). Photo: Courtesy of Lowell Libson.

Edward Lear (1812 – 1888), The Cedars of Lebanon. Inscribed, dated and numbered: ‘The Cedars / Lebanon / 20 . 21 May 1858 (193)’, pencil, pen and ink and watercolour, (14 ¾ x 21 ¼ in) 375 x 540 mm. Photo: Courtesy of Lowell Libson.

Also recently discovered is a magnificent Federico Zuccari drawing from an important private collection that is said to be unique. It is likely a preparatory sketch for the Escorial in Madrid, and is being offered at the exhibition of Italian dealers Mattia e Maria Novella Romano. They also are featuring a Vincenzo Gemito Portrait of a Young Girl from a private Naples collection.

Francesco Salghetti Drioli (1811 – 1877), Hector reproaches Paride. Pen and brown ink, brown wash, heightened with white, on paper, signed and dated ‘F. Salghetti f.1831 Roma’, 9 ¾ x 13 ¼ in (236 x 336 mm). Photo: Courtesy of Mattia e Maria Novella Romano

Returning exhibitor David Tunick is showing a major gouache by Fernand Leger, Les Constructeurs of 1950, publicly shown only once before at the Grand Palais in Paris in 1971. The definitive study for the painting of the same subject in the Sonja Henie-Onstad Art Centre Museum in Oslo, it last was on the market in 1980. Tunick says, “We were very pleased that the executors of the estate handling the Leger chose to go with us instead of the auction route.”

Fernand Léger, Les Constructeurs, 1950. Study for painting in Oslo museum. Gouache and pencil, 369 x 458mm. Photo: Courtesy of David Tunick.

Gunther Gerzso’s “Surrealist Sketchbook” is among the star attractions at Mary-Anne Martin Fine Art. The hardcover sketchbook is a work from the artist’s estate and has never before been exhibited. It includes 55 original drawings mostly done in the carbon transfer technique some with frottage and many augmented with pen, India ink and colored pencils. Some are experimental, reminiscent of Miro and Matta, others depict pre-Columbian clay fertility figures in Surrealist settings. Plus seven sketches related to well-known paintings from his Surrealist period, such as a portrait of Benjamin Peret. Martin also is showing a group of drawings by Frida Kahlo made between 1928-1946 including an academic study of a Greek Mask, two political drawings representing Kahlo’s “redesigns” of the Statue of Liberty, and a tender portrait of “Tonito” Frida’s nephew, Antonio Kahlo, drawn c1940.

Elena Climent, Mexican, b. 1955, Alebrije Cat in Oaxaca, 8 x 10 3/16 inches (image), iPad drawing digitally printed on rag paper, 2012. Photo: Courtesy of Mary-Anne Martin Fine Art

Elena Climent, Mexican, b. 1955, Tin Cactus and Old Leaves, 8 x 11 inches (image), iPad drawing digitally printed on rag paper, 2012. Photo: Courtesy of Mary-Anne Martin Fine Art

A small group of noteworthy David Cox watercolours Martyn Gregory is bringing to New York includes a very large one that is completely fresh to the market. Gregory says it is interesting as it is made on several sheets of the “Scotch” paper Cox used later in his career, which he had carefully pieced together to make a much larger sheet. It is an interesting reworking of watercolour of one of Cox’s favorite subjects Betwys-y-Coed in North Wales. Gregory is also showing 18th and 19th century British watercolours including Richard Parkes Bonington’s The Ruins of Chateau d’Harcourt near Lillebonne, a pencil and watercolour dating to 1821-22 when Bonington made his first tour of Normandy, a 1793 watercolour by British artist William Alexander showing Chinese Barges of the first British embassy preparing to pass under a bridge, led in 1792-4 by Lord Macartney, and a highly detailed wash drawing, John Hood’s The East Indiaman Essex in three positions.

James Ward, RA (1769-1859), Study of two stags’ heads. Oil over pencil on paper. Signed in monogram ‘JWD. RA’, 10 ⅞ x 17⅜ in (275 x 440 mm). Photo: Courtesy of Martyn Gregory

Joseph Mallord William Turner, RA (1775-1851), A windmill with cottage and wagons. Pencil and watercolor, 7 x 9 ¼ inches (178 x 235 mm). Photo: Courtesy of Martyn Gregory

Frist time exhibitor at MDNY, Eric Gillis Fine Art, is showing a top-quality selection of 19TH century French drawings including an outstanding Seurat work of 1881-82 that once belonged to Paul Signac, The Reader, and a very rare group of drawings from the finest late 19th century Belgian artists, including examples of symbolism and expressionism. Exceptional among these are works by Leon Spilliaert, such as Bird of Prey, and Henry van de Velde, whose Two Haymaker Women which will be among the highlights.

Dalva Brothers are also exhibiting at MDNY for the first time showing a collection of small scale graphite drawings by William Trost Richards (1833-1905) depicting plant studies, rocky shorelines and pastoral scenes from the 1850s through the 1860s, among them views of Atlantic City and Maine.

talian drawings by Domenico Piola and Orazio Samacchini take center stage at Christopher Bishop’s exhibition. Piola, a Genovese artist of the 17th century, drew Angels with Doves presumably for a fresco in the Palazzo Rosso in Genoa. Bishop says The Adoration of the Magi by Orazio Samachini, the late 16th century Bolognese artist, is an exciting find as it is a completely unknown drawing preparatory for a painting which was recently discovered and auctioned off at the Dorotheum in Munich.

Pietro Antonio Novelli (1729-1804), Diana at her Bath. Pen and grey washes, 11 1/4 x 8 1/8 in (287 x 205 mm). Photo: Courtesy of Christopher Bishop Fine Art

Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, Called il Guercino (1591-1666), Study of a Woman with a Hand held to her Breast. Brown ink and brown washes, 5 11/16 x 6 1/2 inches (145 x 165 mm). Photo: Courtesy of Christopher Bishop Fine Art

Pandora Old Masters is showing interesting political drawings by Giovanni Costetti (1874-1949) of Hitler and Molotov. The recto, The Mask, from 1939, shows them when they signed the non-aggression pact, and the verso, The Face, from 1941, portrays Hitler and Molotov when the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union.

Giovanni Costetti (Reggio Emilia 1874 – 1949 Settignano), La Maschera e il Volto (The Mask and the Face) [recto]- Hitler and Molotov [verso]. Colored chalks and watercolor on japanese paper. Inscribed and dated in black chalk on the recto “1939 NON INTERVENZIONE” and “LA MASCHERA E”. Inscribed and dated in black chalk on the verso “1941 IL VOLTO”. 250 x 370 mm (9 13/16 x 14 9/16 inches). Photo: Courtesy of Pandora Old Masters

Among important 20th century artists being featured at the BARBARA MATHES gallery, you will see Agostino Bonalumi’s 1971 Progretto, a mixed media on paper, and Sophie Taeuber-Arp’s Badnes, Cercles et Lignes, dating to 1932.

Robert Rauschenberg (1925-2008), Spring Clearance, 1961. Solvent transfer, ink, gouache, and graphite on Strathmore paper, signed and dated on verso: Rauschenberg 1961, 23 x 29 in (584 x 737 mm). Photo: Courtesy of Barbara Mathes Gallery

Jan Dibbets (b. 1941), Wien, 1990-91.Color photo, watercolor on paper on cardboard, signed, titled, and dated on verso: Jan Dibbets, “Wien,” 1990/91, 24 x 24 in (610 x 610 mm). Photo: Courtesy of Barbara Mathes Gallery

London specialist Stephen Ongpin Fine Art always manages to acquire new-to-the-market works by the most iconic names in fine art including Edgar Degas, Thomas Gainsborough, Paul Klee, Henri Matisse, Edvard Munch, Signac, Thiebaud and Odile Redon. This year’s exhibition won’t disappoint as Ongpin is showing Gainsborough’s Travellers Passing Through A Village, Klee’s Night impression of a Southern Town, Degas’s A Seated Young Woman Plaiting her Hair, Matisse’s Standing Female Nude, Munch’s Rocks on the Edge of a Sea, Paul Signac’s Still Life with a Bowl of Fruit, Wayne Thiebaud’s Ice Cream Cone and Redon’s A Face in the Window.

Nicolas II Huet (c.1770-1828), An Indian Elephant. Pen and brown ink and watercolour, with touches of gouache on vellum laid down on board. Signed and dated huet fils 1810 at the lower right. 312 x 446 mm. (12 ¼ x 17⅝ in.). Photo: Courtesy of Stephen Ongpin Fine Art

Claudio Bravo (1936-2011), A Seated Man Seen from Behind. Pastel on buff paper. Signed and dated ‘CLAUDIO BRAVO / MCMLXXXIII’ in red chalk at the upper right. 381 x 300 mm. Photo: Courtesy of Stephen Ongpin Fine Art

New exhibitor PRPH Rare Books is offering an album of 70 uncensored 16th century drawings after Michelangelo’s Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel. The original figures depict genitalia and other “lewd” elements which were later censored and painted over at the Church’s direction. These were generally unknown until the restoration of the work in 1980-84. They are bound in 18th century calf and were in the collection of Count Leopold Cicognara (1767-1834), the leading Italian art historian of his time. PRPH is also showing a highly important complete set of 50 engraved fortune telling cards (Northern Italy 1465) by the Master of the ‘Mantegna’ Tarocchi – E-series, rebound in 18th century cartonnato.

Sigrid Freundorfer Fine Art is showing a wonderful selection of contemporary watercolour, gouache and graphite drawings by American artist Scott Kelley (b. 1963) taken from the Legends of Gluskap, the cultural hero of the Wabanaki the five tribes of Maine, where Kelley lived. His heartfelt animal depictions of bears, rabbits, beavers and deer portray Gluskap’s relationship with animals and their importance to mankind and his teachings on how to live together with nature.

Merce Cunningham (1919-2009), Untitled (Grasshopper), 1998. Ink and colored pencil, 9 x 12 in. (230 x 305 mm.). Photo: Courtesy of Sigrid Freundorfer Fine Art

Merce Cunningham (1919-2009), Untitled (Grey Bird), 1998. Ink and colored pencil on paper, 12 x 9 in (305 x 230 mm.). Signed lower center. Photo: Courtesy of Sigrid Freundorfer Fine Art

London dealer Guy Peppiatt brings over wonderful British works including artworks by one of the most important British topographical artists of the late 18th century, Edward Dayes, whose Carlsbrooke Castle Isle of Wight, dating to 1788, is featured at MDNY. Also featured is a William Callow R.W.S. watercolour A Spring Day at Florence from San Miniato, dating to 1882, and Thomas Rowlandson’s pen, ink and watercolour, The Mid-day Rest.

Samuel Palmer (1805-1881), View on the Devon Coast. Watercolour over pencil heightened with touches of bodycolour, 7 ¼ by 10 ½ in. (187 x 269 mm). Photo: Courtesy of Guy Peppiatt

Francis Towne (1740-1816), Ludlow Castle, Shropshire. Signed lower left: F. Towne/delt. 1777/no 46 and inscribed verso: a view of Ludlow Castle, Shropshire./ Drawn on the spot/ by/ Francis Towne July 21st 1777. Pen and grey ink and watercolour on five sheets of paper joined on original washline mount, 11 ¾ by 22 ¼ in. (30 x 57 mm). Photo: Courtesy of Guy Peppiatt

Pia Gallo is offering a Salvator Rosa (1615-1673) Study for the Figure of Scylla in pen ink and wash that is a study for the painting Glaucus and Scylla at the Brussels Musee des Beaux Arts. The drawing that was once owned by Queen Christina of Sweden. A second artwork offered shows an 1800 Italian school hand painted fan shaped gouache meant to be mounted as a fan, Veduta del Sepolcro della Sacerdotessa Mammia a Pompejano.

New York dealer L’Antiquaire and The Connoisseur is showing Daniel Dumonstier’s (1574-1646) black chalk and pastel A Portrait of a Young Woman in a Ruffled Collar. Dumonstier retained his celebrity undertaking portraits under the reigns of Henry IV and Louis XII. He was renowned for his prodigious memory and gallant and humorous repartee. He was the appointed painter to King Louis XIII who granted him land and titles.

Daniel Dumonstier (1574–1646), A Portrait of a Young Woman in a Ruffled Collar. Medium: Black chalk and pastel, 10 ¼ x 7⅝ in. (260 x 192 mm). Photo: Courtesy of L’Antiquaire and The Connoisseur

Octavianus Monfort (active in Turin, 2nd half 17th century), Still life with pomegranate, apple, peach, pears, plums and gourd; with carnation and hyacinths, resting atop a ledge. Tempera on parchment, 8 x 9½ in. (204 x 242 mm.). Photo: Courtesy of L’Antiquaire and The Connoisseur

Crispian Riley-Smith of London has titled his exhibition, “Flights of Fancy: Birds and Animals by Aert Schouman and his contemporaries in 18th century Holland.” On view are six Aert Schouman watercolours, including five from the collection of the late Lord Fairhaven, and four watercolours by Abraham Meertens. Plus master drawings by Bandini, Benso Hackert, Zuccarelli and Van Goyen.

Gaetano Gandolfi (1734-1802), A Sheet of studies of Six Fantastical Heads, circa 1780s. Pen and brown ink on paper, 213 x 211mm. (8½ x 8⅜ in). Photo: Courtesy of Crispian Riley-Smith Fine Arts Ltd

Aert Schouman (1710-1792), A Black tailed Godwit [Limosa Melanura]. Pencil, pen and ink and watercolour and gum arabic, 357 x 247 mm. (14 x 9 ¾ in.). Photo: Courtesy of Crispian Riley-Smith Fine Arts Ltd

Margot Gordon Fine Arts is staging a show titled “Five Centuries of Faces and Figures.

Raffaello Sanzio, called Raphael (1483-1520), Two Putti Supporting a Beam or a Plaque, circa 1517/18. Pen and brown ink, over black chalk, 4 1/2 x 2 3/4 in (114 x 69 mm). Photo: Courtesy of Margot Gordon Fine Arts

Mia Weiner is showing selection of important works by Gaetano Gandolfi, including Studies of Two Angels for L’Immacalota Concezione, a lovely double sketch preparatory for the flanking angels in the 1780 altarpiece “Immaculate Conception” in S.M. Lambarun Coeli. She also offers an intriguing red chalk drawing by a student of the Carracci closest in technique to Annibale, drawing a fellow student as he works from model sheets of facial features made by Agostino. Plus 19th century landscape oil sketches by Northern European artists including Filippo Lauri’s Allegorical Figures Frolicking in the Flowers, Daniel Israel’s Portrait of a Bearded Man, Jan Van Kessel’s Butterfly, Moth, Rose and Spring of Gooseberries watercolour, Salvator Rosa’s Study of a River God for The Dream of Aeneas,”, a study for the same figure in a painting at the Metropolitan Museum and Carl Friedrich Heinrich Werner’s watercolour, A Beautiful Water Carrier which Weiner says is a stunning example of the artist’s work.

Attributed to Giovanni Battista Baiardo (circa 1620–1657), Christ Restoring the Heart of St. Catherine of Siena, The Blessed Ludovica Albertoni. Pen and brown ink , brush and wash, 15 ½ x 10 ¼ in. (394 x 261 mm.). Photo: Courtesy of Mia N Weiner

Josephus Augustus Knip (1777 – 1847), Landscape with Ruins of a Monastery by a River. Signed Lower left ‘J.A.Knip’ and inscribed by the artist, pencil under drawing, pen and grey ink, brush and watercolour, 14⅞ x 20 in. (377 x 500 mm.). Photo: Courtesy of Mia N Weiner

VAN DOREN WAXTER exhibition is titled Emil Nolde and Die Brucke and includes works by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Emil Nolde. Nolde’s Meer, also titled Welle, dates to 1926 and Kirchner’s 1912 watercolour and pencil is titled Gerda mit Tanzer.

Emil Nolde (1867-1956), Young Woman with a Big Hat. Watercolour on paper, 5⅜ x 3⅞ inches (137 x 99 mm). Photo: Courtesy of Van Doren Waxter

Leonard Hutton galleries showing Fernand Leger study for“La Gare,” a 1918 pencil on paper.

Joan Miró (1893-1983), Le numéro de music hall, 10 November 1938. Gouache and pencil on cardboard, 10 x 7 ½ in (254 x 191 mm). Photo: Courtesy of Leonard Hutton Galleries

Mireille Mosler is showing artworks spanning five centuries including works by Zacharias Blijhooft, Pieter Holsteyn II, Francois Bonvin, John Constable, Jules Bastien-Lepage, Willem van den Berg, Leo Gestel, Jan Sluyters, Jan Toorop and Jacobus van Looy. The earliest 17th century drawings exhibited are a group of 15 small animals and insects that once belonged to a larger album in the possession of the Earl of Arundel 1585-1648 known as “The Collector Earl.” John Constable’s 1810 “En plein air” East Bergholt depicts the surroundings where he grew up. A Francois Bonvin Study for Le Couvreur tombe dating to 1877 is a recently rediscovered study of a now lost important Salon painting of the same year.

Jacobus van Looy (1855- 1930), A Water Carrier in Tangier. Signed ‘Jac.v. Looy’. Pastel on paper, 320 by 250 mm. Photo: Courtesy of Mireille Mosler

Nicolaas Struyk (1686-1769), Lizards and crustaceans. Bodycolor and grey wash on paper, 380 by 262 mm. Photo: Courtesy of Mireille Mosler

An Antonio Campi (1522-1587) chalk drawing of a Head of a Child is a standout at Nissman-Abromson Ltd. exhibition.

Francesco Fontebasso (1707 – 1769), Study of Heads. Pen and brown ink with umber and brown washes and traces of red chalk. 8 x 10¼ in. (204 x 260 mm.). Photo: Courtesy of Nissman, Abromson Ltd

Giorgio Morandi (Bologna 1890 – 1964 Bologna), Still Life. Graphite. Signed: Morandi / 1941. 6 3/8 x 8 5/8 in. (163 x 220 mm.). Photo: Courtesy of Nissman, Abromson Ltd

Jill Newhouse gallery is showing a selection of works by Georg Sand, Pierre Bonnard, and others. Only one other similar study for Bonnard’s 1893 Study for Conversation is known and it is in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Newhouse says the sense of flattened space and perspective for which Bonnard is known is evident in this drawing, and the entire scene is a whirl of tight, energetic marks. Bonnard created the lithograph with the intent of having it published in the weekly satirical magazine L’Escarmouche but the magazine was only published from November 1893 to January 1894. On the verso of the present drawing appear studies of a robust stranding man and a woman singing, figures which evoke the theater and cabaret performances that Bonnard loved to depict. The George Sand watercolor and collage dates to 1855 and is titled Aristolocha Pistolochia. Sand was a watercolorist as well as a writer, much in the same vein as Victor Hugo.

Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947), Woman Painting, 1944. Pencil on paper, signed lower center, 6 ⅞ × 5¼ in (176 × 132 mm). Photo: Courtesy of Jill Newhouse gallery

Les Enluminures is offering a full page frontispiece miniature showing St. Jerome giving his epistle to a messenger, in French. Jerome, Letter LIV to Furia, on the Duty of Remaining a Widow, in the translation by Charles Bronin, has one full-page miniature. It dates to 1500-1510. Also being exhibited is Catherine D’Amboise Complaint of the Fainting Lady against Fortune with 8 large miniatures by the artist of Paris, Mazarine, dating to 1525-30; the Francois Fortin Hours Use of Lisieux and Rouen in Latin and French with 11 miniatures, by a follower of the Master of the Echevinage of Rouen, dating to 1480; and a Noted German Hymnal, Nonnenarbeitern Nuns’ Work, dating to 1460-80, in Latin with a historiated initial R.

Italy, Lombardy [Santa Maria di Monte Oliveto di Baggio near Milan?], c. 1439-1447, Olivetan Master (Frater Jeronimus?), detail from f. 9v, Monks singing the Office; Decorated Initial A[sperges me…]. Gradual, (Use of the Olivetan Benedictines), in Latin, illuminated manuscript on parchment, 23 1/2 x 17 1/8 in. (595 x 435 mm). Photo: Courtesy of Les Enluminures

France, Paris, c. 1320-1330, 169v, The Ascension of Christ, St Taurin Missal (Use of the Benedictines). In Latin and French, illuminated manuscript on parchment, 15 large historiated initials by an artist in the circle of Jean Pucelle, signed by the scribe Jean de Massingy, 8 5/8 x 6 1/4 in. (225 x 157 mm). Photo: Courtesy of Les Enluminures

Founded in 2006 as a way to draw upon and buttress the presence of collectors and museum officials during the important January art-buying events, including the Old Master auctions and The Winter Antiques Show, MASTER DRAWINGS IN NEW YORK has become an important part of the winter art scene in its own right, attracting the most influential dealers not only in New York but in England, France, Italy, Germany and Spain who each stage a themed exhibition in more than two dozen Upper East Side galleries between East 63rd and 93rd Streets.

Master Drawings in New York has received critical acclaim for orchestrating a showcase for fine art works that cut across the full range of styles, centuries, mediums and genres, and for providing greater accessibility to fine art at price points that range from several thousand dollars to several million.

New York Old Masters specialist Margot Gordon, who organized the first Master Drawings in New York event ten years ago says, “We are delighted to see how well known Master Drawings week has become as it has matured, with probably the most diverse array of representative artworks created between the sixteenth and twentieth centuries presented in both a lively and informative manner.

London drawings dealer Crispian Riley-Smith coordinates New York’s week-long event as well as its sister event during London Art Week each July. He says, “By agreeing to coordinate their exhibitions during a single week in galleries on New York’s Upper East Side, the world’s most respected dealers in master drawings have made it easier for both private and institutional clients to see the newest items on the market from the very top tier of specialists. For individuals interested in learning more about the quality and range of drawings on offer, there’s simply no better way to expose yourself to the very finest examples during a single week each year.”

Over the years both founders of Master Drawings in New York have seen that visitors are “surprised to see that not all our drawings date to the early centuries. We have member dealers who specialize in modern and contemporary works too. From illuminations drawn during medieval times, to preparatory studies for iconic masterworks by artists of the renown of Raphael, Titian, and Gainsborough, to sketches by Picasso and Miro, and wonderful modern and contemporary drawings. What visitors love is that they can enjoy the full range of drawing options in the course of an afternoon visiting a handful of East Side galleries. »