Displaying items by tag: post war art

Postwar public art in England is “disappearing before our eyes”, whether through wilful destruction, accidental loss, theft or sale, a heritage body has said.

Historic England is launching a campaign to raise awareness of how much art is being lost, whether metal sculptures being stolen and sold for scrap or architectural friezes being deliberately ripped down by developers.

Christie’s presents the sale of three works by Carl Andre, Sol LeWitt, and Dan Flavin from the collection of Paul Maenz to be sold in the evening sale of Post-War and Contemporary Art on November 10th. Through his gallery and the artists he represented, Paul Maenz had a profound impact on Cologne’s importance as a cultural and artistic center. Specialized in works by conceptual artists early on, the Galerie Paul Maenz Köln was instrumental in introducing avant-garde art of the 1970s and 1980s to Europe. New York and Cologne have had a decisive influence on the art world, both cities afford the kind of climate that artists value and possess intuitions that both challenge and support the art scene.

A late landscape painted by Vincent Van Gogh in Arles the year before he died, and one of the last great Suprematist paintings by Kazimir Malevich in private hands will headline Sotheby’s Impressionist and Modern art sales in New York on 5 November.

The auction house, which has led rival Christie’s in the past eight of ten sale seasons in this field, will be selling a group of ten works from a collection assembled in the 1940s and 50s by the Belgian collectors Louis and Evelyn Franck. “This is one of those fantastic post-war time-capsule collections that there are now so few of,” says Simon Shaw, the co-head of Sotheby’s worldwide Impressionist and Modern art department.

Inverleith House, Edinburgh presents the first exhibition in a UK public gallery by the great American artist John Chamberlain (1927-2011). One of the pioneers of post-war American art, Chamberlain was a key figure in the vibrant New York art scene of the 1950s and ‘60s; his innovative work in sculpture, painting and film spans six decades.

Chamberlain represents a unique link between the vivid colour palettes and frenetic energy of Abstract Expressionist painting and the truthfulness to material found in Minimalist sculpture.

Christie’s Evening Sale of Impressionist and Modern Art realized $202,608,000 (£128,721,728/ €178,022,150) with sell-through rates of 93% by lot and 99% by value. Bidders from 34 countries competed in the room and on the phone for works by Impressionist and Modern masters, including Piet Mondrian, Chaïm Soutine, Claude Monet, Pablo Picasso, Amedeo Modigliani and Fernand Léger. Bidding on Modern works was particularly active, a testament to the energy brought to the market by crossover collectors and the success of Christie’s curated week of sales spanning both Impressionist & Modern and Post-War and Contemporary categories.

Sotheby’s sold a yellow-and-blue Mark Rothko abstract from 1954 for $46.5 million on Tuesday. The following night, archrival Christie’s International hollered back by selling a rust-colored, rectangular version that Rothko painted four years later for $82 million.

Dealers said Christie’s Rothko, “No. 10,” was prized in part because its blurry brown and black hues famously matched the somber mood of the artist at that time in his career. It sold to a telephone bidder.

Who doesn’t love trying something new? In the mid-1900s a number of modern artists experimented with new types of commercial paint using it as a base layer for their paintings. Now, decades later, their paint choices are turning out to have some negative consequences.

Abstract Expressionist painters Hans Hofmann, Jackson Pollock and others took advantage of an explosion of new paints, including zinc oxide and commercial white house paints, that became available in the years following the first and second world wars.

Lucian Freud's most famous and iconic subject will be offered as the highlight of Christie’s Post-War and Contemporary sale on May 13. "Benefits Supervisor Resting" is regarded as Freud’s ultimate tour de force, a life-size masterwork in the grand historical tradition of the female nude, painted obsessively with intense scrutiny and abiding truth.

This bold and extraordinary example of the stark power of Lucian Freud’s realism reveals his unique ability to capture the reality of the human form in all its natural force. Chosen by Freud as the cover of the definitive monograph about the artist, "Benefits Supervisor Resting" was included by the artist in every major museum exhibition devoted to Freud, including Tate Britain, London, The Museum of Modern Art, New York and the recent survey "The Facts and the Truth: Lucian Freud at the National Portrait Gallery, London."

The Broad museum will open Sept. 20 as the downtown showcase for Eli and Edythe Broad's contemporary art collection, the founding couple announced Thursday. As promised, admission will be free. But it'll cost $10 to get a one-day sneak preview Feb. 15.

The opening art display in September will offer an array of greatest hits from the more than 2,000 pieces the Broads have amassed. The show will range through some 60 years of post-World War II art, arranged in "predominantly chronological" order from the 1950s to a recently acquired massive video installation created in 2012.