Displaying items by tag: postwar

The Clark Art Institute has received sixty-three Japanese color woodblock prints, dating from 1832 to 1971, from long-time Clark docent Adele Rodbell. The Rodbell Family Collection includes landscape prints spanning from the late ukiyo-e through the shin hanga and sōsaku hanga movements of the 1920s and ‘30s to postwar Japan.

Among the works are a Hokusai landscape, a number of works from Hiroshige’s series “100 Famous Views of Edo,” and the Zen architecture prints of Saitō.

Christie’s has announced that two monumental works by Andy Warhol will lead its highly anticipated Post-War and Contemporary Art Evening Sale on November 12. The silkscreen paintings, “Triple Elvis [Ferus Type]” (1963) and “Four Marlons” (1966), are expected to fetch around $70 million each. Brett Gorvy, Chairman and International Head of Post-War and Contemporary Art at Christie’s, suspects that interested buyers could try to acquire both works and keep them as a unique pair. Warhol’s current record at auction was set last November at Sotheby’s when his two-panel painting “Silver Car Crash (Double Disaster)” sold for $104.5 million.

“Triple Elvis” and “Four Marlons” are being offered for sale by the German casino company WestSpiel.

A court here on Wednesday issued a ruling that permits the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation to display art as it sees fit in the Venetian palazzo given to it by the wealthy collector Peggy Guggenheim.

In a 16-page decision, the Paris tribunal rejected legal claims made by a group of her descendants that the foundation was bound to display Guggenheim’s vast collection of modern art the way she had originally presented it in her home.

Her family — seven grandsons and great-grandsons based in France — vowed to appeal after the tribunal dismissed their demands to revoke Guggenheim’s donation to the foundation unless the displays of Cubist, Surrealist and abstract postwar art were returned to their original state without additions of contemporary works.

Brazilian customs authorities were in for a surprise on Monday. Upon inspecting a shipping container sent to Rio de Janeiro from the US, they found 20 works of contemporary art worth an estimated $4.5 million, the AP reports.

The two containers were marked as containing the belongings of a 75-year-old Brazilian woman. They had been shipped from Florida. Brazilian authorities don’t buy the front, however, alleging instead that a company was using the woman’s move to evade import and sales taxes on the artworks.

Among the 20 pieces are works by Rio de Janeiro–based artist Beatriz Milhazes and São Paulo–based street art duo Otavio and Gustavo Pandolfo (better known as Os Gêmeos). The only work on which an estimated monetary value has thus far been placed is a sculpture by noted Rio-based postwar artist Sérgio de Camargo, who died in 1990. The unidentified piece is valued at $900,000.

A self-portrait of Andy Warhol in a spiky fright wig sold for 2.9 million pounds ($4.98 million) at Phillips yesterday in London, concluding the spring auction season in Europe.

This week’s evening sales of contemporary art at Phillips, Sotheby’s (BID) and Christie’s in the U.K. capital produced a total of 202.4 million pounds, a 28 percent jump from the tally at equivalent events last year. New buyers from China and other international markets are boosting prices for top postwar and contemporary artists, as the works are being increasingly seen as strong investments.

On June 27, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York will present the exhibition “Garry Winogrand,” the first retrospective of the pioneering American photographer’s work in 25 years. Widely regarded as one of the most important photographers of the 20th century, Winogrand captured moments of everyday American life in the postwar era. He produced much of his best-known work in New York City during the 1960s, becoming a major voice of the tumultuous decade.

Known for his energy, honesty, and sense of humor, Winogrand shot business moguls, politicians, hippies, athletes, famous actors, and everyday people on the street, at rodeos, in airports, and at antiwar demonstrations. He traveled from his native New York to San Francisco, Dallas, Houston, Chicago, and the Southwest, creating an expansive visual catalogue of America’s rapidly changing social scene. 

While the National Gallery of Art’s East Building galleries are closed for renovations, the Modern masterpieces that usually reside within their walls have headed from Washington, D.C., to San Francisco. “Modernism from the National Gallery of Art: The Robert and Jane Meyerhoff Collection” is currently on view at the de Young Museum and presents 46 paintings and sculptures by postwar masters, including Jasper Johns, Ellsworth Kelly, Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Rauschenberg, and Frank Stella. The show marks the first time that the Meyerhoff Collection has been exhibited outside of the greater Washington, D.C., and Baltimore metro areas.

The exhibition is divided into three generational groupings, creating a sweeping view of American Modern art from the end of World War II through the close of the 20th century. Highlights from the show include Stella’s geometric canvas “Flin Flon IV” (1969), Johns’ haunting encaustic “Perilous Night” (1982), Lichtenstein’s Pop art gem “Painting with Statue of Liberty” (1983), and Barnett Newman’s “The Stations of a Cross” (1958-66), a series of paintings, widely considered to be the Abstract Expressionist artist’s most import work. The canvases will be displayed in their own intimate gallery so that they can be experienced as a single work, as the artist intended.

A Mark Rothko painting owned by Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) co-founder and billionaire Paul Allen helped boutique auctioneer Phillips sell $132 million worth of art, capping two weeks of marathon sales in New York.

Estimated at $50 million to $60 million, “Untitled (Red, Blue, Orange)” attracted bids yesterday from four staffers competing on behalf of clients. August Uribe, senior director and worldwide co-head of contemporary art at Phillips, placed the winning bid of $50 million, or $56.2 million with fees.

Christie’s sold $134.6 million of contemporary art in New York in an hour as international buyers from 26 countries chased after works including Andy Warhol’s electric chair silkscreen and Martin Kippenberger’s slouching man in his underwear.

Titled “If I Live I’ll See You Tuesday,” the auction yesterday surpassed its high target of $124.1 million as 11 artist records were set, including those for Richard Prince, On Kawara, Wade Guyton, Dan Colen and Kippenberger. Of the 35 lots offered, all but one found buyers. Similar to last week’s Impressionist and modern art auctions, Asian collectors competed fiercely, winning at least two of the top 10 lots, Christie’s said.

Auction houses expect to sell as much as $2.3 billion of art in New York this month as billionaires from China to Brazil compete for trophy works by Claude Monet, Pablo Picasso and Jeff Koons in a surging market.

Two weeks of semiannual sales of Impressionist, modern, postwar and contemporary art at Christie’s, Sotheby’s (BID) and Phillips begin May 6, with online bidding as early as today. Their combined sales target represents a 77 percent increase from estimates for a similar round of auctions a year ago.