Displaying items by tag: claude monet

A billion pound collection of modern masterpieces which has languished in a storeroom bunker under Tehran's Museum of Contemporary Art in Iran may finally see the light of day, under changes in the new government's policy. Paintings by Picasso, Miro, Calder, Bacon, Pollock, Warhol, Lichtenstein, Van Gogh and Monet have languished in a storeroom beneath the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art since the  Islamic Revolution in 1979.

The collection was put together in the 1960s and 1970s by Queen Farah Pahlavi, the wife of the last shah of Iran. Fearing that they would be destroyed by the religious turmoil that gripped the the country, the works were carefully packed up, crated and removed from public view.

The presumed mastermind of a brazen art theft from a French Riviera museum involving four paintings by Monet, Sisley and Breughel denied any role as he went on trial on Monday.

The Miami-based Bernard Ternus, who is in his sixties, was sentenced in the United States to five years in prison in 2008 over the theft at Nice's Jules Cheret museum a year earlier.

Transferred to France last year after serving his sentence, Ternus -- who is being held in custody -- told the court in Aix-en-Provence in southern France that he had been framed.

Pablo Picasso’s colorful 1932 oil painting “The Rescue” sold for $31.5 million at a New York auction Wednesday, far exceeding its $14 million to $18 million estimate.

“The Rescue” led the bidding at a Sotheby’s sale of impressionist and modern art. The auction house sold 50 pieces, raising about $219 million.

It was the second straight night a painting by the Cubist master changed hands for a big price. Picasso’s 1942 painting of his mistress in a purple dress titled “Portrait of Dora Maar” sold Tuesday for $22.5 million at Christie’s.

Simon Shaw, Co-Head of Sotheby’s Worldwide Impressionist & Modern Art Department, commented: “A key factor in tonight’s successes was our longstanding relationships with top collectors, and our partnership with them throughout the sale process – the three works from the Private American Collection that led our sale, Monet’s Le Pont japonais, and more were non-competitive consignments. It was a privilege to offer Picasso’s spectacular Le Sauvetage exactly a decade after we last auctioned it in New York, and we are thrilled to see its price double in that time. We are pleased to once again deliver exceptional results on behalf of a great American institution, with Monet’s Sur la Falaise à Pourville selling for well over its high estimate to benefit the Acquisitions Fund of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.”

Christie’s Evening Sale of Impressionist and Modern Art on Tuesday, May 6, realized $285,879,000 (£168,668,610/€205,832,880), selling 89% by lot and 96% by value. This marks the highest total for Christie’s New York in this category since May 2010. Of the 53 works offered, 9 lots sold for over $10 million, 18 for over $5 million, and 43 for over $1 million. The sale was led by works from distinguished private collections, including Monet’s Nymphéas from The Clark Family Treasures and Picasso’s Portrait de femme (Dora Maar) from the Viktor and Marianne Langen Collection. Two additional sales, Works on Paper and the Day sale, will complete the series on Wednesday, May 7.

Brooke Lampley, Head of Department, Impressionist & Modern Art, Christie’s New York, commented, “Our strong performance tonight, the highest since May of 2010, is a testament to the continued strength of the global market for Impressionist and Modern works of art. Bidders from 36 countries competed in our sale tonight for a wide variety of works, from Monet’s classic Nymphéas and Modigliani’s engaging portrait of a red-haired man, to bold, modern works by Picasso and Kandinsky. Our global team has worked tirelessly to source the best works available this season, many of which had never been offered at auction, including star lots from the leading collections of the season: the Clark Family Treasures, the Estate of Edgar M. Bronfman and the Viktor and Marianne Langen Collection.”

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.

The Portland Art Museum in Oregon has announced a monumental exhibition that will present masterpieces from the collection of Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist Paul G. Allen. “Seeing Nature: Landscape Masterworks from the Paul G. Allen Family Collection” will feature approximately 40 paintings by Claude Monet, Edouard Manet, J.M.W. Turner, Vincent van Gogh, Gustav Klimt, Edward Hopper, Georgia O’Keeffe, and others.

The exhibition, which spans five centuries of European and American landscape painting, was organized by the Portland Art Museum, the Seattle Art Museum, and the Allen Family Collection. It will debut at the Portland Art Museum in October 2015. It will then travel to The Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, and the New Orleans Museum of Art before closing at the Seattle Art Museum in early 2017.

The exhibition explores the evolution of landscape painting from the early Impressionists’ direct observations of nature to the more subjective works of the Post-Impressionists and the individualized perspectives that 20th-century artists brought to traditional landscape subjects.

Brian Ferriso, the Marilyn H. and Dr. Robert B. Pamplin Jr. Director of the Portland Art Museum, said, “Paul Allen is one of the Northwest’s most significant art collectors and philanthropists. His willingness to share his landscape masterpieces with our visitors continues his exceptional generosity and is a wonderful opportunity to be inspired by works of art that reflect his personal vision.”

The Legion of Honor in San Francisco is currently hosting the exhibition “Intimate Impressionism,” which features nearly 70 Impressionist and Post-Impressionist landscapes, seascapes, still lifes, interiors, and portraits from the collections of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. Masterpieces by Paul Cezanne, Edgar Degas, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Edouard Manet, Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, and Alfred Sisley are on view.

The sweeping exhibition offers glimpses into the artists’ processes and highlights their inspirations, favorite subjects, and individual perspectives. For instance, a section of the show explores how Monet, Renoir, Pissarro, and Sisley were motivated by their plein-air predecessors when painting the natural world. Depictions of artists’ studios, domestic interiors, and family members further deepen connections between the artists, their works, and the audience.

The exhibition, which will remain on view at the Legion of Honor through August 3, was made possible by the closure of the National Gallery’s East Building for a major renovation and expansion project.    

An oil painting by Claude Monet of London’s Waterloo Bridge is among the 180 artworks recently found in Cornelius Gurlitt’s home in Austria. Monet painted the Waterloo Bridge repeatedly between 1900 and 1908, often using a limited palette of blues, yellows, and greens to capture the bridge in the dreary London weather at various times of day. 

In November 2013, it was reported that in 2012, over 1,400 artworks, many of which were stolen from their owners by Nazis, were discovered in Gurlitt’s apartment in Munich. The subsequent investigation led authorities to Gurlitt’s other home in Salzburg, where two additional troves were discovered. A total of 238 works were found in Austria and are currently being held in a high-security storage unit. In addition to the Monet painting, the recently discovered works include a bronze sculpture by Pierre-Auguste Renoir and drawings by Paul Gauguin, Paul Cezanne, and Pablo Picasso.

Gurlitt, 81, is the son of the art dealer Hildebrandt Gurlitt, who supposedly acquired the works in the late 1930s and 1940s. Gurlitt’s father had been put in charge of selling the stolen artworks abroad by Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda, but secretly hoarded many of them and later claimed that they were destroyed in the bombing of Dresden. Gurlitt sold a number of the paintings over the years and lived off of the profits.
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German authorities have formed a task force that is responsible for establishing the ownership histories of each artwork. While many of the works were looted, a number of pieces were acquired legitimately by Gurlitt’s father both before and after the war. Last week, Gurlitt’s lawyers said that their client would return any stolen artworks to their original owners or their heirs.

Authorities have been photographing and uploading each artwork to Germany’s Lost Art Internet Database.

The Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Hartford, Connecticut, has acquired a rare self-portrait by the Italian Baroque painter Artemisia Gentileschi, who is widely regarded as the most important female artist before the modern period. The institution purchased “Self-Portrait as a Lute Player” from Christie’s New York using funds from the recently established Charles H. Schwartz Fund for European Art. It is the first painting by a female artist of the Baroque period to enter the Wadsworth Atheneum’s permanent collection.

“Self-Portrait as a Lute Player” is one of only three uncontested self-portraits by Gentileschi that are known to exist. The work was most likely commissioned by the Grand Duke Cosimo II de’Medici and was recorded in the Medici collection as early as 1638. The painting’s whereabouts remained a mystery until it surfaced in a private collection in 1998. It was subsequently featured in major Gentileschi exhibitions around the world. The Wadsworth’s recent acquisition expands the museum’s already-stellar collection of Baroque masterpieces, which includes works by Caravaggio, Claude Lorrain, and Nicolas Poussin.

“Self-Portrait as a Lute Player” will make its public debut alongside works by Fra Angelico, Caravaggio, Artemisia’s father Orazio Gentileschi, Claude Monet, and Pierre-Auguste Renoir in 2015 following a reinstallation of the museum’s European collections in the Morgan Memorial Building, which is undergoing an extensive renovation.