Displaying items by tag: painting

An actor known for his role as an Italian Mafia assassin is now promoting and exhibiting an old master painting of a bloodied, dying saint.

Federico Castelluccio, who played the ponytailed hired gun Furio Giunta on “The Sopranos” TV series, has rediscovered the artwork, a depiction of St. Sebastian said to have been painted by Guercino in the 1630s. This week, in its first American showing, the painting went on view at the Princeton University Art Museum after its European debut in a survey of St. Sebastian portraits at a castle near Turin, Italy, last year.

An art expert has spotted a painting valued at up to £1m, which was once sold to help fund Nelson Mandela’s legal defense, being used as a noticeboard in a London flat.

The painting, Arab in Black, a 1939 work by Irma Stern – regarded as South Africa’s leading artist, whose works have recently been soaring in value – was recognised by Hannah O’Leary, a specialist in South African art at Bonhams auction house, during a valuation visit to the flat.

A flea market find may mean a big payout for a Texas man. Ray Riley believes that the canvas he picked up for a mere $90 earlier this year is an authentic Sigmar Polke painting.

Polke has had a resurgence over the past few years, with a retrospective of his work at MoMA this past year and a new record for his work set at auction in May this year when it sold for $27.1 million at Sotheby's New York (prior to that, the record was $9.2 million, set in 2011).

The National Bank of Hungary purchased a painting by 16th century artist Titian for 4.5 billion forints ($16 million), making it the most valuable piece in the monetary authority’s 100 million-euro art collection program.

Only a short time remains for a special exhibition of the work of American modernist Gershon Benjamin (1899-1985), a Romanian-born, Montreal-educated artist remembered as an Expressionist for his individualistic style and use of color. The exhibition, Gershon Benjamin: Modern Master features more than 60 portraits, still lifes, landscapes and city scenes in oil, watercolor and charcoal—all representing more than seven decades of work.

Benjamin was part of a 1920s New York scene of progressive artists who favored European modernism to the popular American Scene and Regionalist art of the day.

When Gustav Klimt's Portrait of Gertrud Loew-Felsövanyi (1902) sold at Sotheby's London in June for $39 million, many speculated about the buyer's identity.

Now, an investigation conducted by the Austrian daily Der Standard has revealed that the painting was not bought by Ronald Lauder as was previously assumed. The buyer is Joe Lewis, a British billionaire who's made his fortune in foreign exchange market (forex) trading in the early 1990s.

A painting by Lucas Cranach the Elder fetched 9.3 million pounds ($14.3 million) at Sotheby’s in London, an auction record for the German Renaissance artist.

The sale of the Cranach and other works tallied 39.3 million pounds, toward the lower end of the presale estimate. Wednesday’s result represented a 42 percent drop from an equivalent auction a year ago, when 68.3 million pounds worth of Old Master and British paintings were sold. Of 57 lots offered, 20 failed to find buyers, while auction records were set for five artists.

A JMW Turner street scene described as the greatest painting of Oxford will remain in the city after the Ashmolean Museum raised the money to buy it in just four weeks.

The High Street, Oxford, by Turner, was left to the British nation in lieu of inheritance tax, but its value of £3.5m was more than the tax due. That led to a fundraising campaign by the Ashmolean, where the painting has been on loan from a private collection since 1997.

Christie's kept the international art auction caravan rolling with an impressionist and modern art sale that brought in $113 million (£71.88 million) on Tuesday.

A Claude Monet study of mauve irises swaying against a pale blue sky in his Giverny garden was the star lot at $17 million. A 1969 Pablo Picasso head, with all the startling vigour of his old age, came in next at $7 million.

The UK is fighting to keep a Paul Cézanne landscape painting in the country following its sale for £13.5 million ($20.5 million) at Christie's London during its $222.8 million Impressionist and modern art sale in February.

At the auction, "Vue sur L'Estaque et Le Château d'If" (1883–85) barely topped its pre-sale estimate of £8–12 million ($13–19 million), and was sold to Nancy Whyte, an American art advisor.