Displaying items by tag: maquette

Christie’s will sell a number of pieces from the collection of Jan Krugier, an art dealer who sold works for Pablo Picasso’s family. The sale will include over 150 lots and is expected to garner at least $170 million. The sale, A Dialogue Through Art: Works from the Jan Krugier Collection, will take place on November 4-5, 2013 at the auction house’s New York location.

Krugier, who died in 2008, was one of the leading dealers in premier 20^th century art for four decades. He operated galleries in Geneva and New York and exhibited at highly anticipated art fairs including Art Basel in Switzerland and TEFAF Masstricht in the Netherlands. Krugier’s Manhattan gallery closed in 2010 and his company no longer participates in fairs.

A Dialogue Through Art will present 30 works by Picasso including a maquette for the 65-foot sculpture Tete, which is located in Chicago. The work is expected to sell for $25 million to $35 million and is the most valuable piece in the sale. Other highlights include a bronze sculpture by Alberto Giacometti made for the Venice Biennale, which is expected to sell for $9 million to $12 million; a Fauvist period landscape by Wassily Kandinsky, which carries a $20 million to $25 million estimate; and a 1982 painting by Jean-Michel Basquiat, which is expected to sell for $3 million to $4 million.

A selection of works from the upcoming sale will be on view at Christie’s headquarters in London through September 19, 2013.

Henri Matisse: La Gerbe is currently on view at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and highlights the artist’s final commissioned work. Henri Matisse (1869-1954) created La Gerbe (The Sheaf), a 2,000 lb., 18 x 20-foot ceramic piece, in 1952 for the home of Los Angeles-based philanthropists Sidney and Frances Brody. Mrs. Brody promised the work to LACMA in honor of the museum’s 25^th anniversary and donated it to the institution in 2010. This event marks the first time that La Gerbe has been displayed alongside its full-scale maquette, which is on loan from the University of California’s Hammer Museum.  

Late in his career, Matisse developed his cut-out technique, which involved cutting organic shapes out of colored paper and arranging them on his studio’s walls. Giving the artist a renewed sense of freedom, Matisse lauded the technique for its immediacy and simplicity, which he believed helped him express his artistic urgencies more completely.

When he received the commission from the Brody’s, Matisse created a full-scale paper cut-out of his design, which he showed the couple during their visit to his studio in Nice, France. The Brody’s rejected the first design but accepted a second full-scale cut-out, which is the maquette included in LACMA’s exhibition. The final La Gerbe was executed in ceramic and consisted of 15 sections, which were shipped to Los Angeles in 1954 following the artist’s death. The work was installed on the Body’s patio wall where it remained until Frances’ death in 2009. The work was permanently installed at LACMA in 2010.

LACMA’s exhibition includes other major works from Matisse’s cut-out period including Madame de Pompadour (1951) and Jazz (1947), a historic book of 20 prints, which is considered the artists’ first major project using the cut-out technique.

The La Gerbe exhibition will be on view at LACMA through September 8, 2013.

A cast of Auguste Rodin’s (1840-1917) Monument to the Burghers of Calais, which has stood in the gardens next to London’s House of Parliament for almost a century, will be moved to the gardens at Perry Green in Hertfordshire, England for the upcoming exhibition Moore Rodin. The show, which opens on March 29, 2013, will compare the works of Henry Moore (1898-1986) and Rodin, two major figures in modern sculpture.

Perry Green, which was Moore’s home for over 40 years until his death in 1986, now houses a gallery, 70 acres of gardens, and the Henry Moore Foundation. The Foundation is responsible for organizing the groundbreaking exhibition, which marks the first time another artist has been shown alongside Moore at Perry Green. Moore was an ardent admirer of Rodin’s work and considered Monument to the Burghers of Calais the greatest public sculpture in London.

Moore Rodin will include a number of loans from the Musée Rodin in Paris, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, and the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge. Musée Rodin is lending Adam (1881), the third maquette for the seminial The Gates of Hell (circa 1881-82), and Walking Man, Large Torso (1906) for the exhibition. The Musée Bourdelle in Paris will lend the Foundation Walking Man (1899), a cast of which Moore owned. In addition to the sculptures, the exhibition will include an extensive selection of drawings by both artists and photographs taken by Moore of his cast of Walking Man at Perry Green.

Moore Rodin will be on view through October 27, 2013.