NEW YORK, NY.- Christie’s announces the spring season of Latin American Art, the only dedicated sale in the category at a major auction house, with a live evening auction on May 22, a live day auction on May 23 and an online auction running May 18-29. Combined, the sales include over 250 lots, offering a comprehensive selection from 17th and 18th-century colonial painting through modern and contemporary masterpieces, and together the sales expect to realize in excess of $17 million. Featured are works from private collections including Divine Splendor Spanish Colonial Art from The Collection of James Li, The Collection of Drue Heinz and The Collection of H.S.H. Princess “Titi” Von Fürstenberg. Works from the live and online auctions will be on view May 18-22 at Christie’s Rockefeller Plaza.

Leading the sale this season is the stunning painting Simpatía (La rabia del gato) (estimate: $2-3 million) by famed Surrealist Remedios Varo. In her short and remarkable career, Varo made a name for herself in Mexico City’s vibrant Surrealist community with an enigmatic body of work that evokes Freudian and Jungian psychology, science, magic and the occult. Imaginative, humorous and subversive, Simpatía ranks among one of the artist’s finest and most accomplished compositions. Rare and fresh to market, having been held in the same private collection for almost fifty years, Simpatía is poised to achieve an exceptional price at auction. Rounding out the modern Mexican works in the sale is a newly discovered early masterpiece by Roberto Montenegro, Untitled (Tehuanas in Traditional Huipil Grande Headdresses) painted circa 1920s (estimate: $70,000-90,000), Rufino Tamayo’s evocative Mujer con rebozo (Woman with a Shawl) from The Collection of Drue Heinz (estimate: $500,000-700,000) and a superb example of Francisco Zúñiga’s iconic sculptures of powerful indigenous women, Juchiteca sentada (estimate: $200,000-$300,000) from a Distinguished Private Collection. Extraordinary examples of paintings, sculptures and works on paper spanning six decades by beloved artist Fernando Botero will also be on offer.

Among the contemporary highlights this season is a monumental painting by the Cuban-American artist Carlos Alfonzo titled Water Seeds (estimate: $100,000-150,000). Alfonzo rose to prominence in the United States during the 1980’s and was at the forefront of the Miami generation. Alfonzo tapped the cultural mythos of Cuban America in paintings that explore themes of human suffering and mortality, exile and solitude in an explosively lyrical style. His work is featured in institutional collections from the Whitney Museum of American Art to the Smithsonian. Another highlight is an untitled work by Olga Albizu (estimate: $50,000-70,000). Albizu is a Puerto Rican artist whose richly painted expressionistic canvases often graced the album covers produced by Verve and RCA Victor for Stan Getz, João Gilberto, and many other celebrated Bossa Nova artists. Other contemporary masterworks include a superb example from Venezuelan artist Arturo Herrera’s best-known Disney series, a striking, large-scale collage that blurs the boundaries between abstraction and figuration.

The James Li Collection represents a compilation of the great artistic production that thrived in the 18th-century New World. Li recently donated a selection of ten 17th and 18th century works from Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, expanding its holdings of Spanish colonial art. Works being sold this season from his collection include six anonymous Andean works: Archangel Jehudiel (estimate: $10,000-15,000), Saint Michael (estimate: $30,000-40,000), Immaculate Conception and the Holy Trinity (estimate: $30,000-40,000), Triumph of the Eucharist (estimate: $15,000-20,000), Saint Basil the Great (San Basilio Magno) (estimate: $30,000-40,000) all from the 18th Century and Our Lady of Lake Titicaca from the 19th Century (estimate: $30,000-40,000).