NEW YORK, NY.- Sotheby’s presents their May offerings of Latin American Art, which will be featured across the marquee spring auctions of Impressionist & Modern and Contemporary Art from 14 -17 May in New York.
All of the works are now on public view in Sotheby’s newly-reimagined and expanded York Avenue galleries through 14 May for Impressionist & Modern Art, and 16 May for Contemporary Art.
IMPRESSIONIST & MODERN ART EVENING SALE
Auction 14 May
The outstanding selection of Latin American Art on offer this May is led by two magnificent paintings by Rufino Tamayo and Joaquín Torres-García.
Making its auction debut in the May Evening Sale, Sandías from 1980 is a resplendent example of Rufino Tamayo’s watermelon motif and one of the last canvases that he painted of the fruitful subject, as well as among the last works that the artist created before he ceased production in 1990 (estimate $4/6 million). Watermelons were a favored motif of Tamayo's, which persisted throughout six decades of the artist's oeuvre and are among the artist’s most iconic and celebrated subjects. In particular, the genre of still life allowed Tamayo to innovate and experiment with formal questions of color, line, compositional structure and depth. The influence of still life paintings by Giorgio de Chirico, Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso can be seen throughout the present work. A testament to the artist’s love for this particular painting, the canvas hung in Rufino and Olga Tamayo’s dining room before it was acquired directly from the artist by the present owner in 1989.
Construcción en blanco was painted in Paris in 1931 at the apex of Joaquín Torres-García’s artistic output (estimate $3.5/4.5 million). This ambitious work embodies the artist’s plastic and philosophical theory of Universal Constructivism: his most original contribution to the development of abstraction and an idea that he first conceptualized during his years in Paris from 1926 - 1932. Works by Torres-García from this seminal year are highly sought after among collectors, with a marked increase in demand over the past five years; similar examples dating from this critical moment in the artist's career can be found in distinguished museum collections, such as the Art Institute of Chicago, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. In addition, the present work was most recently exhibited in the 2015 exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art, The Arcadian Modern – Torres-García’s first major retrospective in the United States. Construcción en blanco comes to market for the first time this May from the collection of Gonzalo Fonseca – an established artist and sculptor in his own right and one of the foremost disciples of Torres-Garcia’s Montevideo-based Taller Torres-Garcia.
IMPRESSIONIST & MODERN ART DAY SALE
Auction 15 May
In addition to Sandías, a quintessential work by Rufino Tamayo will highlight the Day Sale of Impressionist & Modern Art. Dos personajes from 1970 is a mesmerizing example of the artist’s extraordinary treatment of color and texture that has remained in the same private collection since 1977 (estimate $1.5/2 million). By the late 1960s, Tamayo’s work had evolved to become almost entirely atmospheric, a process which allowed him to emphasize the textural quality of his semi-abstract compositions. Marked by opulent Oaxacan color, masterly achieved by the application of superimposed layers of subtle halftone glazes, Tamayo’s palette in the present work reveals his virtuosity as one of the greatest colorists of the 20th century, as well as his high regard for the technical aspect of Color Field painting.
One of several works on offer from the collection of Joe R. & Teresa L. Long, Diego Rivera’s Retrato de Guadalupe "Pico" Rivera Marín is a tender and intimate portrait of the artist’s eldest daughter, Guadalupe “Pico” Marín (estimate $500/700,000). Rivera’s portraits of children are among his most celebrated series; this work, however, is unique in its depiction of the artist's own daughter with his second wife, Guadalupe "Lupe" Marín. Painted in 1925-26, the present work offers a synthesis of the ideas that Rivera explored in Europe with the revolutionary social realist vocabulary of his murals. Rivera painted relatively few portraits during this early period and the present work’s intimate mood, hazy luminosity and geometric sensibility correspond to a markedly different artistic impulse than his well-known society portraits of the 1940s and 50s. Here, Rivera lends Pico a gravitas and monumentality generally reserved for portraits of adult men, while clothing her in the trappings of modernism and imbuing her with profound mexicanidad.
Also on offer from the Long collection is one of the finest paintings by David Alfaro Siqueiros to come to market in recent seasons: Conquistador from 1954 (estimate $250/350,000). Painted just four years after Siqueiros claimed the Venice Biennale’s highest honor for an international artist, the present work embodies the core tenets of the artist’s practice in technique and fiery lyricism. The artist masterfully manipulates the dripping of the paint to meld the crimson of the Conquistador’s helmet with his glowing locks of hair and the tempestuous sky. Siqueiros was the Americas’ first innovator in the artistic application of industrial paint; he exploited the low viscosity of pyroxylin to create rugged textures and atmospheric waves of color, knowledge he later imparted to students at the American Artists’ Congress in New York in 1936 – among them, a young Jackson Pollock. The artist continued to innovate techniques throughout his life, the subtle smoky qualities of his earlier work giving way to resplendency in mature works, such as the present painting. Conquistador's appearance in the May sale marks a rare opportunity for collectors to acquire a work of this caliber and quality by Siqueiros; pieces such as this rarely become available outside of Mexico.
Further highlights from the Day Sale include: a rare and early onyx by Francisco Zúñiga, Desnudo reclinado, also on offer from the Long collection (estimate $70/90,000); and Miguel Covarrubias’ Mujer en el Río (Balinesa) from 1947 – an exuberant work that encapsulates the artist’s affinity for the beauty of Bali and its native culture, one of the artist's most sought-after subjects (estimate $150/250,000).
CONTEMPORARY ART DAY SALE
Auction 17 May
The Contemporary Art Day Auction offers an outstanding selection of works by Latin American post-war and contemporary artists, ranging from Jesús Rafael Soto and Carlos Cruz-Diez to Fernando Botero and Sergio Camargo.
A diverse ensemble of works by Fernando Botero are among the sale’s many highlights, led by Madonna and Child (Nuestra Señora del Carmen) from 1967 – a stunning example of the artist’s seminal religious images of the 1960s (estimate $700/900,000). Painted at the height of Botero’s mature production, the large-scale oil reflects the fundamental effect of the artist's Roman Catholic upbringing in the devout city of Medellín on his work throughout his life. Depicted with humor and gentle irony, Botero’s religious subjects conjure up an imaginative world where identifiable saints and sinners play out their preordained roles in familiar narratives. The pictorial exploration of this genre— its sculptural immediacy, and, at times, satirical interpretation of its subjects—stand as one Botero’s most significant achievements. More than a work of art, our Lady of Carmen inspires a religious experience, connecting our humanity through the presence of a colossal and omnipresent spiritual being.
An impressive assemblage of optical-kinetic artworks will also highlight the May offering, led by Jesús Rafael Soto’s enigmatic Gran vibración azul y negra from 1999, which will make its auction debut in the Contemporary Art Day auction (estimate $700/900,000). The present work is one of the largest pieces by Soto ever to appear at auction, and an outstanding example of his widely admired and lasting Vibraciones series. As the artist intended, works from this series are understood as experiential art objects in which he integrates movement into the two-dimensional surface through a structural superimposition of lines, suspended elements and geometric figures that generate endlessly varied optical vibrations as the viewer moves. Throughout a career that extended over five decades, Soto experimented with chromatic planes and the transformable qualities of color, exploring the relationships between the object and the spectator, and between background and foreground to produce movement in his works.
Executed in 1978, Sergio Camargo’s Estrutura 2 serves as a remarkable example of both the artist’s definitive qualities and his "relief" works in particular (estimate $600/800,000). Here, Camargo manipulates the individual white wooden cylinders, also known as toquinhos (roughly, “little touches”), to exist in a permanent state of change. Light is essential to the activation of Camargo’s reliefs; reflecting across the sizeable toquinhos as it changes through the day and as the viewer moves in front of them, the work creates an infinite and ever-evolving network of shadows, roiling with organic motion. Entranced by the work of Constantin Brancusi, whose studio he often visited during his early years in Paris, Camargo began working in bronze and soapstone in the 1950s. By the 1960s, the artist shifted his preferences to the more pliable materials favored by his contemporaries working within the ZERO movement, and the many opto-kinetic, participatory-oriented artistic movements flourishing in Europe at the time. Camargo created his first reliefs during this period, and became increasingly consumed with them as the decade continued.
Rounding out this exceptional group is Carlos Cruz-Diez’ Physichromie 1506 – a rare, privately-commissioned example that engrosses the viewer in a panoramic experience (estimate $500/700,000). Executed in 2007 and acquired directly from the artist by the present owner, the grand installation represents Cruz-Diez’s challenge to traditional painting and concepts of color: unlike painting, which captures a specific moment in time, these works are intended to express a reality of the present moment and one’s experience with the work in real time. Warm variations of red envelop the viewer, while vibrant cascades of blues, yellow and greens reveal themselves, creating an intimate and continuously changing chromatic experience. Sotheby's established a new world auction record for any work by Cruz-Diez, when Physichromie Panam achieved $879,000 (estimate $500/700,000) during our Contemporary Art Day auction in November 2018.
