AMSTERDAM.- Christie’s Post-War and Contemporary Art Amsterdam, an online-only auction, will take place from 10 to 26 November 2020. Reflecting the breadth of works offered in the Amsterdam live sale series, it will also offer works from two distinguished collections: Betty van Geest-van Garrel, an acclaimed Dutch journalist who wrote several books and interviewed artists for NRC Handelsblad and Ernest van Zuylen, a supporter of the CoBrA movement. The auction offers 153 works from artists around the globe, with a strong focus on German Post-War and Contemporary art, accounting for one third of the auction. Estimates range between €1,500 and €150,000, providing opportunities for collectors at all levels.

The Betty van Geest-van Garrel Collection
Held for over half a century in the collection of celebrated Dutch arts and culture journalist and writer Betty van Geest- van Garrel, Shoe (1965, estimate: €3,000-6,000) and Stars (1953, estimate: €60,000-80,000) stem from the revolutionary early years of Yayoi Kusama’s practice. Acquired by van Garrel from Galerie OREZ in The Hague in 1965, they capture the major painterly and sculptural themes that would form the matrix of the artist’s output over the following decades. Shoe belongs to the early series of phallic sculptures that dominated Kusama’s practice during the 1960s. Three biomorphic forms, made from stuffed and sewn fabric, protrude from the interior of a gold-painted stiletto. Executed in 1953, while the artist was still living in Japan, Stars represents a vivid precursor to the ground-breaking Infinity Net paintings, characterised by their seemingly endless webs of tiny repeated dots.




From the Ernest van Zuylen Collection
Executed in 1949 and 1953 respectively, Corneille’s Dépouillement (Dispossession), (estimate: €50,000-70,000) and Untitled (estimate: €4,000-6,000) originate from the collection of Ernest van Zuylen, the noted Belgian industrialist and patron of the arts, who was closely involved with the CoBrA movement. He became President of the Société Royale des Beaux Arts in his native Liège, and the two works presented bear witness to his fascination with Corneille: one of CoBrA’s founding members, who played a pivotal role in its evolution. Painted during the heady early days of the CoBrA revolution, Dépouillement captures Corneille’s fascination with mythic subject matter. After the disbandment of CoBrA in 1951, the artist travelled widely. Untitled reflects the jubilant light, colour and sensual textures that came to define his language during this period.

Neue Wilde
Armed with boisterous humour and a devil-may-care attitude, the Neue Wilde, ‘new Fauves’, partied hard, rejected standard aesthetic values and ridiculed the post-war excesses of their country, Germany. They held the staid, the minimal and the high brow in contempt. They played fast and loose with symbol and subject matter. Many embraced the label of ‘bad painting’, creating turbulent, deliberately noxious canvases which ironically did much to revive a medium that had been declared dead in the water. The group is represented by Albert Oehlen’s Untitled (1983, estimate: €25,000-30,000), two paintings by Martin Kippenberger; Ichsehe was was du nicht siehst (estimate: €40,000-60,000) and Frei Sprechen Können (estimate €40,000-60,000). Further works by Werner Bűttner, Georg Herold and Markus Oehlen are also included in the sale.

Jan Schoonhoven
Carefully handmade in the small Delft apartment that the artist shared with his wife and son, Ster 2 (1968, estimate: €40,000-60,000) and R70-42 (1970, estimate: €120,000-180,000) are two virtuoso examples of Jan Schoonhoven’s distinctive minimalist practice. Ster 2 – which was gifted by the artist to Albert Vogel Jr., founder of the The Hague’s influential Galerie OREZ – consists of eight triangles, or four bisected squares, whose overlapping planes form a radial ‘star’ within a square frame. R70-42 is a three-dimensional grid of sixteen by sixteen squares, which oscillate in a dynamic network of light and shadow. Both works are executed in papier-mâché and painted entirely white.

Tal R
With its vivid explosion of colour, form and texture, Lord Tanger is a dynamic early work by Tal R (2000, estimate €40,000-60,000). Spanning two metres in both height and width, it demonstrates the bold, playful multi-media language for which he is celebrated. Acrylic, spray paint, wax crayon, chalk and pencil intermingle freely across the canvas, creating a swirling panorama of abstract, semi-anatomical forms. The work takes its place within a series of compositions titled after fictional ‘lords’, including Lord Madras, Lord Tirsdag and Lords of Kolbojnik.