NEW YORK, NY.- Christie's presents the outstanding collection of Edwin A. and Lindy Bergman which was thoughtfully assembled over a sixty-year period and possesses some of the earliest and most iconic works by Joseph Cornell. The Bergmans were renowned patrons of the arts and philanthropists, and set a standard as supporters of art institutions, education and medical research. The Bergman Collection will be sold over five sales this Spring, and includes Modern, Post-War and Contemporary Art, Latin American Art and 20th Century Decorative Art. A dedicated section to the Collection will be sold during the Evening sale of Post-War and Contemporary Art on May 13th, and, in addition to the extraordinary Cornells, the Collection includes major works by Alexander Calder, Pablo Picasso, Matta, Lucas Samaras and Wayne Thiebaud.

Dedicated supporters of the arts throughout their life, Edwin and Lindy Bergman were especially committed to the Art Institute of Chicago and notably donated works from their Surrealist collection to the museum as well as a selection of Cornell boxes and collages in 1982 and 1991. The Bergman's gifts are now a core part of the museum's permanent collection and are displayed in the Edwin A. and Lindy Bergman Gallery located in the Modern Wing. Additional works from the Bergman Collection have also been donated to the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Israel Museum.

“It is an honor to present this exquisite collection which reflects the unique and inquisitive eye of Edwin and Lindy Bergman. Their legacy demonstrates the power of passion, collaboration and dedication to the art and their community. They acquired the works they loved, and built a collection that is both unusual in its depth and intensely personal. The public will have the opportunity to view the depth and beauty of the Bergman Collection in a dedicated exhibition at Christie’s from April 17th-May13th,” declared Laura Paulson, Christie’s Chairman and International Director for Post-War and Contemporary Art.

Among the most well known works in the Bergman Collection is Alexander Calder's remarkable sculpture, Poisson volant (Flying Fish), from 1957, which skillfully combines the monumentality of Calder's large scale sculptures with the delicacy of his legendary mobiles. The striking appearance of the fish's curved body is tempered by the hypnotic nature of the fish's eye which Calder beautifully fashions out of a tightly coiled piece of steel wire, (estimate: $9,000,000-12,000,000). The sleek black outline of the fish combined with the complex construction of animated elements that comprise the fish's tail demonstrates the artist's unique compositional ability, unsurpassed technical execution and sheer sense of joie de vivre in one memorable work. Although much of Calder's work was defiantly non-referential, the fish motif was one that occurred throughout his life; from Steel Fish, one of the artist's earliest standing mobiles created in 1934 for the Museum of Modern Art, to the themed headboard he made for Peggy Guggenheim in 1945 and continuing with his large scale mobiles and stabiles such as the present work, the symbolic nature of the fish seemed to encompass much of what Calder wanted to achieve in his unique style of sculpture.

At the heart of the Bergman Collection is one of the world's most comprehensive collections of works by Joseph Cornell and the sale will present an exquisite opportunity to discover some of the rarest and most important Cornell works, which have been generously lent to institutions over the years. The Bergmans relationship with Joseph Cornell began in September 1959, through the artist Piero Dorazio, a Cornell acquaintance who they met in Rome four month earlier. Cornell asked Dorazio for some material for his boxes and the Bergmans offered to deliver the documents to Cornell when back in New York. From that first meeting began a long relationship with the artist and frequent visits to Utopia Parkway when the Bergmans travelled to New York from Chicago.

The Evening sale will offer eight exceptional works by Joseph Cornell including one of his earliest, Glass Bell, executed in 1932 (estimate: $600,000-800,000), which was shown in Cornell's first exhibition at the Julien Levy Gallery in New York, in 1933. Also included is Medici Slot Machine, executed in 1943, (estimated: $2,500,000- 3,500,000). Cornell's Medici Slot Machines are among the most well-known works by the artist, which incorporate Renaissance portraiture in complex constructions that are both magical and richly symbolic while addressing the Surrealist and Dada notion of chance. This very personal museum of the mind is based on Pinturicchio's Portrait of a Young Boy and combines the boy's rarified world, the souvenir-gathering of the Grand Tour, with a contemporary vending machine.

In February 1945, Cornell spent a rainy afternoon at the New York Theater where Howard Hawk's „To Have and Have Not’ was playing, starring Humphrey Bogart and the nascent Lauren Bacall. The resulting jewel-like box, Untitled (Penny Arcade Portrait of Lauren Bacall), executed in 1946, (estimate: $4,000,000- 6,000,000), is of exceptional scale and occupies a place of pride in Cornell's oeuvre as his most significant homage to an actress. The box is further distinguished in that Cornell also made an exclusive dossier of source materials and writings which accompanies the box. As the famed curator and prestigious museum director, Walter Hopps [Joseph Cornell: Shadow Play Eterniday, 2003] once proclaimed, “The Penny Arcade Portrait of Lauren Bacall, which is very beautiful in its blue monochrome nature, is complex and medieval. It’s a whole architectonic structure of images built around a central one, like a great northern Renaissance altarpiece. Cornell transposed the composition of Christian altarpieces into his homages of great entertainers and beautiful women.”

Additional Cornell highlights are Medici Princess, 1952 (estimate: $2,500,000-3,500,000), Snow Maiden, 1933 (estimate: $800,000- 1,200,000), and Soap Bubble set, 1939 (estimate: $500,000-700,000).

Pablo Picasso's Tête de femme à deux profils was acquired by the couple in the 1960’s from E.V Thaw & Co, Inc., a recommendation from William Rubin, Director of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Transforming her visage and head into an astonishing arc configuration, Picasso painted this bust-length portrait of the complex Dora Maar, as if she were a sphinx mysteriously contemplating herself. Painted in 1937, the present Tête de femme à deux profils is a gripping realization of Picasso's ability to conceive, bring forth and empower such prescient ideas, in feats of imagination and invention that after nearly three quarters of a century remain unmatched and certainly not surpassed in the art of our own time.

The Bergmans had a long and warm relationship with Roberto Matta and the sale will include Matta's, The Horoscope, executed in 1937. One of the most important years in the enigmatic artist's career, 1937 is when Matta's drawings began to truly develop the visual idiom that would set him on his unique path. Matta's earliest works were all on paper; using coloured crayons, he summoned up his hallucinatory images of a realm beyond our understanding. It was as a result of this that, also in 1937, Matta came to the attention of the Surrealists, and in particular of their great and enthralling guru, André Breton. The Bergmans met with the artist by the late 1950s in Paris, and they acquired The Horoscope at the Pierre Matisse Gallery in New York in 1960, (estimate: $150,000-200,000).

Among the other works in the collection are two exquisite paintings by Wayne Thiebaud. Executed in 1969, Row Ties is a vibrant painting that exemplifies Thiebaud's extraordinary ability to transform an everyday, prosaic object into an altogether heraldic icon, a relic of a bygone era imbued with provocative associations. Thiebaud marvels in color combinations that are exuberant and masterfully painted (estimate: $1,000,000-1,500,000). In Self-Portrait, dated 1973, Thiebaud exploited the possibilities of color, shadow, brushwork and line, treating a portrait as a "still life” (estimate: $1,500,000-2,000,000). This masterful work is exceedingly rare, as it represents one of a select few self-portraits ever painted by the artist and has remained in the Bergman's collection since its creation.

Edwin and Lindy Bergman began their journey in collecting together. While taking a great books course, discussions of history, philosophy, and literature turned to examinations of fine art's role in culture and society; after class, the couple would often find themselves wandering into Chicago galleries and museums, enthralled by the work around them. Their first substantial purchase, a Paul Klee gouache, heralded the beginnings of an ever- growing assemblage incorporating the best in Surrealism, Tribal Art, and Post-War painting, drawing, and sculpture. The collection included names such as Cornell, Balthus, Calder, Delvaux, Matta, and Magritte, as well as work by the Chicago Imagists and John Graham, Mrs. Bergman's preferred painter.

The Bergmans were constantly expanding their personal circle of artists, curators, and scholars. The Chicago artist John Miller introduced the couple to local sculptors and collectors, and the Bergmans were drawn to dealers such as Richard Feigen and Allan Frumkin, who recognized their interest in Surrealist artists. “This was the period of the Abstract Expressionists,” Mrs. Bergman said later, “and there was a question about which way we should go. But Surrealism appealed to us the most.” It was an artistic movement full of vibrant, colorful work— and equally colorful artists— that provided consistent visual and intellectual stimulation. By the late 1950s, they were established Surrealist collectors, traveling to Paris with friend and artist Wifredo Lam and meeting luminaries such as Giacometti, Man Ray, Ernst, and Matta. Friends and fellow collectors describe the Bergman residence as one filled with art that fostered conversation, contemplation, and a sense of beauty; the couple simply collected the art they loved.

The Bergmans' enthusiasm for Joseph Cornell's works forms an integral and celebrated aspect of their collecting history. They purchased their first works by Cornell in 1958, and worked carefully to build a relationship with the reclusive artist. The Bergman Cornells were, like the rest of the collection, fully integrated into daily life: with moving parts and the occasional sound component, the artist's boxes provided an intimate, sensory experience that appealed to the couple. By the time they established the Edwin and Lindy Bergman Joseph Cornell Gallery at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1982, their collection included some of the most important examples from the artist's oeuvre. Nearly a decade later, Lindy Bergman made another first-class bequest to the museum: a collection of Surrealist masterworks by artists such as Dalí, Ernst, Magritte, Picabia, and Tanguy. It was the largest gift to the Art Institute of Chicago in nearly half a century, one that transformed the museum into a premier destination for Surrealist work.

Edwin and Lindy Bergman were hallmarks of the Chicago art scene, a vibrant segment of the American creative landscape that continues to climb in critical and art historical importance. As promoters of both international and local artists—including members of the Hairy Who collective and the wider Chicago Imagists (many of who are included in the Bergman Collection)—the Bergmans played a major role in the continuing reputation of Chicago as one of the world's most important destinations for great art. Edwin Bergman was one of the founders and president of the city‟s Museum of Contemporary Art, a landmark institution that set the standard for presenting new work to the region. He also served on the 20th Century Painting and Sculpture and Prints and Drawings advisory committees at the Art Institute of Chicago, among other leadership roles. In addition to their monumental Chicago bequests, the Bergmans donated important works to major museums around the world. As her eyesight began to fail in later years, Lindy Bergman turned her attention to writing: she published Out of Sight, Not Out of Mind, documenting her own personal struggle with macular degeneration.

The Bergmans were lifelong and dedicated supporters of their alma mater The University of Chicago: Edwin Bergman was Chairman of the Board from 1981-1985, funded the construction of the Bergman Gallery (a studio space and home of the Renaissance Society), and provided scholarships, chaired professorships, and academic initiatives. A steadfast patron of local culture, Lindy Bergman was awarded the Smart Museum of Art Joseph R. Shapiro Award in 2000 for her extraordinary achievement in the visual arts.