LONDON.- Christie’s announced full details of Small is Beautiful: The Online Modern Sculpture Sale, the first online sale of small-scale sculpture by Impressionist & Modern artists and Modern British artists. This new sale concept reflects the increased international demand witnessed for works on a smaller scale by artists such as Salvador Dali, Henry Moore, Auguste Rodin, Max Ernst and Pablo Picasso. This online format offers both new and established collectors the opportunity to add to their collections during Impressionist and Modern Art Week in London. The works on offer date from 1892 to the present day with estimates ranging from £800 to £100,000. The full sale exhibition is on view at Christie’s South Kensington from 20 June to 3 July 2014.

Tom Best, Specialist and Head of Sale: “We put together this new sale format as a response to the increasingly global demand we have seen for smaller works by these 20th and 21st century artists. This sale format also adds an extra dimension to the week of Impressionist & Modern sales in London, giving clients a new way to add to their collections and the ability to bid from around the globe.”

Leading the sale is Victoire de Samothrace by Salvador Dalí (estimate: £70,000 – 100,000), a sculpture demonstrating a blend of Dalinian ideas fused into a representation of the Winged Victory of Samothrace, the famed second century B.C. Greek sculpture of the goddess, Nike. An egg-like object at the base of the bronze appears to merge with a Christ figure as a symbol of birth and a new world. Bay laurel branches from the Greek myth of Daphne stretch out from the figure in an explosion-like growth, echoing the advances of science and atomic theory with which Dalí was fascinated at the time. Originally intended as part of the restoration process for the Chateau Vaux le Pénil after the Second World War, Victoire de Samothrace overflows with iconic concepts and symbols that are so unique to the 20th Century surrealist master.

Pablo Picasso’s Taureau was originally conceived in 1955 and was cast during the artist's life time, just over half a decade later (estimate: £45,000 – 65,000). Sculpture was a crucial part of Picasso's work, he had been intrigued by the possibilities of works in three dimensions for most of his career, and several times dedicated particular focus on the medium. The subject of the bull runs like a thread through Picasso's work, emerging in different guises. In particular, he often placed his bulls in context of the bullfight, or corrida. He had been brought to bullfights from a young age in Malaga and had long been fascinated by them.

Modern British sculpture is represented in the sale by artists including Henry Moore, Sir Jacob Epstein, Sir Eduardo Paolozzi and contemporary British artists.