NEW YORK, NY.- On 26 & 27 May 2015 Sotheby’s New York will present the Latin American Art Modern & Contemporary sale featuring a broad survey of paintings and sculpture from the region’s artistic giants. Highlights include two seminal works by Cuban Wifredo Lam, the extraordinary La Familia by Rufino Tamayo, further works from the Collection of Lorenzo H. Zambrano and a Diego Rivera painting from the Goldwyn Collection. The pre-sale exhibition opens on Friday 22 May.

Les Oiseaux Voilés by Wifredo Lam dates from 1945, the period which is widely considered to be the very height of the Cuban master’s career (est. $1/1.5 million). The June 1945 solo exhibition at Pierre Matisse Gallery in which this work was featured was a particularly significant one for Lam who was by then becoming a recognized artist within the relatively small New York art scene which included emerging figures such as Barnett Newman, Arshile Gorky, and Matta.

Also by Lam, Le Sorcier De L'océan (Alafi Incam/Ogun Ferraille), The Wizard of the Ocean comes from a key point of transition for the artist with the figure of the femme cheval having been extricated from the jungle and isolated as a single entity against a stark black background (est. $800,000/1.2 million).

Quarto Famba is a rare wooden piece from 1973 by Cuban Surrealist sculptor Agustín Cárdenas who incorporated aspects of his African heritage and Dogon totems into his work (est. $100/150,000) and Claudio Bravo’s White Package is an early painting from the Chilean realist master from one of his most sought-after series from the 1960s (est. $400/600,000).

Following the success of the initial offering from the Collection of Lorenzo H. Zambrano in November 2014, this May sale will present further works assembled by the Mexican businessman and philanthropist. Highlights include Dr. Atl’s commanding Autorretrato (Self Portrait) from 1958 (est. $150/250,000) and Tres futbolistas con boina by Ángel Zárraga (est. $600/800,000).

El Balcón by Diego Rivera boasts extremely distinguished provenance coming from The Goldwyn Collection and previously having been in the collections of both John and Nelson Rockefeller (est. $300/400,000). While the Goldwyn family is legendary within the film industry, their creative vision also extended to collecting fine art with Samuel Goldwyn Sr. assembling a magnificent collection including pieces by artists such as Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse. El Balcón is an intimate scene of two Yucatán women and a young infant which was selected to participate in the first major retrospective of Diego Rivera in the United States, the exhibition of 1931 at the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

La Familia, a late work by Rufino Tamayo is the last and definitive version of the artist’s endearing motif (est. $1.2/1.6 million). At eighty-eight Tamayo continued to fulfill extraordinary creative cycles and the present painting can be seen as a nostalgic return to his youth, evidenced in the depiction of this recurrent subject matter.

Other highlights from this section of the sale include Untitled (Woman With Flowers) by Alfredo Ramos-Martínez, a beautiful depiction of Mexican modernism (est. $500/700,000), and Dr. Atl’s colorful landscape Valle Pihuamo, Jalisco (est. $150/200,000).

The sale will lead off with a particularly strong selection of Latin American Contemporary Art including Felt #8 by Arturo Herrera, a monumental work by the Venezuelan artist who created his most sensual series to date using the material (est. $125/175,000). Further contemporary highlights include a superb group of Cuban works by artists such as Zilia Sánchez, Alexandre Arrechea, and Los Carpinteros.

Fernando Botero is among the world’s most recognizable artists and the May sale features a strong selection of his paintings and sculpture. Like so many of Botero’s major works, Desnudo ante el espejo depicts a robust woman caught in a private moment (est. $600/800,000), while the bronze Sitting Woman (Donna Seduta) is a more recent work from 2003 (est. $350/450,000).