NEW YORK, NY.- Amid a growing interest in Latin American art at major museums in the United States and Europe,
Christies fall Latin American Art Evening Sale in New York offers collectors worldwide an opportunity to buy exceptional works by giants from across the region, including Joaquín Torres-García, Matta, Fernando Botero, Rufino Tamayo, Claudio Bravo and Wifredo Lam. Among the works for sale in the November 20 evening sale and November 21 day sale are a broad representation of artists, from the colonial period to contemporary, including a large number of exceptional works by some of todays leading Brazilian artists.
Key highlights include a lushly colored modernist work by Tamayo, Tres Personajes (1970) (estimate $1,500,000 - 2,000,000), which recalls the vibrant colors of the artists childhood in Mexico City. Another highlight is an exquisite example from 1931 of Torres-Garcías mature style, Composition Nord - Art Constructif (estimate $1,500,000 - 2,000,000). Created while the artist lived in Paris, this work is a veritable blueprint for understanding Torres-Garcías theory of Universal Constructivism rooted in a select and universal language of ideograms organized within a gridded structure. Torres-García is currently featured in a retrospective at New Yorks Museum of Modern Art. In addition, the sale features another important example of Torres-Garcias constructivist period, Constructif avec poisson ocre, from 1929, (estimate: $600,000 - 800,000).
The sale offers an opportunity to collect a signature 1964 oil painting, La Barrière (estimate: $400,000 600,000) by the acclaimed modernist Wifredo Lam, who also has two works in upcoming Christies sales of Impressionist and Modern Art in New York and London, Femme cheval, an oil on canvas from 1950 (estimate: $600,000 - 900,000), and Chant de la forêt, an oil from 1946 (estimate $1,300,000 - 1,800,000). Lam, like Torres-García, is currently enjoying a moment of global exposure with a traveling retrospective exhibition at the Centre Pompidou in Paris; both shows are on view through mid-February 2016.
The sale will also include an exceptional work by Matta, painted at a pivotal moment in 1939 as the artist had just arrived in New York and would soon become a key figure between the European exiled community of artists and the burgeoning New York School. Untitled (estimate: $500,000 700,000) masterfully encapsulates what Matta referred to as his inscapes works that merge inner and outer worlds rendered in a perennial state of transformation.
Other highlights from the sale include:
Five works by Chilean artist Claudio Bravo, including two from his signature Packages series that epitomize his technical virtuosity and his command of classical realism and conceptual abstraction: Red Package, painted in 2005, estimate: $700,000 900,000) and Purple and Blue-Grey Package (estimate: $500,000 700,000).
Works by Armando Morales (1927 2011) and Tomás Sánchez (b. 1948) underscore these artists unique virtuosity and command of the genre of landscape painting. One of several works from the distinguished Mezzacappa Collection to be sold by Christies this season, Morales Platanal from 1994 (estimate: $250,000 350,000) is as much a visual meditation on the human ordering of nature, as a pictorial rendering reminiscent of one of Gabriel García Márquezs lyrical passages on the majesty and magical realism inspired by the tropics. The poetic possibilities of landscape painting are further explored by the allegorical and meticulous landscapes of Tomás Sánchez, such as Meditador en la orilla, an acrylic from 1998 (estimate: $300,000 - 400,000)
A large selection of works by the prolific Fernando Botero, in many media and subjects, from drawings and sculptures to paintings, including Man from 2006, (estimate: $500,000 - 700,000).
A selection of works from the Brazil Golden Art Collection that features some of todays most sought-after contemporary Brazilian artists, including Adriana Varejão (Espelho D'Água, 2008 estimate: $300,000-500,000), OsGêmeos (Untitled, estimate: $200,000 - 300,000, and Luiz Zerbini (A Praça, 1985, estimate: $80,000-120,000).