NEW YORK.- On May 29, 2002 Sotheby’s Latin American Art Department will celebrate the 25th anniversary of its first sale. The inaugural sale in 1977, which was devoted to Mexican Modernism, will be honored this spring by a selection of works by modern Mexican masters at the height of their careers including Rufino Tamayo, Diego Rivera, Alfredeo Ramos Martinez, and Maria Izquierdo. These and other works, presented as a special section of the sale, epitomize the vitality of Mexico and its artists and their innovations and contributions to twentieth century art history in Latin America and beyond. Other highlights from the sale will include works by Maria Martins, Fernando Botero, Matta, Armando Morales, Claudio Bravo and Leonora Carrington. The May sale is expected to bring $9/13 million.
Kirsten Hammer, Director of Sotheby’s Latin American Art Department, noted: “In these 25 years our scope has grown beyond pure modernism, running from the colonial to the contemporary and encompassing the artistic production of the entire region—from the Rio Grande to the Southern Cone, from the Pacific Coast to the Caribbean. Sotheby’s was the first to hold auctions of Latin American Art, maintains its position as the leader in the field and holds world auction records for nearly every major Latin American artist including Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, Matta, Rufino Tamayo, Fernando Botero, Claudio Bravo, Wifredo Lam and Armando Morales.”
Modern Mexican Art: A tribute to Sotheby’s 1977 sale of Modern Mexican Paintings, Drawings, Sculptures and Prints
Sotheby’s is pleased to offer Diego Rivera’s Naturaleza muerta en óvalo (pictured page 1) which is estimated to sell for $500/700,000. The canvas has not been offered at auction since 1959 when it was sold to the present owner in the Parke-Bernet sale of twenty-seven paintings from the artist’s brief, but dazzling career as a cubist painter in Paris (1909-1917). As a young man, Rivera’s exceptional talent was noted in Mexico and he was sent to Europe in 1907 with a government grant, together with his compatriot, Ángel Zárraga. Rivera first studied in Madrid and then in 1909 moved to Paris where he shared a studio with Marie Blanchard. By the early teens he had become an integral part of the School of Paris, counting among his friends and colleagues Picasso, Modigliani, Mondrian, Gris, Léger, Chagall Dufy and Signac, and showing at the Salon des Indépendants and the Salon d’Automne. The present painting compares favorably to another work of this period, Still Life, 1915, in the collection of the Kröller-Müller Museum in the Netherlands. Both paintings reveal the extent of Rivera’s experimentation with color and texture during this period. Naturaleza muerta en óvalo, in particular, both showcases Rivera’s resolutions of the formal and compositional challenges of Cubism and anticipates his mastery of coloristic effects that would define him as one of the great masters of the twentieth century.
Chief among the highlights this spring is Rufino Tamayo’s Fuego which is estimated to sell for $800,000/1 million. Painted in 1946, a period widely regarded by experts as one of the most productive and surprising periods for the artist, Fuego also marks a time when Tamayo moved beyond the Mexican subject matter of many of his works from the 1930’s to a phase of intense experimentation in the years following his move to New York City in 1934. Fuego delivers enormous visual impact with a subtle range of reds, oranges, grays and blues, which enhance the dramatic scene of two nude figures fleeing a burning building and geometric forms compose a sequence of triangles, circles and flattened conical shapes creating a visual language derived from Cubism—a form of painting that deeply interested the artist in the 1940’s. Fuego has been widely exhibited in Europe, Asia and the Americas, but has never before been offered at auction.
Several works by the Mexican painter Alfredo Ramos Martinez will be sold to benefit Camp Coca-Cola, a program which provides inner-city children of exceptional merit with a nurturing and challenging camp experience while encouraging them to continue to higher education. It is fitting that these works are being sold to benefit children, as Ramos Martinez moved to California late in life, leaving a well-established career in Mexico, to seek medical treatment for his only daughter. Once in California he became an integral part of the southern California arts scene, where he executed the stunning murals at the Scripps College in Claremont, California and founded the “Open Air Schools of Painting”. The present work, El Valle de Mexico (pictured page 2, bottom right), represents all five elements of his California paintings: mountains, sienna and ochre brown fading toward a pale blue sky, cultivated fields, huts, and peasant women in a group of five and one alone, all carrying baskets of fruits and stalks. This work is one of the largest works by Ramos Martinez ever offered at auction and is estimated to sell for $70/90,000.
Also highlighting this portion of the sale is María Izquierdo’s 1946 still life, Naturaleza Viva (pictured above). Unlike Spanish still life paintings, which are traditionally titled naturalezas muertas, María Izquierdo titled her paintings naturalezas vivas. Her reasoning for this resonates in the present work, which juxtaposes the ripe, rich forms of the foreground with the brooding background and sky to create tension in the scene. Izquierdo was trained as an artist in Mexico’s capital in the 1920’s and was active in the revolutionary artistic political movements that flourished in that time and in the subsequent decades. Like Antonio Ruíz and Frida Kahlo, Izquierdo incorporated indigenous subjects and stylistic motives from popular Mexican paintings of the 19th century into her work. This can be seen in the choice of a rural backdrop, and in the display of native fruits and wares. Naturaleza Viva is estimated at $150/200,000.
Other Highlights
Sotheby’s is pleased to offer Eighth Veil, one of the finest and most celebrated bronzes by Maria Martins ever executed, which depicts a scene from the Biblical temptress Salome’s famous dance. Dated 1948 and estimated to sell for $500/700,000, the piece is currently featured in the special exhibition, Surrealism: Desire Unbound at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Martins—better known professionally as simply “María”—depicted the body her teenage daughter who posed as the model, but she has taken the liberty of distorting the head, hands and feet in a way that suggests their metamorphosis into grotesque plant forms. Once the lover and certainly the muse to Marcel Duchamp, who dedicated several works to her including his last major project, Etant donnes, now in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Martins has been described by Andre Breton as the “shining star” of post-war art and as one of the most important sculptors of the Surrealist period.
Several important works by Fernando Botero will be offered this spring including Horse, his monumental bronze sculpture from 1992. The work, which stands almost nine and a half feet tall and seven and a half feet wide, will be exhibited in the atrium of Sotheby’s York Avenue headquarters from May 1st until the day before the sale and is estimated to sell for $400/500,000. Botero’s magnificent 1977 painting, La princesa Margarita (after Velázquez) (est. $300/400,000) is another highlight by the artist. In the late 1970’s Botero executed a series of paintings after the Spanish master of the Golden Age, Diego Velázquez. Botero selected the young Infanta Margarita, daughter of King Philip II of Spain and the central figure in Velázquez’ most famous painting Las Meninas, as the cornerstone of this series. This painting is a synthesis of several of Velázquez Infantas: eyeing the spectator sideways as she does in Las Meninas but portrayed in the solitary regal splendor with which she was depicted throughout her life in official court portraits.
A work on paper by Chilean-born artist Matta will also be offered in Sotheby’s evening sale. Like many from the Surrealist group, Chilean-born Matta fled Europe for the New World at the onset of World War II. In 1939, Matta arrived in New York with his American wife where he rapidly became part of the New York art scene, becoming mentor to younger American artists such as Robert Motherwell, Arshile Gorky and Jackson Pollock. Appropriately executed in wax crayons, ink and lead pencil on paper the year after the artist’s arrival in New York, I Want My Jam depicts a little boy throwing a temper tantrum and is estimated to sell for $100/150,000.
Property from an Important Mexican Collection includes an early work by Leonora Carrington entitled Plain Chant (est. $175/225,000). Revealing the artist’s childhood Catholic upbringing, this painting is a mischievous play on plainchant, the official melodic chanting of the Christian liturgy. Far from the usual music-making heavenly host depicted in Christian art, here is a multitude of open-mouthed, hybrid entities united in creating a sound that, one suspects, challenges notions of the sacred.
Additional highlights in the sale include a beautiful oil on canvas entitled Selva Tropical by Armando Morales (est. $350/450,000), an exceptionally well painted canvas, Still Life, by Claudio Bravo (est. $300/350,000), and a large bronze by Francisco Zúñiga entitled Juchiteca Sentada which is estimated to sell for $200/250,000.
