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SELECTION OF AUCTION HIGHLIGHTS
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Lot 1034
Oskar Schlemmer
German, 1888-1943
ROTE LEIBER, 1929
Signed Osk Schlemmer, inscribed as titled and stamped O.S. on the reverse; stamped O.S. on the stretcher
Oil on canvas
35 3/8 x 23 5/8 inches (89.9 x 59.4 cm)
Provenance:
With Alfred Flechtheim, Berlin
With J.B. Neumann, New York
Private Collections, Long Island, New York
Exhibited:
Darmstadt, Germany, The Beautiful Body in Modern Art, 1929, p.63, no.131
Weisbaden, Germany, Thirty German Artists, 1930, p.12, no.112
Berlin, Galerie Alfred Flechtheim, Oskar Schlemmer und Marg Moll, 1931, no.2
New York, The Museum of Modern Art, German Painting and Sculpture, 1931, p.34, no.81 (dated 1928 and as lent by Galerie Flechtheim, Berlin)
Literature:
Hans Hildebrandt, Oskar Schlemmer Werkverzeichnis, Prestel-Verlag, Munich, 1952, no.162
Karin von Maur, Oskar Schlemmer Oeuvrekatalog der Gemalde, Aquarelle, Pastelle und Plastiken, Munich, 1979, p.85, no.G195, illustrated
Note:
C. Raman Schlemmer participated in the sale as the grandson of the artist and expert on the oeuvre of Oskar Schlemmer
Sold to a New York buyer for $2,480,000
OSKAR SCHLEMMER (1888-1943)
Rote Leiber, 1929
The premier offering in the Modern and Contemporary Art section of the sale was a rare and important painting by Oskar Schlemmer (German, 1888-1943) entitled Rote Leiber. A painter, sculptor, and stage designer, Schlemmer was born in Stuttgart in 1888, where he studied art at the Kunstgewerbeschule and the Kunstakademie. After spending a year in Berlin he returned to his native city in 1912 and studied with Adolf Holzel (1853-1934), who interested him in avant-garde art. Schlemmer served in the German infantry during World War I and was wounded several times. After the war he went back to Stuttgart and became active in modernist art circles. At the invitation of the architect Walter Gropius (1888-1969), Schlemmer began to teach at the Weimar Bauhaus in 1920 and made preparations for his Triadisches Ballett (first performed in 1922). He moved to the Dessau Bauhaus late in 1925 and taught theater and dance.
Rote Leiber dates from the time after Schlemmer left the Bauhaus in 1927 and accepted an appointment at the Staatliche Akademie in Breslau. He abandoned his earlier abstract style and began to paint semi-cubist figurative subjects that reflect his interest in dance. Schlemmer's paintings of this period typically represent streamlined, cylindrical figures rigidly set in frontal, rear, and profile positions. In early compositions such as Rote Leiber, the static, mechanistic figures are situated in ambiguous surroundings that are devoid of the architectural elements that later manifest themselves in Group of Fourteen Figures in Imaginary Architecture (1930, Wallraf-Richartz Museum, Cologne) and the famous Bauhaus Stairway (1932, The Museum of Modern Art, New York). The artist painted the latter work, which is often interpreted as exemplifying the Bauhaus ideal of a synthesis between architecture and the figural arts, after learning that the Nazis had closed the Dessau Bauhaus.
For the last decade of his life Schlemmer had to contend with the fact that the Nazis considered his art degenerate; he lost his position in Breslau, his paintings were included in the notorious Nazi-sponsored Entartete Kunst (degenerate art) exhibitions, and he was forbidden to sell his paintings in Germany. He worked for a Stuttgart firm beginning in early 1938 that produced murals and camouflage, and relocated to Wuppertal in 1940 to do experimental work at a varnish factory. Schlemmer died in Baden-Baden in 1943.
Rote Lieber was exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1931 and is listed in Karin von Maur, Oskar Schlemmer: Oeuvrekatalog der Gemalde, Aquarelle, Pastelle und Plastiken (Munich: Prestel-Verlag, 1979), vol. 2, p. 85, as G 195.
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Lot 1121
Henri Matisse
French, 1869-1954
UN BEAU MATIN D'ETE, 1905
Signed Henri Matisse (lr)
Oil on canvas
16 x 12 3/4 inches (40.5 x 32.4 cm)
Provenance:
Galerie Druet, Paris, 1908, no.2877
Professor Braune, Breslauer, Germany, acquired in 1908
Galerie Thannhauser, Luzern, December 16, 1926, no.1123
Galerie Matthiesen, Berlin, 1927
Charles H. Worcester, 1928
Helen Worcester Bradley, gift from Charles Worcester
By descent to the present owner
Exhibited:
Ceret, France, Musee d'art moderne Ceret, Matisse-Derain Collioure 1905, un ete fauve, June 18-October 2, 2005
Le Cateau-Cambresis, France, Musee Matisse, October 22, 2005-January 22, 2006
Literature:
Musee d'art moderne, Ceret and Musee Matisse le Cateay-Cambresis, Matisse-Derain Collioure 1905, un ete fauve, Gallimard 2005, p.81, no.8, illustrated
Sold to a European buyer for $1,136,000
HENRI MATISSE
Henri Matisse painted Un beau matin d'ete in the summer of 1905, during a fourteen-week stay at Collioure, a picturesque fishing village on the Mediterranean by the foothills of the Pyrenees near the Spanish border. It was among the fifteen canvases, forty watercolors, and one hundred drawings that Matisse produced at Collioure that summer. The painting is significant because it was then that Matisse, accompanied by Andre Derain (1880-1954), abandoned Neoimpressionism and began to paint in a manner that emphasized brilliant, but deliberately unnatural, even distorted color.
Collioure was beginning to attract tourists in 1905, evolving into its present status as a fashionable resort. An early guidebook to the area drew attention to its "intense light, this perpetual dazzlement, that gives a northerner an impression of a new world," and noted that "one is struck above all by the bright light, and by colors so strong and so harmonious that they possess you like an enchantment." These surroundings inspired Matisse to paint such masterpieces as Portrait of Mme Matisse, or The Green Line (Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen) and The Open Window, Collioure (private collection).
Shortly after returning to Paris at the end of the summer, Matisse and his followers exhibited their controversial paintings in the notorious Salle VII at the Salon d'Automne. The critic Louis Vauxcelles referred to these radical works as having been painted by fauves, or wild beasts, from which the first modern art movement of the twentieth century soon came to be known.
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Lot 1219
Ernest Lawson
American, 1873-1939
WILLOWS IN WINTER
Signed E. Lawson (lr)
Oil on canvas
25 1/2 x 30 1/2 inches
Provenance:
Macbeth Gallery, New York
The Milch Galleries, New York
Exhibited:
Columbus, Ohio, Columbus Gallery of Art, (possibly)
Sold to a New York buyer for $114,000
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Lot 1043
Jose Guerrero
Spanish/American, 1914-1991
BLUE VARIATIONS
Signed J Guerrero (lr)
Oil on canvas
53 x 69 1/2 inches (134.6 x 176.5 cm)
This painting was executed circa 1962.
Property of the Brooklyn Museum of Art
Sold to a European buyer for $114,000
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Lot 1230
Charles Ephraim Burchfield
American, 1893-1967
LATE AFTERNOON IN THE HILLS
Signed with monogram and dated 1939-41 (lr)
Watercolor and charcoal on paper
27 x 40 inches
Provenance:
Collection of Frank K.M. Rehn, Inc., New York
Kennedy Galleries, New York, 1985, to the present owner
Exhibited:
Columbus, Ohio, Ohio State Fair, Charles Burchfield Memorial Exhibit, 1970
Literature:
Christopher Finch, American Watercolors New York: Abbeville Press, 1986, p.228, illustrated no.293
Sold to a California buyer for $108,000
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Lot 1030
Maurice de Vlaminck
French, 1876-1958
PAYSAGE BLEU
Signed Vlaminck (lr)
Oil on canvas
25 3/4 x 31 3/4 inches (63.5 x 80.6 cm)
Provenance:
Acquired directly from the artist by the noted Austrian playwright and librettist Hugo von Hofmannsthal (1874-1929). After von Hofmannsthal's death, the painting passed to his daughter Christiane von Hoffmannsthal Zimmer (d.1987) who, along with her husband and family, fled Anschluss around 1941, lived in London for a year, and eventually settled in New York City. Her son, Andrew Zimmer (d.2003) inherited the painting, which has since descended in the family.
This work is accompanied by a certificate of authenticity from Gilbert Petrides, Paris, dated October 22, 1990, no. 21.991.
Sold to a European buyer for $96,000
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Lot 1059
Christo
Bulgarian, b.1935
WRAPPED REICHSTAG (PROJECT FOR BERLIN): IN TWO PARTS
Signed Christo and dated1981 (ul); inscribed WRAPPED REICHSTAG (PROJECT FOR BERLIN) PLATZ DER REPUBLIK, REICHSTAG PLATZ, Scheidemannstr, Brandenfurger tor and with annotations
Pencil, pastel, wax crayon, charcoal, fabric and wire on paper
33 1/2 x 28 1/4 inches overall (85.1 x 71.8 cm)
Sold to a European buyer for $84,000
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Lot 1194
Seymour Joseph Guy
American, 1824-1910
PEEK-A-BOO
Signed SJGuy with monogramed initials (lr)
Oil on canvas
12 x 15 1/8 inches
Sold to a New York buyer for $66,000
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Lot 1118
Auguste Rodin
French, 1840-1917
L'ETERNELLE IDOLE
Signed A. Rodin and stamped on the inside A. Rodin; stamped on the back of the base ALEXIS RUDIER/Fondeur Paris.
Bronze with black brown patina
Height 11 1/2 inches (29.2 cm)
This lot is accompanied by a certificate from the Musee Rodin in Paris dated September 3, 1957 stating that this bronze is the third of a limited edition of twelve that were posthumously cast by Alexis Rudier after the original plaster model by Rodin in the museum's collection.
Sold to a British buyer for $63,000
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Lot 1051
Kenneth Armitage
British, 1916-2002
CHILDREN PLAYING, 1953
Inscribed indistinctly
Bronze with black brown patina on wood base, from an edition of 6
Height including base 12 inches (30.5 cm)
Literature:
Woollcombe, Tamsyn, Kenneth Armitage: Life and Work, 1997, Lund Humphries, London, in association with The Henry Moore Foundation, illustration of another example.
This work is listed in the Artcurial Catalogue for the artist, Paris, 1985
Sold to a British buyer for $51,000
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Lot 1055
Irene Rice Pereira
American, 1907-1971
ABSTRACT COMPOSITION
Signed I RICE PEREIRA (lr)
Oil on paperboard
17 1/4 x 22 3/4 inches (43.9 x 57.8 cm)
This painting was executed circa 1939-40.
Sold to a New York buyer for $48,000
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Lot 1220
Isabel Bishop
American, 1902-1988
THE KID
Signed Isabel Bishop (lr), stamped Jones Street Workshop on the reverse
Oil on board
16 x 20 inches
Provenance:
Midtown Galleries, New York
Everhart Museum, Scranton, Pennsylvania, acquired in 1940
Exhibited:
New York, National Academy of Design, 111th Annual Exhibition, 1936 (Isaac N. Maynard Prize)
New York, The Art Association of New York, 28th Annual Exhibition, 1939
Scranton, Pennsylvania, Everhart Museum
Chicago, The Art Institute of Chicago, American Paintings and Sculpture, Sixty-Ninth Annual Exhibition, Jan.17-Feb.22, 1970
Sold to a California buyer for $45,000
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Lot 1260
Guy Carleton Wiggins
1883-1962
BOAT RACE, ESSEX
Signed Guy Wiggins (ll) and inscribed 'Boat Race'/Essex and Guy Wiggins on the reverse
Oil on canvas
29 7/8 x 39 3/4 inches
Sold to a New York buyer for $39,000
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Lot 1222
Phil Herschel Paradise
American, 1905-1997
INDIANS THRESHING
Signed Phil Paradise (lr)
Watercolor and pencil on Arches paper
22 7/8 x 30 inches
Exhibited:
Cincinnati, Ohio, Cincinnati Art Museum, Annual Exhibition of American Art
Sold to a California buyer for $39,000
A WORLD AUCTION RECORD
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Lot 1100
Jean Pougny
Russian, 1894-1956
PARK RUEIL
Signed Pougny (lr)
Oil on canvas laid to masonite
12 3/8 x 18 3/8 inches (31.5 x 46.6 cm)
Provenance:
Hammer Galleries, New York
Sold to a British buyer for $39,000
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Lot 1168
Arthur Fitzwilliam Tait
American, 1819-1905
STAG AND DOE
Signed A.F. Tait and inscribed and dated NY '78 (ll)
Oil on prepared panel
9 7/8 x 15 inches
Sold to a New York buyer for $36,000
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Lot 1259
Jean MacLane (McLane)
1878-1964
EARLY SPRING
Signed Jean MacLane (ll)
Oil on canvas
40 x 40 inches
Exhibited:
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 121st Annual Exhibition of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, 1926, no.257
Sold to a Texas buyer for $36,000
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