MASTERPIECES BY RUFINO TAMAYO, REMEDIOS VARO AND FERNANDO BOTERO LEAD CHRISTIE’S LATIN AMERICAN SALE Christie’s will present its most valuable Latin American Sale, expected to realize in
excess of $22 million, on November 19 and 20 in New York.
News-Antique.com - Oct 23,2007 - New York – Christie’s will present its most valuable Latin American Sale, expected to realize in
excess of $22 million, on November 19 and 20 in New York. Leading the November 19 evening
sale is Rufino Tamayo’s important masterpiece, Trovador, which reflects his signature style of semiabstracted
forms and mastery of color (estimate: $2,000,000-3,000,000), and a very rare appearance
on the market of a work by Remedios Varo, Exploración de las fuentes del río Orinoco (estimate:
$400,000-600,000). With over 300 lots, the two day auction offers works by the most important
Latin American artists such as Fernando Botero, Joaquín Torres García, Diego Rivera, Matta,
Wifredo Lam, and Claudio Bravo.
Tamayo’s Trovador (Troubadour), executed in 1945, is
perhaps the least studied of the artist’s great paintings.
Combining ideal subject matter of the guitarist with the
artist’s signature brilliant palette and scale, this iconic work is
the most important easel painting by Tamayo to come up at
auction in more than a decade. Trovador has the potential to
break the current world auction record for Tamayo, which
was set at Christie’s in 1993 with the 1955 painting, America
(Mural).
Surrealist Remedios Varo’s beautiful and delicate painting,
Exploración de las Fuentes del río Orinoco, is one of the most
important works by the artist to ever be offered at auction (estimate:
$400,000-600,000). Painted in 1959, at the height of her career, the
painting portrays the artist’s familiar themes of journey and
discovery, inflected with Varo’s trademark whimsical and humorous
details. Showing a woman with a focused gaze navigating a magical
vehicle with garment-like details down the foggy Orinoco River in
Venezuela, the painting has a haunting and mystical aura which
references Varo’s feelings of transition and separation. Immersed in
the émigré community in Mexico City in the 1940s, the most
influential of Varo’s cross-cultural surroundings proved to be the
friendship she developed with the Surrealist Leonora Carrington.
Leading a wonderful group of works by Botero is El domingo por la tarde, painted early in the artist’s
career in 1967. From his picnic series, this work
portrays a well dressed family with two small
children picnicking in the mountains with a military
guardian — the rotund subjects arranged as a still
life of fruit (estimate: $1,400,000-1,800,000). The
Bedroom is a portrait of a corpulent woman dressed
in lingerie, beckoning the viewer into her confined
space (estimate: $800,000-1,200,000). Among the
various sculptures by Botero, Pedro on a Horse shows
a child on a toy horse, and suggests the influence of
Degas with his use of synthetic hair on the horse’s
mane and the leather reins (estimate: $200,000-
300,000).
Alfredo Ramos Martínez’s Las floreras (The Flower Vendors),
1933 is a wonderful example of the artist’s California style which
employs geometric and hieratic figures, purity of line, a reduced
palette and narrative strength (estimate: $800,000-1,200,000). The
canvas is divided - earth and sky - and the women are beautifully
silhouetted with curvilinear lines. Stooping under the weight of
their baskets filled with flowers they are a powerful
