Sotheby’s New York Highlights Release September - December 2009 FINE CHINESE FURNITURE, WORKS OF ART AND CARPETS FROM THE ARTHUR M. SACKLER COLLECTIONS Exhibition opens: 11 September 16 September 2009 17
Bois (est. $5/7 million, pictured here), which was completed a few weeks after the boy’s second birthday in the summer of 1949. The picture is one of two oil versions that Picasso painted of his son Claude with his hobby horse and marks the beginning of an important new stage in his artistic development. Beginning in 1949 and continuing through the early 1950s, Picasso completed a series of portraits of Claude and his younger sister Paloma that reflect the powerful impact the children had on his art as he witnessed their childhood wonderment and joy of first discovery. Fernand Léger’s Les Trois Musiciens, ler Etat, 1932 is vivid depiction of the spirit of its era, personifying the heart and soul of Paris in the years leading up to World War II. This autumn marks the first public exhibition of the present work since 1960, during which time it has remained in a private Chicago collection (est. $2.5/3.5 million).
CONTEMPORARY ART Exhibition opens: 6 November 11 -12 November 2009
Among the highlights of the November Evening Sale of Contemporary Art is an offering of works from the collection of Mary Schiller Myers and Louis S. Myers, noted collectors and arts benefactors from Akron, Ohio. Over a period of 40 years Mrs. Myers, with her husband, assembled a classic collection of Contemporary paintings and sculpture comprising a broad spectrum of American artists as well as an interesting group of European and British artists. Among the highlights are two outstanding works by Willem de Kooning: a painting from 1977, Untitled XV (est. $5/7 million) and a sculpture from 1974, Large Torso (est. $4/6 million). Important pieces by Calder, Judd, Mitchell, Neel, Thiebaud, Oldenburg, Noguchi, and others, will also be offered. From another consignor is David Hockney’s California Art Collector (est. $5/7 million), the second work executed by the artist during his first stay in Los Angeles in 1964, and his first major composition to incorporate the dramatic impact that the new surroundings had on his subject matter, materials and technique. With this painting, Hockney began to use acrylic paint, depicted his first swimming pool and synthesized his first impressions of the affluence of glamour of Beverly Hills. Another highlight is Jasper Johns’ Gray Numbers, which was included in Leo Castelli’s watershed exhibition of the artist’s work in 1958 and was purchased from that show by Dorothy Miller, the first curator at the MoMA, for her private collection (est. $5/7 million, pictured here). Executed in 1957, Gray Numbers is not only the artist’s first gray number painting, but also among the first works he did where letters or numbers served as the sole subject of the work. The sale will also include a lovely work on paper by Mark Rothko, Orange, Red, Orange (est. $2/3 million) from the collection of former Brazilian model and philanthropist Lúcia Moreira Salles who, in the 1950s and 60s, was a muse for both Valentino and Coco Chanel, at one point working as Chanel’s exclusive house model.
