PIASA PRESS RELEASE Modern and Contemporary Art Date and place of sale Tuesday 31 March 2020 7:00 PM 118 rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré 75008 Paris Public exhibition March 27, 2020 from 10:00 to 18:00 March 28, 2020 from 11:00 to 18:00 March 30, 2020 from 10:00 to 18:00 March 31, 2020 from 10:00 to 12:00 Contacts Florence Latieule + 33 (0)1 53 34 10 03 [email protected] Laura Wilmotte Koufopandelis + 33 (0)1 53 34 13 27 [email protected] Margot Denis - Lutard +33 (0)1 53 34 10 02 Press contact [email protected] Romain Arazm Domitille d'Orgeval + 33 (0) 6 78 36 14 54 [email protected] [email protected] After the successful dispersion of the collection of the dealer Daniel Varenne, the highlight of the PIASA house for the year 2019, the Modern and Contemporary Art Department presents on Tuesday 31 March 2020 a selection of 182 lots. Beyond the pioneers of Modern Art (Paul Klee, Henri Matisse Max Ernst ...), this ambitious corpus highlights the movement of Narrative Figuration with artists such as Eduardo Arroyo, Antonio Segui, Hervé Télémaque, or Bernard Rancillac and Robert Combas. Representing the diversity of artistic creation in the second half of the 20th century, this session also offers an insight into Art Brut with artists such as Jean-François Larrieu, Michel Macréau and Louis Pons. Bernard Rancillac N Born under the Algerian sun in 1931, Bernard Rancillac arrived in France six years later. Alongside his work as a teacher, he set up his first workshop in Bourg-la-Reine in 1955. A contract with a collector allows him to devote himself fully to his production. After three years of study in an engraving workshop, he was awarded the painting prize at the Paris Biennale in 1961. From 1961 onwards, Bernard Rancillac became a central player in the Narrative Figuration movement, alongside artists such as Hervé Télémaque, Robert Combas and Alain Jacquet. In 2003, his work was the subject of an ambitious retrospective at the Musée d'Art Moderne de Saint-Étienne. Bernard Rancillac (born in 1931) Geometral of an idol, 1966 Acrylic on canvas Signed, dated and titled on the back. 88.5 x 115 cm Estimation : 40 000 / 60 000 euros Robert Combas A major painter of Figuration libre, Robert Combas became known in the early 1980s for the imaginative force of his painting in which very heterogeneous universes collide. His mocking tone, his sense of humor and grotesque quickly became his trademark. The painting offered for sale "Compagneros catcheros! Fucking Dios! Edenteros! "(2001) is a perfect illustration. Two wrestlers with toothless smiles seem to be trapped in their costumes and bow ties that are too tight. As is often the case with Combas, the canvas space is saturated with colours, graffiti and words that spill over onto the frame of the work (a filling compulsion that brings it closer to art brut). These words, which here serve as titles, are written in a deliberately popular, slang style, with spelling approximations. Behind his satirical verve and his deliberately anti-intellectual remarks, Combas, as a good "neo-dadaist" artist, casts a cruel glance at our world. « He seeks neither poetry nor grace. He tells of the world from which he comes and which he knows by heart. He invents its realism, brutal and trivial like this world itself. everything that was no longer valid in art suddenly returns. The burlesque, the grotesque, the obscene resurface ». Philippe Dagen Robert Combas (né en 1957) Compagneros catcheros ! Putain de Dios ! Edenteros ! 2001 Acrylique sur toile et cadre peint par l'artiste Signée et datée en bas vers la droite 107 x 107 cm Henri Matisse Estimation : 30 000 / 50 000 euros A heroic figure of a chromatic radicality, Henri Matisse is the author of a very large number of drawings. Remnants of ideas as fleeting as they are brilliant, they translate with great fidelity the relationship that the painter had with forms, especially when they are feminine. After training in the studio of Gustave Moreau, the young thirty-year-old attended the Académie de la Grande Chaumière, then under the direction of Antoine Bourdelle. After his discovery of the work of Paul Signac, he spent more and more time in the South of France, in Saint Tropez and then in Collioure before going to Morocco. Beginning with his divorce from his wife Amélie, the 1940s were far from simple for the artist, who was forced to stay in bed for several months after a serious operation. In this drawing, volumes of the body, the expression of the face and the jewellery (bracelet, necklace) are suggested with great sensitivity. Henri Matisse (1869-1954) Serge Férat Untitled, 1942 India ink on paper Serge Férat was born Sergei Nikolayevich Signed, dated and annotated bottom Yastrebzov in Moscow in 1881, and his real right surname was Sergei Nikolayevich Yastrebzov. 51,5 x 39 cm Like Pablo Picasso, he moved to Paris in 1900 at the age of 19. He then attended classes at the Estimation : 40 000 / 60 000 euros Julian Academy. Marked by the aesthetic heritage of Maurice Denis, he exhibited for the first time at the French Artists' Salon. He was for a while an illustrator and decorator, notably for a play by Guillaume Apollinaire Les Mamelles de Tirésias. From the beginning of the 1930s, the cubist aesthetic that characterizes his painting is transformed to become more decorative. Some of his works were presented in 1953 at the Museum of Modern Art of Paris. Serge Férat (1881-1958) L'homme à la guitare et au chien Oil and gouache on cardboard Signed lower right 27.5 x 18.5 cm Estimation : 20 000 / 30 000 euros Paul Klee Paul Klee met Vassily Kandinsky at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. He undertakes several stays in Italy, which he will document with the meticulous attention of an enlightened traveller. In Paris he frequents the Louvre and discovers the Impressionist painters. A major figure of the group of artists Le Cavalier bleu (Der Blaue Reiter), Paul Klee was one of the co-founders of the New Munich Secession, alongside artists such as Alexi von Jawlensky, Gabriele Münter and of course Vassily Kandinsky. The year in which the painter produced this drawing entitled "elefantengruppe" was synonymous with success for him. In particular thanks to an exhibition in Berlin. He went through the First World War without a hitch and in 1920 he was appointed professor at the Bauhaus School, which Walter Gropius had founded a year earlier. Paul Klee (1879-1940) Elefantengruppe (Group of elephants), 1917 Pencil on paper Signed and dated top left Dated and titled down the centre 15,9 x 15,2 cm Estimation : 20 000 / 30 000 euros Arman (1928-2005) Born in 1928 in Nice, Arman is initiated to art from childhood. After a stint at the Arts Décoratifs in Nice and then at the Ecole du Louvre, he organised his first solo exhibition in 1956 at the Galerie du Haut Pavé in Paris. At the end of 1957, when Arman signed his works with his first name, a typographical error appeared on the cover of a catalogue. "Armand" became "Arman", a name he later kept. In 1960, he co-founded the Nouveaux Réalistes group with, among others, Yves Klein, Jacques Villeglé, César, Daniel Spoerri and Niki de Saint Phalle. They advocate the use of recycled materials. Arman (Armand Fernandez dit) Casanova Memories, 1964 Accumulation of bedpost balls in resin Signed bottom left 50 x 50 x 50 cm Provenances : - Lawrence Gallery, Paris - Old Eliane Radigue Collection - Private collection, Paris Estimation : 40 000 / 60 000 euros Michel Macréau (1935 - 1995) Forerunner of free figuration, marked by the work of Jean Dubuffet. He then took part in the creation of tapestry panels for Le Corbusier. Fragile, the artist multiplies hospital stays. Schematic and treated in the childlike aesthetic characteristic of Art Brut, the human body is an omnipresent motif in his paintings. Today, his work is kept in several major museum collections and was first exhibited in 1960 at the Raymond Cordier Gallery in Paris. The inscription "INRI", the cross on the horizon and the flow of blood inform the viewer about the identity of this white silhouette. This work was created between 1966 and 1968. Michel Macréau INRI, circa 1966 - 1968 Oil on jute canvas Signed lower right 146.3 x 114 cm Provenance: Private collection, Paris Estimation : 22 000 / 30 000 euros Lyonel Feininger (1871-1956) Born in the United States from German parents, Lyonel Feininger left in 1887 for europe where he multiplied his academic training in Hamburg, Berlin, Liège and finally Paris. Halfway between the painting that fascinated him and the illustration that brought him to life, the first years of the 20th century were for him the theatre of the influence of the avant-gardes, led by the Cubists, which he discovered at the Salon des Indépendants. It was during this period that he produced this work in Indian ink. For a few more years in the field of figurative art, he depicted the city, its architecture and its popular and industrious atmosphere. Lyonel Feininger Ready to depart, September 1911 Chinese ink on paper Signed lower left Titled bottom center Dated lower right 21 x 29 cm Estimation: 35 000 / 45 000 euros .