For Immediate Release May 11, 2011 Contact: Sophia Chabbott tel +1 212 636 2680 [email protected] CHRISTIE’S NEW YORK LATIN AMERICAN ART SALES TO OFFER A RANGE OF MASTERPIECES OF MEXICAN AND CUBAN MODERNISM AND REDISCOVERED WORKS OF ARGENTINE POP TWO-DAY AUCTIONS EXPECTED TO REALIZE UPWARDS OF $20 MILLION Miguel Covarrubias (Mexican 1904-1957) Offering of Fruits for the Temple, 1932 Estimate: $ 200,000-300,000 Public Exhibition: May 21 to May 26, 2011 Auctions: May 26 – 27, 2011 at 6:30 p.m. and 10 a.m. New York — This month, Christie’s New York will present an array of Latin American Art to astound and excite. The Latin American Evening and Day sessions, to be held on May 26 and 27 are in keeping with the Season of Discoveries at Christie’s, with fresh to market works by outstanding artists such as Miguel Covarrubias, Claudio Bravo and the Argentinean 1960s Pop artist Jorge de la Vega. The auctions are comprised of nearly 350 works by more than 145 artists from 16 countries spanning across Latin America including Argentina, Venezuela, Puerto Rico, Chile, Cuba, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico and Nicaragua. The works hail from the late 18th Century to Contemporary including prime examples from Colonial, Modernism, Kinetic Abstraction and Pop and Op Art. This resplendent sale is expected to realize upwards of $20 million. Fernando Botero (Colombian b. 1932) Colombian Landscape, 1986. Estimate: $800,000 - 1,200,000 Virgilio Garza, Head of Latin American Paintings at Christie’s comments: “Christie’s Latin American sales offer an impressive survey of fine paintings and sculptures that transcend the borders of the Latin American market. We secured a small but special collection of rarely seen Spanish Colonial works from the Cuzco and Mexican schools. As well as Latin American Modernist Masterpieces works by Torres-Garcia, Matta, Tamayo and Lam are part of the sale. As the market leader in Latin American art, we are confident in the vigor of the marketplace for supreme, fresh to market works across multiple genres.” The cover lot is a remarkable rediscovered painting by Miguel Covarrubias, the Mexican artist whose extended trips to Bali in the 1930s forever inspired his work. Transfixed by the island’s rich culture, artistic and religious traditions, Covarrubias, a successful illustrator, whose work was often featured in Vanity Fair and Vogue magazines, wrote The Island of Bali. Offering of Fruits for the Temple, pictured above from 1932 is Covarrubias’ pictorial ode to the idyllic beauty of the Balinese women, as a group of beautiful women elegantly balance baskets of fruit on their heads, swathed in brightly colored sarongs. The rare work has been in a private collection until now and is considered one of the artist’s great masterpieces. Jorge de la Vega (Argentinian 1930-1971) Untitled, 1966 Estimate: $200,000 - $300,000 Christie’s also discovered a rare trove of works by Argentinean artist Jorge de la Vega focusing on the 1960s. The works were part of the Estate of Stanley and Regina Cohen. The Cohens were great art collectors who filled their home with Argentinean works by the likes of De La Vega, Ernesto Deira and Victor Chab, which they collected in the 1960s and 1970s. Upon his wife’ death in 1985, Stanley Cohen moved along with his collection to Queens, N.Y., where the collection came to light. By Jorge de la Vega, a leader of the Argentinean avant garde and a member of the Nueva Figuración group in the 1960s, Untitled, from 1966 (estimate $200,000-300,000) is included in the sale. The artist improvised a highly idiosyncratic artistic language to critique visual culture. This work was painted in 1966 during the artist’s nearly three-year stay in New York City during which he became inspired and critically engaged with a consumer culture and popular media stereotypes. The work’s central figure is suspended in a tilted space vaguely resembling a television screen. Flattened figures and grotesque deformations belie the slick realism of facial features drawn with sardonic TV-ready smiles. Matta The Rufino Tamayo Wifredo Lam (Chilean 1911-2002) (Mexican 1899-1991) (Cuban 1902-1982) Regard du germs Mujer caminando J'arrive (Le Temoin), 1961 Estimate: $150,000-200,000 Estimate: $ 70,000 - 90,000 Estimate: $400,000 - $600,000 Notable works by Claudio Bravo, Fernando Botero, Rufino Tamayo, Matta and many others are included in this stellar selection. Additional Highlights include: Amelia Peláez (Cuban 1896-1968) Untitled, 1947. (estimate: $250,000 - 350,000) Amelia Peláez was tireless in her exploration of the theme of still life. Here, in tune with her depiction of fruit-covered still lifes as seen through the scrim of her stained glass windows at her home in La Víbora, Havana, the artist transforms the humble subject matter into a wondrous expression of her love of all things Cuban. This Untitled gouache work acts like a roadmap of a familiar terrain, except unlike the old and vibrant tones she typically employs this has a soft warm light of orange and gold colors. The overlapping lines serve to break away form and lend the work a nervous psychological quality. Claudio Bravo (Chilean b. 1936) Berber Still Life, 2001 (estimate: $300,000 - $400,000) Like Covarrubias and De La Vega before him, Claudio Bravo painted his most masterful works outside his native country. It was the Chilean artist’s adopted home of Morocco that inspired Berber Still Life in 2001. The meticulous arrangement of three containers of various foods and other items typically associated with North Africa and the indigenous Berber. The fruit, ceramics, furniture, ostrich eggs and other objects become potent symbols location in this stage-like setting. Historically, the eggs and heads of lettuce refer to fertility and abundance in this region. Anonymous (Cuzco School Late 17th or Early 18th century) The Holy Trinity (estimate: $25,000 - 30,000) Painted by an unknown artist of the Cuzco School from the late 17th or early 18th century is another sale highlight. Andean depictions of the Holy Trinity as three distinct individuals permitted the teaching of the native populations of the New World about the concept of the trinity. A divine mystery, the Holy Trinity is typically depicted as the God the Father an old man; God the son as the young figure of Jesus Christ; and the Holy Spirit as a dove. Although not adhering to strict Church-sanctioned precepts, according to scholars, images such as this one were used to propagate the Christian faith in the New World. Joaquín Torres-García (Uruguayan 1874-1949) Formas trabajadas anímicas, 1933 (estimate: $600,000 - $800,000) Torres-García left Paris in December 1932 for Barcelona, where he spent 18 months teaching and lecturing before his making his celebrated return to Montevideo in 1934. The graphic stylizations of its dominant anthropomorphic figure clearly suggest the influence of primitive art forms, from Andean textile and pottery designs to Bronze Age artifacts found in prehistoric Spain. The abstracted figure is wholly integrated within Torres-Garcia’s iconic gridded structure, its features and limbs concisely abbreviated into a bold, geometric pattern. The psychic undertones referenced in the title allude to the spiritual and emotional properties that Torres-García believed inherent in abstract art, from the ancient Americas to the modernist grids of art in the 20th Century. Emiliano di Cavalcanti (Brazilian 1897-1976) Carnaval, 1946 (estimate: $200,000 - $300,000) Brazilian painter Emiliano di Cavalcanti captures the vitality and energy of Carnaval in this work. The subject matter is decidedly Brazilian — Carnival revelers, street performers, and samba dancers parading down a crowded street while local residents look on from their windows and balconies vicariously partaking of the merriment below. Central to the composition is the figure of a woman with arms extended upwards framing her delicate face in a manner not unlike one of the female nudes in Picasso's iconic 1907 painting Les Desmoiselles d'Avignon. Jesús Rafael Soto (Venezuelan 1923-2005) Virtual cobalto sobre el rombo, 1977 (estimate: $250,000 - 350,000) This season Christie’s presents a dazzling group of six works by Jesus Rafael Soto. One such masterpiece, Virtual cobalto sobre el rombo from 1977, channels geometric abstraction into the radical innovations of Kineticism and Op Art. In 1950, Soto traveled from Venezuela to Paris where he was drawn into Salon des Réalités and Galerie Denise René, the cradle of the Post-War geometric abstraction, where he worked alongside an international group of artists including Julio le Parc, among others. Here, the superimposed geometric shapes animate the classic modernist grid suggested by the black square rotated 45 degrees into a diamond shape. The suspended horizontal wires vibrate in space giving the optical illusion of the original square. Carlos Cruz-Diez (Venezuelan b. 1923) Physichromie No. 826, 1975 (estimate: $150,000 - $200,000) For over 60 years Carlos Cruz-Diez has probed the perceptual and situational properties of color in space, experimenting with the illusions of sensory perception to induce sometimes dazzling psychophysiological effects. More than mere optical illusion, the kinetic effects triggered by the chromatic vibrations and radiations of his idiosyncratic works speak to the dynamic experience of color under changing pressures of time and space. The artist has said: “Color is a situation which evolves…” The dazzling display of the vitality of color in Physichromie offers the viewer a sensual and cerebral experience, speaking suggestively to the psychic and transformative power of the chromatic field. The experience becomes the viewer’s own: the chromatic field shimmers and fluctuates with the movement of the viewer and the relative angle and modulation of the ambient light.