Famous self-portrait by Leonardo da Vinci on display for the first time at exhibition in Turin

TURIN.- The exhibition, conceived and organized on the occasion of the celebrations for the 150th anniversary of Italian Unification by the Italian Ministry for Cultural Heritage is aimed to offer a journey into Leonardo’s works: about 30 original drawings from some important Italian and foreign institutions and some writings about the Autoritratto from the Biblioteca Reale of Turin. The path includes also a series of works from the 15th to the 20th century, telling us the importance and the strengthening of [...]

Exhibition in Strasbourg celebrates Tomi Ungerer’s 80th anniversary

STRASBOURG.- The exhibit entitled “Tomi Ungerer and the Masters. Inspiration and Dialogue” held at the Tomi Ungerer Museum represents a high point in celebration of the artist’s 80th birthday. Approximately 300 works will be shown throughout the museum, a display that has been assembled from both private and public collections and the museum’s permanent collection treating the innovative theme of the illustrator’s work and its ties to the history of art. Indeed, specially selected pieces of his work take on numerous graphic, plastic [...]

Auction house Ketterer Kunst in Munich announces sale of Modern and Post-War Art

MUNICH.- “It is a real sensation for the German art market. Works of such a remarkable nature are usually auctioned in London and New York”, said Robert Ketterer about Hermann Max Pechstein’s masterpiece with painting on both sides, which will be called up in the Munich auction on 10 December. In general, the range of offerings from Expressionism to Contemporary art is equally impressive. Modern Art This section is led by Hermann Max Pechstein’s work “Weib mit Inder auf Teppich” and [...]

Sotheby’s London sales of Modern & Post-War British art conclude with a combined total of $13.5 million

LONDON.- The Evening and Day Sales of Modern and Post-War British Art concluded today with a combined total of £8.5/$13.5 million. The top lot of the Evening Sale was L.S. Lowry’s Railway Platform of 1953 which sold for £1.1/$1.8 million (est. £1-1.5 million, further details on the painting below). A highlight of the Day Sale was a cast of Lawrence Holofcener’s iconic bench The Allies – the life-size cast (number 3 of the edition of 7) of the landmark on Bond [...]

Paris Photo 2011: Strong sales and a unanimous success for the 1st edition at the Grand Palais

PARIS.- This 15th edition was a landmark in the evolution of Paris Photo with a move to the Grand Palais, offering the artists and their works, the galleries, the editors and the public an exceptional setting and thereby strengthening the position of the fair on an international level and the Parisian cultural scene. Under the leadership of Julien Frydman, named Director of the fair in February 2011, Paris Photo was centred on new initiatives for the cultural programme: the exhibition « Recent Acquisitions [...]

Stadel Museum inaugurates an entirely new presentation of the modern art collection

FRANKFURT.- The reopening of the garden wing with its presentation “Modern Art (1800–1945)” on November 17, 2011 will be the first of three major collection openings at the Städel Museum. At the first opening, visitors will not only find the museum rooms of the garden wing refurbished and redesigned as well as a museum shop with a bookshop and a café extending the former range of services, but also “an entirely new presentation of the modern art collection which, besides familiar and [...]

Museum fur Gegenwartskunst Siegen presents Antoni Tapies’s Image, Body, Pathos

SIEGEN.- The exhibition Image, Body, Pathos shows 48 paintings from more than seven decades of the impressive creative oeuvre of Catalan artist Antoni Tàpies, many of them are being presented in Germany for the first time ever. Antoni Tàpies, born in Barcelona in 1923, had a decisive influence on European painting in the second half of the 20th century. The early presentation of the 4th Rubens Prize to Tàpies by the city of Siegen in 1972 was more than justified. The [...]

Exhibition of selections from the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao Collection Part II opens

BILBAO.- The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao presents Selections from the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao Collection II , the second exhibition in a series that began in 2009 and will continue until 2012. This series aims to show the public selected works from the Bilbao collection, put them in context and thus offer a detailed overview of the collection’s focus and orientation. The show, curated by Petra Joos, Deputy Director for Museum Activities at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, explores the work of a series of influential [...]

Modigliani, Picasso and Chagall to feature in Bonhams’ Impressionist & Modern art auction

LONDON.- The current highlight of the sale is Jeune fille aux cheveux noirs by the Italian artist Amedeo Modigliani. This follows on from Bonhams’ successful sale of another Modigliani portrait – Portrait de Femme, which fetched £1,812,000 on 21st June 2011. Modigliani is renowned for his enigmatic portraits of women with their elongated features and deep gazes. They have been described as ‘the works by which the artist has earned his place in the history of art’ and this fine example, estimated [...]

Christie’s Latin American evening sale achieves $15,333,750, Botero sculpture is top lot

NEW YORK, N.Y.- Christie’s Latin American Evening Sale on November 15 achieved $15,333,750/ £9,660,263/ € 11,346,975 and was 83% sold by value and 76% sold by lot. The Head of the Latin American Art department, comments: “Brazilian art shines tonight. Record prices were achieved for iconic works by Antonio Bandeira, Hércules Barsotti, José Pancetti, Alfredo Volpi, and Franz Weissmann, proving the tremendous interest in Brazilian art and for works that are fresh to the market and competitively estimated. Across the board, Mexican [...]

MOCA Gala raises $2.5 million with Marina Abramovic’s “An Artist’s Life Manifesto”

LOS ANGELES, CA.- The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, celebrated its 32-year history as one of the world’s leading contemporary art institutions on Saturday, November 12, 2011, with An Artist’s Life Manifesto, a special gala envisioned by renowned performance artist Marina Abramović who served as this year’s gala artistic director. Music and popular culture icon Deborah Harry performed hit songs “One Way or Another” and “Heart of Glass,” as well as tracks from her new album, Panic of Girls, as [...]

Impressionist masters from the Clark Collection on view at CaixaForum in Barcelona

BARCELONA.- In April 1874 the first exhibition was held in the studio of the photogra-pher Nadar, in the Boulevard des Capucines in Paris, of a group of painters who had been rejected in the Official Salon: the Impressionists. European art entered into a new stage, marked by a series of very rapid changes that, in just a few years, dispensed with appearance, natural colours, the subject and perspective: the elements that, since the Renaissance, had characterised pictorial representation. When Sterling Clark [...]

Medieval to Modern: Sotheby’s sale of European sculpture and works of art spans 800 years

LONDON.- Sotheby’s sale of European Sculpture and Works of Art: Medieval to Modern on Tuesday, 6 December 2011 will showcase 800 extraordinary years of artworks that form a continuous history from the twelfth century through to the mid-twentieth century. The auction comprises medieval, Old Master, eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth century sculpture and works of art. The department is returning to presenting Sculpture as it did from 2000 to 2005 in an uninterrupted tradition from around the tenth century to the beginning of [...]

Museum quality pieces and royal connections in Bonhams Russian sale in London

LONDON.- Museum quality paintings by Vasilii Polenov, Jewellery albums belonging to Grand Duchess Ksenia Alexandrovna and stunning examples of Fabergé, offer much to excite buyers at the Bonhams Russian Sale, taking place on November 30th in New Bond Street, London. Following a successful and well-attended two-week exhibition at the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow, two rare paintings by Vasilii Polenov are among the highlights of the sale. Considered masterpieces of the golden age of 19th century Russian painting, the two works entitled “He that [...]

Sotheby’s announces upcoming African & Oceanic art auction in Paris this December

PARIS.- Sotheby’s next sale of African & Oceanic Art in Paris on December 14 will include a highly selective ensemble of 100 lots. Some have remarkable provenance, whilst others are appearing on the market for the first time. Two Exceptional Yoruba/Nago Figures (Benin) The two Yoruba/Nago altar-figures which Sotheby’s has to offer for sale are extraordinary for both their quality and rarity. Very few altar-figures from this part of Benin are known. They are the work of a remarkably talented and imaginative [...]