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Category :Art Market |
Written by: Elena Lanzanova
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Autumn Auctions At Christie’S Milan
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Monday 15 November 2010
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Christie’s Milan will be presenting its November sales over three days: the catalogues are dedicated to Modern and Contemporary Art (23rd-24th November), to Old Master Paintings (24th November) and to Jewellery (25th November). After the very encouraging results recorded in May 2010 and the remarkable success of the spring sales, the Milanese auction house is opening the autumn season with enthralling sales that promise to attract many Italian art lovers and collectors to Palazzo Clerici.
Christie’s first auction starts with Modern and Contemporary Art, with two sessions offering 237 lots of high artistic and historical quality. The honour of the highest estimate goes to Linea di velocità + cielo by Giacomo Balla, an oil on canvas estimated at 300-500 thousand euros. This marvellous painting dated 1914 is built around speed, main distinctive theme for Balla and the futurist movement. What stands out in this work is the absence of recognisable images, of identifiable objects or figures: the absolute simplicity of the composition is built on very few elements and the colours are reduced to two primary ones, red and blue. The elements just mentioned strongly connect the canvas to the early abstract experiences which were developing in those years in Europe. The determining role of Giacomo Balla in the development of pure abstraction has been widely discussed and recognised, but in paintings like this one what emerges – besides the artist’s extraordinary anticipating power – is the originality of his personality, presenting a particular and open position on the European artistic scene, deciding to dialogue both with the emerging abstractionism and with the most advanced fringes of supporters of the real facts, among which cubists. The most interesting aspect of Balla’s works of this period is, indeed, the tension between the polarities of abstraction and figuration, a tension which developed in a supremely dynamic balance as it was chronically instable.
From the United States we have Quattro donne by Massimo Campigli (estimate 300-400 thousand euros), a work auctioned to support the new acquisitions of one of the most important – if not the most important – museums of modern and contemporary art, the Museum of Modern Art of New York. The painting, executed in 1938 and present at an exhibition in New York the following year, after various events, became part of the Murray Graham collection and was then given to the New York museum which has kept it for fifty years. The painting, which testifies the notoriety achieved by Campigli on the American continent, also belongs to a fundamental moment for the painter’s private and artistic career.
With the same estimate Christie’s is offering Concetto spaziale, attese by Lucio Fontana, a hydro-painting on canvas dated 1967 which comes from an important private Milanese collection, while with a lower estimate there is Nell’arena (estimate 200-300 thousand euros) and Piazza d’Italia (estimate 170-250 thousand euros) by Giorgio de Chirico, Oggi ventinovesimo giorno ottavo mese dell’anno millenovecentoottantotto by Alighiero Boetti (estimate 180-250 thousand euros) and finally Cerere I by Felice Casorati (estimate 150-200 thousand euros).
On Wednesday 24th November, the auction will be dedicated to Old Master Paintings featuring about eighty pieces from the 16th to the 19th century. Highlight among these is a Madonna with Child and Saints, a precious domestic altarpiece by Benvenuto Tisi, called il Garofalo. Small and brightly coloured, the painting is proposed with a valuation of 110-150 thousand euros. Last May an elegant San Giacomo by the same master achieved great success at Christie’s auction in Milan: offered with an estimate of 50-70 thousand euros, it was sold for 101,600 euros.
Other highlights of the sale include a mythological scene by Amico Aspertini, capricious and bizarre artist but very rare to find on the art market. A possible decoration for a nuptial box, the small painting portrays the Judgment of Paris as a courtly scene in Renaissance guise. The oil on canvas, which has been a subject of study for a long time but rarely seen by the public, is offered with an estimate on 80-100 thousand euros.
A number of 17th-century paintings represent the regional Italian schools, among which Vecchia che conta il denaro by Matthias Stomer, one of the most famous northern followers of Caravaggio who moved to Sicily. This unseen nocturnal candle-lit scene has been valued by experts at 50-70 at thousand euros.
The Florentine Seicento is also represented by a Cleopatra by Cesare Dandini (estimate 25-35 thousand euros) and by an episode of the Liberated Jerusalem signed by Francesco Curradi (estimate 20-30 thousand euros), while from Rome we have the Portrait of cardinal Francesco Nerli by Ferdinand Voet (estimate 25-35 thousand euros) and Saint John the Baptist by Giovanni Lanfranco.
There are also still life paintings, including one by Pietro Paolo Bonzi, called il Gobbo dei Carracci (Natura morta di frutta con rinfrescatoio, estimate 40-60 thousand euros) and landscapes: in particular a very elegant pair of countryside scenes by the painter Vittorio Amedeo Cignaroli (Paesaggio con figure e animali, estimate 30-40 thousand euros) and Paesaggio del Brenta alla chiusa di Dolo by Giovan Battista Cimaroli (estimate 40-60 thousand euros).
The Neoclassical period is represented by some temperas with mythological subjects by Felice Giani, realised in the early 19th century for the decoration of Palazzo Milzetti in Faenza, [Anfitrite (L'Acqua) e Venere (La Terra) and Il console Marcello trainato dai destrieri al galoppo, both valued 10-15 thousand euros], while the end of the century proposes a panoramic view of the Palatino and the Colosseum painted by Pio Joris in 1877 (estimate 60-80 thousand euros).
Finally, with more than 410 pieces, the Milanese auction at Christie’s dedicated to Jewellery is anticipated to be an excellent chance to find on the Italian market the best of precious stones, branded jewels and historical pieces. Stars of the catalogue are an ancient necklace with emeralds and diamonds (estimate 150-200 thousand euros), a diamond Art Déco tiara (estimate 70-100 thousand euros) and a diamond Art Déco bracelet, signed Cartier (estimate 70-90 thousand euros).
Arcadja Auctions Skim here through the auction at Christie’s – Milan, November 23rd-24th 2010 Arcadja Auctions Skim here through the auction at Christie’s – Milan, November 24th 2010
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Tags: Cesare Dandini, Giacomo Balla, detto il Gobbo dei Carracci, Massimo Campigli, Benvenuto Tisi, Pio Joris, Alighiero Boetti, Modern and Contemporary Art, Felice Giani, Felice Casorati, Amico Aspertini, Matthias Stomer, Vittorio Amedeo Cignaroli, Ferdinand Voet, Giovan Battista Cimaroli, Lucio Fontana, Pietro Paolo Bonzi, Giorgio De chirico, Milano, Old Master Paintings, detto il Garofalo, Francesco Curradi, Christo, Giovanni Lanfranco
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