The unknown picture of the Dutch artist Rembrandt van Rein succeeded in acquiring the Lackenhal Museum in one of the auctions abroad. The purchased canvas will be exposed for public viewing in Leiden, the hometown of the famous painter.
The curator of the paintings of the old masters of the Lacenghal Museum, Christian Vogelar, said about a sensational acquisition without specifying on which auction the picture was bought, and also refused to tell which canvas is said and how it was found that it belongs to Rembrandt’s brush.
It is only known that the painting is being restored, and the public canvas will be presented on November 3 of the following year at the exhibition dedicated to the early work of Rembrandt.
“First of all, we must make sure that the restoration is completed on time and that we have time to study the painting in detail,” Vogelar said. – “At this stage, we can not say anything more”.
French artist Henri Matisse was called a “wild” artist because he dared to simplify the laws of painting. Looking at his canvases, the public indignantly criticized him, but at the same time, he constantly made an order for him. One of the most famous paintings by the artist “Dance” in 1910 is considered a provocative picture. Nude, dancing bodies on the canvas, wide smears – all of them were angry and, at the same time, attracted spectators.
Once in 1908, a Russian industrialist and collector Sergei Shchukin looked at the workshop for Henri Matisse in Paris. He painted an order for several paintings to decorate the grand staircase of his new home in Moscow. The collector wanted the artist to write something that would symbolize music and dance. Matisse, thinking for a moment, agreed with joy, because in his mind for a long time the idea of some kind of allegory in dance has matured.
To create a famous painting the artist was inspired by the then famous organizer of the ballet in Paris Sergey Diaghilev and the Greek vase painting. On almost four meters of canvas, Matisse portrayed dancing in the dance of girls, simplifying their image almost to schematization. He was surprisingly able to convey expression through a minimal amount of colors. Their master used only three, which symbolize the internal heat that unites the heavens and the earth and the bodies of dancers. The dance itself represents the expression of the insane twentieth century.
Henry Matisse, “Music”, 1910. The Hermitage, St. Petersburg
In addition to the famous “Dance”, the artist wrote for Shchukin two more paintings in the same style as “Music” and “Bathing, or Meditation”, the latter remained incomplete. Before sending two canvases to the customer to Tsarist Russia, they were exhibited for a general review at the Autumn Salon in Grand Palais, but Mati’s paintings received negative reviews and indignation from the public. The viewers are not accustomed to such innovation in painting, irritated by uncovered individual parts of the body, simple careless lines and only three dominant colors.
Collector Serhiy Shchukin was immediately blamed for not being ashamed, called him a garbage collector and almost insane. Frightened by such psychological pressure, he refused to take pictures of Matisse. But after a few days, being a halfway from Paris to Moscow, Shchukin changed his decision, despite the bad reviews, he wrote a telegram to the artist that he still sent him these pictures. He requested Matisse to apologize for his weakness and cowardice and insisted that the author cover these places that led to criticism.
After the October Revolution and the Bolsheviks came to power, Sergey Shchukin was in a hurry to leave the imperial empire, and the collection had to be left. All of the paintings were nationalized and sent to the Hermitage.
Throughout the time of collecting, Shchukin managed to create a unique collection of French avant-garde paintings, featuring canons of Gauguin, Monet, Matisse, Picasso and other well-known representatives of Western art. According to Sotheby’s auction house, the value of the 2012 Sergey Shchukin collection was $ 8.5 billion.
At the Luxembourgian Cultural Center “Abbaye de Neumünster” on September 7, a retrospective exhibition of one of the most prominent representatives of Ukrainian contemporary art, Ivan Marchuk, opens.
The exhibition entitled “In Search of Truth” will feature over three dozen landscape and abstract compositions that cover five of the twelve creative cycle of the famous artist.
According to the organizers, most of the collection has already been featured in recent years in Lithuania, Germany, Poland and Belgium, and it is extremely enjoyable – the work of Ivan Marchuk is always amazement and enthusiasm among the European public.
The artist Ivan Marchuk said that now in the EU there are more than a hundred of his unique works. There is a high probability that all these priceless canvases that the artist has written during his lifetime can stay forever abroad. The reason for this is the lack of initiative of the Ukrainian authorities to allocate at least some premises in Kiev so that these pictures can be constantly seen by all those who wish. The artist himself is not against leaving them outside of Ukraine, because he is tired of appealing to the Kyiv authorities “roof” for his work. If they do not value theirs, then aliens are only happy to be ready to shelter his artistic creations that are recognized by the world.
Two portraits of José Capelo by Francis Bacon. Stolen in 2015.
From the friendship with Francis Bacon, Jose Capello left as many as five of his portraits. His treasures, which skyrocketed in value, the Spaniard recklessly kept at home. And when he only had to go to London, the canvasses disappeared. A year later, three were found, the police arrested more than ten people, but the case has not been solved yet. Portrait of another friend Bacon, Lucien Freud, a couple of years, led the rating of the most expensive works of art sold at public auctions: a triptych “Three sketches for a portrait of Lucien Freud” purchased for $ 142.4 million (Christie’s, 2013).
“The wounded table” by Frida Kahlo. The location is unknown since 1955.
Bernard Zilberstein photographed Frieda Kalo at the “Wounded Table” in 1941, a year after finishing the work on the painting. Photo: Edward B. Silberstein / Cincinnati Art Museum
How it was possible to steal the “Wounded Table” unnoticeably is hard to imagine. Work impressive size (1.2 by 2.4 m) is written on a tree, not on the canvas, so that it can not be cut out of the frame and rolled into a roll. But the fact remains: the picture, which is called the “Holy Grail” for students of Kalo’s creativity, mysteriously disappeared on the way to Moscow. A convinced communist, the artist gave it to the Soviet Union, but our officials did not appreciate the work, categorizing them as “samples of decadent bourgeois art.” Anyway, the “wounded table” after the death of Kalo in 1954 managed to reach the exhibition in Warsaw, and then evaporated. Recently, a Mexican art critic has stirred up the world art community, saying that he attacked the track of the “wounded table”. While they are looking for him, a record-worthy work of the artist, whose great retrospective is being successfully held now at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, there remains the picture “Two Naked in the Woods” – the new owner paid $ 8 million for it.
“View Auvers-sur-Oise” by Paul Cezanne. It was stolen in 2000.
A pledge of successful abduction is a surprise. For example, New Year’s Eve, when no one cares about what is happening in the museum. So decided the robbers, aiming at one of the iconic paintings of Cezanne – “View Over-sur-Oise”, and not lost. The landscape was abducted from the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford on the night of January 1, 2000. Without special effects was not done: intruders, after entering the museum, threw a smoke bomb. While the protection of the noise of New Year fireworks on the street trying to understand what happened, the kidnappers and the trace caught cold. The most expensive painting for Cezanne today is not a landscape, but a still life: “The curtain, the jug and the compote” was sold for $ 60.5 million (Sotheby’s, 1999).
Investigation of the theft of the “Woman – Ocher” painting by Willem de Kooning, stolen 30 years ago, came to a new stage.
It seems that the picture “Woman – ocher” Willem de Kooning, whose value now stands at more than $ 100 million, 33 years ago from the Art Museum of the University of Arizona stole a quiet intelligent couple. The New York Post reported on another piece of evidence – this is a frame from a family album, which confirmed that the day before the crime the music teacher and speech therapist from the American outback were in the same city of Tucson, where the museum is located. The photobook of malefactors, who apparently tried to change their appearance, partially coincides with the image of Rita’s spouses and Jerry Alter. Thieves raced off on a sports car of red color – the same was for the couple. A year before his death, Jerry published a story about the robbery of the museum – that’s just where they steal not the picture, but the jewel. The investigation is still ongoing, but the main thing is that the canvas was found exactly one year ago. His antiquarian returned to his museum, to which Alter’s nephew appealed, who inherited their property. Apparently, all 32 years of work hanging in the bedroom with the spouses, which until now all the neighbors have spoken of as incredibly honest and respectable people.
According to the company Art Loss Register, which collects data on stolen works of art, the three most “stolen” artists include Picasso, Renoir and Caravaggio. Among the specific works, the leader can be “The Portrait of Jakob de Hein II”, which since 1966 has been abducted and returned to the Dalić Gallery in London four times, for which he received the nickname “Rembrandt for Take-Out.” And here are some more pictures that have not been returned yet – but they are looking for it with all their might.
“Portrait of a young man” by Raphael. The fate is unknown since 1945.
“It was not burnt and was not destroyed, but is safe in one of the bank safes”, – so mysteriously representative of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Poland on restitution of cultural property Wojciech Kowalski responded to a request about where the “Portrait of a Young Man” Raphael. The painting, confiscated by the Nazis from the legitimate owners, Princes Czartoryski, disappeared after the end of World War II. Kowalski’s words sound unconvincing, and rumors go different: the portrait is owned either by a Swiss banker, or by a Russian oligarch, or by a hedge fund manager from the USA … There were never public renaissance genre paintings, but a sketch of “The Head of a Muse” for a mural “Parnassus” from Stanza della Senyatura in the Vatican to the new owner went for $ 47.9 million (Christie’s, 2009).
“Poppy” (“Vase with Flowers”) by Vincent van Gogh. Stolen in 2010.
Of the 43 CCTV cameras, only 7 worked, alarming was not turned on at all – it’s no surprise that Van Gogh’s picture was stolen, not at night, as it happens in such cases, but in the morning when the Muhammad Mahmoud Khalil Museum in Cairo was just opened. The authorities suddenly remembered and blocked the stations and airports. Further – even more interesting. At first the police stated that they had allegedly arrested two Italians and the case was closed. Then the statement was denied by the Minister of Culture of Egypt Farooq Hosni, who assured that the canvas was never found. In 2012, British art experts put forward a version that the stolen “Maki” – just a copy, and the original was stolen back in 1978 for a major Egyptian official. The record of the cost of Van Gogh paintings was set 20 years before the abduction of the “Macs”, then “Portrait of Dr. Gachet” went under the hammer for $ 82.5 million (Christie’s, 1990).
“Pigeon with green peas” Pablo Picasso. Stolen in 2010.
Spiderman, Spider-Man – so nicknamed the Serbian mountaineer and thief Vieran Tomich, who penetrated the museums and houses of wealthy people, climbing the walls. The loudest thing in his career is the bold robbery of the Museum of Modern Art of the city of Paris in the spring of 2010. As later confessed to Tomich, who was in the dock, he went to the museum after another picture, but “everything turned out very well.” The alarm was on repair, the CCTV camera he was able to disconnect, and the guards were dozing. Tomich strolled about the halls and took what was in accord with his aesthetic taste – Picasso’s painting “Pigeon with green peas” (and Matisse, Braque, Leger and Modigliani). On the question, where is the work, without blinking answers: “Destroyed and thrown away.” Fortunately, the fate sold for a record $ 179.4 million (Christie’s, 2015) “Algerian Women (version” O “) was more successful: the last picture from the same name series now belongs to Sheikh Hamad bin Jasim, the former Prime Minister of Qatar.
The real triumph of polychrome sculpture fell on the turn of the XIX-XX centuries, with the advent of symbolism and art nouveau and their love for decorativism.
Polychrome sculpture recently became the theme of the exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, covering the period from the XIII to the XXI century. At the exhibition in Orsay, there are 50 samples of only French sculpture of the XIX century, but it turned out to be equally impressive. In France, within the walls of her neo-classical Academy of Arts, white marble and patinated bronze reigned supreme. This went on until the middle of the XIX century, while the pensioners of the French Academy in Rome did not discover an antique sculpture with traces of polychrome. Since the 1850s, color has already taken a prominent place in the arsenal of funds of French sculptors. However, they were not limited to a single coloring, as in 1832 Honore Daumier in his famous series of 36 portraits of caricatures of French parliamentarians. For example, the very popular sculptor of the time Charles Cordier (1827-1905) in his portraits, in addition to gilding, used onyx, effectively combining it with colored marble (“Negro from Sudan”, 1857), and not less famous Ernest Mesonier (1815-1891 ) sought in his sculptures of an amazing life-likeness on the verge of naturalism, using for modeling a pliable wax, cloth and skin, as in his “Horseman”, also included in the exposition. And the real triumph of polychrome sculpture took place at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, with the advent of symbolism and art nouveau with their love of decorativism. At the same time, new materials appeared in the arsenal of sculptors: enamel, colored glass, brass. Well, the exhibition is completed with painted bas-reliefs from Paul Gauguin’s tree on the Tahitian themes and Edgar Degas’s “Little Dancer” in a pack of real tulle and a pink ribbon in her hair.
Museum of Orsay
Polychrome sculpture in France. 1850-1910
Before 9 September
www.musee-orsay.fr
The first six months of the year brought record-breaking financial results to Christie’s auction house – total sales rose by 26% to almost $ 4 billion versus $ 3.1 billion in the first half of 2017, Christie’s reports.
The main reason for success was the record sale of a number of auction auctions of David Rockefeller’s historic collection, which brought $ 835 million. Auction sales increased by 20% to $ 3.6 billion, while private sales showed an increase of 135% – $ 390.3 million
Particular importance is the growth of private sales, as last year it was recorded a decline of 66.5%. Internet sales also increased by 40% in half a year to $ 37.7 million. Over 55 lots were sold for more than $ 10 million. The most expensive lot was the picture of Pablo Picasso’s “Girl with a Flower Basket” (1905) that went For $ 115 million, with an estimate of $ 90 million. Also, auctioned records for Claude Monet ($ 84.7 million) and Henri Matisse ($ 80.1 million) were set.
The British 81-year-old artist David Hockney, who writes rich landscapes and portraits, has every chance to become the most expensive artist in the world while still alive. This year, one of his most famous works is planned to be auctioned, which, according to auction experts, can be sold at a record price, among existing living artists.
It is about David Hockney’s “Pool with Two Figures,” which he wrote in 1971. Now the canvas is in the collection of British billionaire Joe Lewis.
For information Bloomberg, a businessman whose wealth is $ 5.5 billion plans to sell the picture at an auction not less than $ 80 million. Currently, negotiations are underway, which auction will open it for auction-it may be Christie’s, Sotheby’s or Phillip’s.
If there is a buyer who is willing to spend this amount, then David Hockney will become the most expensive artist during his lifetime. Now such a record belongs to the American pop art artist Jeff Koons. In 2013, its inflatable dog «Orange Balloon Dog» was sold at Christi’s for $ 58.4 million. A personal record for the most expensive work belongs to Hockney painting “Pacific Coast Highway and Santa Monica” in 1990, it was sold for $ 28.5 million.
According to analysts, British billionaires are ready to invest in the work of Hockney. Thus, they plan to gradually bring their compatriot to the list of the most expensive artists in the world.
Not a month passes so that somewhere around the world did not open the exhibition of the most famous Mexican – Frida Kahlo
Frida Kahlo with a statuette of the ancient Olmec culture. 1939. Photo of Nicholas Murray. Photo: Nickolas Muray Photo Archives
Now it was the turn of the Victoria and Albert Museum (V & A), who dedicated her show of personal belongings to the artist from her museum in Mexico City, opened in 1957 in the so-called Blue House, where she was born and lived most of her life. The museum kept the situation, personal things, at the request of her husband Diego Rivera, packed and hidden in the bathroom. They were discovered half a century later and some of the items were restored in the museum in 2012 after restoration. Now more than 200 exhibits from this collection: dresses with colorful Mexican ornaments, ornaments, photographs, letters and self-portraits – for the first time left Mexico for display in London.
“If this exhibition does not change, it significantly complements our understanding of the personality and creativity of Frida Kahlo, gives an idea of how she worked on her way,” says Claire Wilcox, senior curator of the fashion department at V & A. Here, even the cosmetics that Kalo used, her medical corsets and prostheses, which she had to wear all her life. What did not stop her from being friends with the best artists, photographers and intellectuals of her era, among them Man Ray, Nicholas Murray, Tina Modotti. Frida loved to shoot herself. Her photographs at the exhibition are shown with self-portraits, which, bedridden, she wrote tirelessly. And on one of the necklaces of jadeite Frida restorers found traces of green paint. It was in him that Frida on one of the self-portraits of 1933. According to the curator, “there is a feeling that even beads should have been in her color to match the color of the picture.”
The Victoria and Albert Museum
Frida Kahlo. Creating your own image
Until November 4
www.vam.ac.uk
Three institutions – the Kunsthalle in Vienna and the German Bielefeld and the Swiss Art Museum in St. Gallen – joined together to fully illustrate the practices of Olaf Nicolai (born in 1962), with whom he has been passionate for the past 20 years.
A philologist by education, a graduate of Leipzig University, he has been engaged in visual arts at the junction of different disciplines and practices since the early 1990s. Nicolai believes that “art is a way to perceive the world with the help of aesthetic feelings, rather than a well-adjusted methodology for the production of high-value objects.” Therefore, the artist is so fond of in Kassel and Venice and calmly treat him in large and important galleries. For Documenta 14 Nikolay created an audio film “There is a bird in the forest …”, referring to the line of the French poet Arthur Rimbaud “There is a bird in the forest, whose singing stops you and makes you blush …”. Nicolai used the records of the rumble of protest demonstrations and rallies from around the world as a basis for creating sound objects and music. In the summer of 2017 “There is a bird in the forest …” was broadcast on the radio of the Documenta exhibition, a vinyl disc with a map and a calendar of events mentioned in the project was released. In 2007, Nicolai created the installation “Considering the multiplicity of manifestations in the light of certain aspects of relevance. Or can art be specific? “. It has 16 color large-format prints for walls and 400 books. When they were made, Olaf randomly handed in the paint, one after another, to the printing press. Prints are the first two and the last two prints of the series. Everything else went to 64-page books.
Kunsthalle
Olaf Nicolai. There is no place until arrival
13 July-7 October
www.kunsthallewien.at
