M.F. Husain, Six drawings on postcards and invites (1962-63)
Trendy Indian Artwork Sale, SaffronArt, Mumbai, 16 March
Estimate: $12,350-$18,520 for the set
To many, M.F. Husain is finest recognized for reaching seven-figure gross sales at public sale—the artist, whose file stands at $1.6m for a 1972 portray at Christie’s New York in 2022, is one in every of simply 11 Indian artists whose works have made greater than $1m. However to those that knew him personally, he was additionally a stressed sketcher. “He was continuously drawing—he wanted to do one thing along with his palms always. One time we went to lunch and by the tip of it I had an image of a tiger and an elephant on a material serviette,” says Minal Vazirani, the cofounder of the Indian public sale home SaffronArt. It’s providing six drawings made by Husain within the early Nineteen Sixties on the backs of postcards and invites. Every of those was both gifted or offered to the lot’s consignor, Najm-ul-Hasan, a good friend of the artist and the chief reporter at Delhi’s Nationwide Herald newspaper within the Nineteen Sixties. 5 of the works are pastel or ink drawings on postcards, and the sixth is on the again of an invite and bears a message stating that the drawing was executed “over tea and kebabs, at a roadside ‘dhaba’ [food stall] in January 1965”. SaffronArt offered an identical physique of labor, at a night sale in March 2020 for $16,000 (with charges). Okay.J.
Max Ernst & Marie Berthe Aurenche, Portrait d’André Breton (1930)
La Révolution Surréalist, Bonhams, Paris, 29 March
Estimate: €400,000-€600,000
Solely two recognized works collectively painted by Max Ernst and his one-time spouse Marie-Berthe Aurenche have ever come to the market. The primary was offered at Christie’s in 1993 for $165,000; the second is being provided this month at Bonhams within the birthplace of the Surrealist motion, Paris. Of Ernst’s romantic artist companions—the listing of which incorporates Leonora Carrington and Dorothea Tanning, Aurenche is probably probably the most ignored. Married to Ernst in 1927, Aurenche was firmly a part of the Surrealist social circle, however was not appreciated by Breton. She was to be written out of this work some years after its execution, when in 1965 the author Robert Benayoun misattributed the work to solely by Ernst, reflecting how girls within the Surrealist motion have lengthy been undervalued. However now Surrealism’s girls are having fun with a market revival, particularly following their dominance in the primary present of Cecila Allemani’s Venice Biennale final yr, with works by Carrington and the Mexican Remedios Varo in scorching demand. Okay.J.
Gerhard Richter, Mathis (1983)
twentieth Century & Up to date Artwork Night Sale, Phillips, London, 2 March
Estimate: £10m-£15m
From the French collector Marcel Brient comes a comparatively early foray into abstraction by Gerhard Richter, which has by no means earlier than been publicly displayed. The work exemplifies a interval of Richter’s profession, from round 1976 to 1986, through which he experimented with brash sharp strains and rhombic shapes. The interval can also be characterised by tactile metallic sheen and the stress and instability created when offered in opposition to sporadic splatters of paint. At 2m by 2m, the portray is likely one of the largest of that interval, possible solely dwarfed by the triptychs Fisch (1-3) and Schiff (1-3), each 1986, which offered for $1.436m at Christie’s in 2001. Brient has additionally consigned a portray by De Kooning, additionally by no means publicly exhibited, with an estimate of £7m to £9m. C.J-N.
Baccio da Montelupo, Madonna col Bambino (round 1511-12)
Proven by Blumka at Tefaf Maastricht 2023, 11-19 March
Value: $650,000
It was not till Tefaf Maastricht 2020 that Tony Blumka, of New York’s Blumka Gallery, realised that the terracotta sculpture he had purchased 5 years earlier than was by the Florentine sculptor Baccio da Montelupo, having been alerted by the Montelupo scholar David Lucidi. Lucidi’s analysis revealed that the work was a mannequin created for a contest to brighten the façade of the Casa del Saggio in Lucca. This was a prestigious competitors, as a result of the statue would successfully be the primary emblem of public devotion in a beforehand secular house. Lucidi’s catalogue essay factors out that, not like some contemporaries whose had been veering in the direction of Mannerism, Montelupo wraps Mary in a denser, crisper material that “enhances her monumentality and imbues her with the extreme classicism typical of an Previous Grasp nonetheless deeply rooted within the Fifteenth-century Florentine custom”. Historic pictures present that the sculpture as soon as belonged to a statuary group that was a part of the gathering of Stefano Bardini, whose palazzo is now the Museo Bardini. Okay.J.
Pauline Boty, BUM (1966)
Trendy British and Irish Artwork Night Sale, Christie’s, London, 21 March
Estimate: £60,000-£80,000
A preparatory sketch for a portray by the British Pop artist Pauline Boty heads to Christie’s this month; the public sale home offered the completed portray for £ 632,750 (with charges) in 2017. Boty—who helped discovered the British Pop motion—died of most cancers in 1966. She created the portray for the theatre critic Kenneth Tynan’s revue Oh! Calcutta! (1969)—a manufacturing so risqué it was really helpful for prosecution by the Police’s Obscene Publications Squad (the case was finally unsuccessful). Boty’s sketch sat alongside one by John Lennon, which was additionally commissioned for the manufacturing. It comes from the property of Tynan, who died in 1980. C.J-N.