LONDON — A serious work by surrealist painter René Magritte that hasn’t been proven in public for 1 / 4 century may fetch $64 million at public sale subsequent month.
Christie’s public sale home introduced Saturday that it’s going to supply “L’ami intime” (The Intimate Friend) at a March 7 sale in London marking a century of the surrealist motion in artwork.
The portray consists of a number of of the Belgian artist’s signature motifs, together with a bowler-hatted man and fluffy white clouds on a blue sky. In this portray, accomplished in 1958, the person is proven from behind, dealing with out over a hilly panorama. A baguette and a wine glass hover within the foreground.
Olivier Camu, Christie’s deputy chairman for Impressionist and fashionable artwork, mentioned the “highly poetic, highly dreamy” portray is among the many handful of most necessary Magritte works in personal fingers. Last exhibited publicly in Brussels in 1998, it’s being auctioned for the primary time since 1980, and has a pre-sale estimate of between 30 million and 50 million kilos ($38 million and $64 million).
This 12 months marks the centenary of Andre Breton’s “Surrealist Manifesto,” which outlined a revolutionary inventive motion characterised by unsettling juxtapositions and paradoxical statements — as in Magritte’s most well-known work, a portray of a pipe titled “This is not a pipe.”
“Now it’s become usual to think of the subconscious, psychology, psychoanalysis — but they were the one who opened the doors,” Camu mentioned.
Camu mentioned Magritte, who died in 1967, has change into probably the most “in-demand” of all of the surrealists.
Unlike the work of contemporaries akin to Salvador Dali, there are few particular cultural or non secular references to be present in his work.
“Magritte never explained anything,” Camu mentioned — even the titles of his work have been prompt by buddies.
“There’s no sign of religion in Magritte ever, or particular history, or anything,” he mentioned. “They are totally conceptual, clean, powerful, disturbing, wonderful, silent pictures. They are accessible to everybody.”
That declare is backed up by hovering costs for Magritte’s work in recent times, hitting a file $79.8 million on the time for “L’empire des lumières” (The Empire of Light) at a Sotheby’s public sale in 2022.
The work up on the market in March comes from the gathering of the late Gilbert Kaplan — founding father of the publication Institutional Investor — and his spouse, Lena Kaplan.
Source: www.bostonherald.com”