NEW YORK- Christie’s spring sales of Latin American art will offer a array of superb works by such important Latin American masters as Rufino Tamayo, Wifredo Lam, Fernando Botero and Matta on May 28 and 29 at Rockefeller Center. A strong selection of paintings by prominent Latin American Surrealists will be offered in the evening sale, as will a variety of outstanding works by Latin America’s most admired contemporary artists. Adding a touch of glamour are a collection of personal effects once belonging to the legendary Mexican artist Frida Kahlo and an exceptional Tamayo painting from the estate of Anthony Quinn.
The top lot of the May 28 evening sale is Rufino Tamayo’s La tierra prometida (Israel de hoy), 1963 (estimate: $1,200,000-1,500,000), a mural-size canvas originally commissioned by the ZIM Navigation Company for their trans-Atlantic luxury liner Shalom. Tamayo had visited Jerusalem in 1962 to attend the opening of a retrospective of his work at the Betzalem Museum. The critical acclaim of that exhibition, which subsequently traveled to the Museum of Modern Art in Haifa and the Helen Rubenstein Pavilion in Tel Aviv, led to the commission. A composition that possesses the virtuous harmony of color and tonalities that characterize Tamayo’s work, La tierra prometida (Israel de hoy) illustrates the revitalized land at the edge of the Nuegev desert.
Another important work by Tamayo, Dos figuras femininas, 1968 (estimate: $400,000-600,000), comes from the collection of the late actor Anthony Quinn, who was born in Mexico in 1915, at the height of the Mexican Revolution. Raised in Los Angeles, Quinn’s heritage remained a point of pride for the actor. Quinn was an artist himself as well as a collector of art; in high school he won a scholarship to study with Frank Lloyd Wright, who changed the course of his student’s life when he enrolled him in an acting class to work on his speaking abilities. The notably architectonic Dos figuras femininas is a richly hued and descriptive example of Tamayo’s progression away from the attenuated and distorted figures of the late 1940s and ’50s towards a documented love of the circle and totemic sculpture-like forms.
Another important highlight of the evening sale is Wifredo Lam’s La Sierra Maestra, 1959 (estimate: $400,000-600,000), a large paper-on-board painting whose name recalls the highest mountain range in Cuba, where Fidel Castro organized his base of operations during the Cuban revolution. The political and historical connotations of that time are reflected in its composition, with the persistence of angular elements evoking bellicose associations that are opposed only by a lone, abstracted figure. More than 40 year later, La Sierra Maestra continues to capture the complexity of its time.
Also by Lam is Dona asseguda, 1940 (estimate: $150,000-200,000), a full-length portrait in geometric forms that comes from a private European collection and is included in the artist’s catalogue raisonné.
A selection of later paintings and sculptures by Fernando Botero includes La pica, 1984 (estimate: $400,000-600,000), a large canvas that portrays three torreadors and a bull in the ring of a Spanish bullfight. From a private European collection comes Caballo, 1999 (estimate: $150,000-200,000), a bronze with green patina from an edition of six, which has never before been offered at auction. Also from a private collection is Cabeza de hombre, 1987 (estimate: $70,000-90,000), a bronze also from an edition of six.
Surrealists
The selection of works by Latin American Surrealists is led by Matta’s The Ecclectrician, 1945-46 (estimate: $400,000-600,000), a reflection of both the artist’s interest in primitive ritual and the dehumanizing effects of modern technology. After leaving his native Chile to study in France, Matta arrived in New York in 1939 and became a key figure of the Surrealist community. The works he executed between 1944 and 1946 represent the culmination of his existential concerns regarding modern man in the modern world, and the role of art as an act that requires an effort of consciousness on the part of the viewer for its full understanding.
Other Surrealist works include Leonora Carrington’s Los visitantes, 1960 (estimate: $150,000-200,000) and Pig Pig Bite Snake, 1951 (estimate: $120,000-140,000), and Matta’s A Elizabeth, 1938 (estimate: $120,000-140,000).
Frida Kahlo
A fascinating addition to Christie’s evening sale of Latin American Art is an assemblage of Frida Kahlo’s personal effects, estimated at $30,000-40,000 and offered as one lot. Included are her tehuana headdress, a pre-Columbian jade necklace, and a much-photographed folkloric blouse. Also, there is a small painted skeleton like those used for the Day of the Dead celebrations in Mexico, in which families celebrate their departed loved ones with offerings of feasts, flowers, and candies. The holiday is one of the most emblematic of Mexico and its exuberant traditions. The lot also includes an essay written by Diego Rivera and a letter from them both to Leon Trotsky. Even more intimate is her small red leather telephone directory. The lot is a mini- history of Kahlo’s life, touching on her many passions, from self-embellishment to her strong political ideas.
Contemporary Art
Among the highlights of the contemporary art selection is Alfredo Volpi’s Fachada, ca. 1955 (estimate: $50,000-70,000), a painting inspired by the richness of folk art and traditions in which the artist embeds a pureness of shape and color that erases the distinction between object and figure. In the late 1950s, Jesús Rafael Soto and Alejandro Otero were among the principal forces behind the abstract movement in Venezuela. Soto’s Vibration I, 1959 (estimate: $40,000-60,000) and Otero’s Tablón de Pampatar II, 1954-71 (estimate: $70,000-90,000) are examples of the artists’ efforts to propel modernism, geometric abstraction, and kineticism to a new level. Important examples by today’s artists include Ernesto Neto’s Untitled, 2000 (estimate: $14,000-16,000) and Betsabee Romero’s Requiem for the Unknown Pedestrian, 2002 (estimate: $15,000-20,000).
