NEW YORK, NY.- Swann Galleries auction of 19th & 20th Century Art: Featuring Dada & Surrealism will take place Thursday, March 23. The sale will feature a selection of 150 lots devoted to modern artists who embraced the enduring movements alongside offerings by stalwarts of the two centuries such as Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Mary Cassatt, Sonia Delaunay, Pablo Picasso and more.
Signature examples by leaders of the Dada and Surrealist avant-garde trends include Man Ray with a wood and metal readymade metronome with a printed eye, Do Not Destroy (Object Indestructible, 1923-1975), conceived 1922-33, executed 1974 ($50,000-80,000); and Marcel Duchamp with The Chess Players, a 1967 color offset lithograph based on the same-titled painting from 1911 ($7,000-10,000). Dorothea Tanning is present with Birthday (Self Portrait at Age 30), a color offset lithograph based on the 1943 painting of the same title ($4,000-6,000); as well as Hannah Höch with a collection of 17 watercolor, gouache, ink and wash drawings circa 1940 ($10,000-15,000). Works by Jean Arp, Francis Picabia, Max Ernst, Yves Tanguy, Joan Miró, Salvador Dalí, Giorgio de Chirico and more feature.
The nineteenth-century art offering includes 100 lots dedicated to key tendencies of the century, most notably Academic Realism, the Barbizon School of landscape painters, and Impressionism with its precursors, as well as Symbolism and the Belle Epoque. Among those represented are Pierre-Auguste Renoir with Le Chapeau Épinglé (2e planchet), color lithograph, 1896 ($30,000-50,000); Winslow Homer with Perils of the Sea, etching printed in dark, brownish black, 1888 ($35,000-50,000); James A. M. Whistler with Nocturne, lithograph, 1878 ($12,000-18,000); and Mary Cassatt with Enfant levant la téte, watercolor, circa 1902 ($10,000-15,000). Also of note are works by Édouard Manet, Auguste Rodin, Paul Cézanne and Paul Signac.
The selection of twentieth-century art includes more than 200 lots of museum-quality works with paintings, drawings, sculptures and editions that span the era with modern artists from Europe, South America, Asia and the United States represented. Highlights include Pablo Picassos Deux femme avec un vase à fleus, color linoleum cut, 1959 ($30,000-50,000); George Groszs Die Gastgeberin, watercolor, circa 1933 ($20,000-30,000); and Wassily Kandinskys Klein Welten IV, color lithograph 1922 ($12,000-18,000). Also of note are costume designs and abstract color studies by Sonia Delaunay, original figure drawings by Miguel Covarrubias, and color woodcut prints by Milton Avery.