NEW YORK, NY.- On 27 and 28 May 2010 Sotheby’s Latin American Art sale will showcase a range of Latin American painting and sculpture from the continents’ most important artists including exceptional works from several distinguished private collections and estates. Wilfredo Lam’s Sur Les Traces (est. $1.2/1.8 million) and The Ordeal of Owain by Leonora Carrington (est. $600/800,000) are from a distinguished Aspen private collection while Fernando Botero’s La Toilette (est. $500/700,000) and two further works come from the Estate Dr. and Mrs Sidney Merians. There are also two important paintings by Diego Rivera, while Botero is represented by a works from each decade of his career. The sale also features one of the earliest totally abstract work by a Latin American artist with Emilio Pettoruti’s Armonia-Movimento from 1914 (est. $90/100,000). Overall the sale is estimated to yield $18.6/25.2 million.

Masterworks from a Private Aspen Collection
The sale includes nine works from an important collection based in Aspen, Colorado. Surrealism is the core of the collection with major paintings by Wilfredo Lam, Leonora Carrington and Matta. Lam’s seminal work Sur Les Traces Transformation ($1.2/1.8 million) is a synthesis of Cubism and Surrealism. This painting sees metaphysical forces emerge from the Cuban jungle which is rendered in Lam’s delicate drawing on the canvas. It is only where the light/dark contrast becomes more articulated that the three forms – a candle, two vessels and a diamond shaped composition - can be made out. These sit in the midst of jungle of complex and often indistinguishable forms. The painting was shown in Lam’s third solo show at the Pierre Matisse Gallery in 1945 in New York.

Following the success of Matta’s Endless Nudes in November, which achieved the second highest price ever for the artist at auction, a 1951 Untitled panting will be offered in May (est. $350/450,000). By the time Matta painted the current work he had moved away from New York, and personal polemics that had seen him break with the Surrealist Group. He was now living in Rome and enjoying a new artistic freedom. Paintings from this period reflect Matta’s concern for the timeless struggle of humanity. White paint is sponged and wiped onto the canvas to give the impression of a limitless space in which insect-like forms surround a central mechanical structure. Leer más...

Fuente: Art Knowledge News