In the present work, Picasso has subverted the traditional embodied interaction of artist and model— a theme that came to symbolize his own life and work most evocatively — and replaced these lead roles with sculpted avatars. In place of the artist is a large, bearded neoclassical head, while the model is substituted by a bas-relief sculpture affixed to the wall above a bouquet of flowers, echoing the graceful profile of Marie-Thérèse. Haunted by the absence of his mistress who had remained in Paris, Picasso re-created her image from memory.

Last sold at Sotheby’s London in 1982 for $173,135, this magnificent work was held for decades in the collection of Edward James, a poet and a lifelong collector of art. James owned several notable works by Picasso and is remembered for his patronage of Surrealist painters including Salvador Dalí, Pavel Tchelitchew, Leonor Fini, Leonora Carrington and René Magritte. Separate release available

FIVE SURREALIST SCENCES BY RENÉ MAGRITTE
Sotheby’s has the privilege of presenting five works by René Magritte in the November Evening Sale, underscoring the recent marked demand for the artist’s works, as well as a renewed interest in Surrealism among collectors. In November 2018, Sotheby’s established a new auction record for Magritte, when Le Principe du Plaisir from 1937 sold for $28.6 million. The work had once resided in the collection Surrealist patron, Edward James.

The group is led by Cosmogonie élémentaire from 1949 – a triumphant example of the artist’s mature oeuvre that combines myriad visual motifs amassed over the course of his career (estimate $6/8 million). Against the recurrent backgrounds of a cubed sky and mountain range, the reclining bilboquet – a chess-like figure frequently depicted in Magritte’s body of work – breathes fire while holding aloft a single leaf, which in itself was the subject of a number of Magritte’s compositions.

The present work first belonged to gallerist Alexander Iolas, who championed the late works of Magritte, Max Ernst and Pablo Picasso among many other artists, and who was instrumental in bringing Surrealism to America. Iolas later sold the work to renowned collector Christophe de Menil, daughter of John and Dominque de Menil who mounted the then-largest exhibition of Magritte’s work in the United States in 1964. The canvas also hung in the de Menil home.

Having remained in the same family collection for nearly 70 years, La Légende des siècles establishes a dialogue between a monumental stone-age chair, presented as a natural phenomenon within a desolate landscape, and a tiny human-made version seated upon it (estimate $4/6 million). A frequent element in Magritte’s iconography, the rock often appears as a giant boulder suspended in mid-air, or as an ordinary element, such as a figure, a landscape or a still-life, fossilized into stone. In La Légende des siècles, the gigantic stone chair and the rocks scattered around it imbue the work with a primeval, timeless quality, in stark contrast to the temporary character of the clouds moving across the sky, and in juxtaposing this imagery Magritte subverts the viewer’s perception of the continuity of time and space. Acquired from Magritte in 1951 by Jean Debernardi, a friend of the artist’s brother Raymond Magritte, the work is the third and most complex oil version on this theme that Magritte painted in 1950; the largest of the three versions is in the collection of the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh.

SUPERLATIVE SCULPTURE BY ALBERTO GIACOMETTI AND AUGUSTE RODIN
Four pieces by Alberto Giacometti will highlight the impressive selection of sculpture on offer. In particular, two works present a variation on the iconic motif of four female figures, worked and re-worked by Giacometti over the course of 15 years to reach a state of sculptural resolution in a masterpiece cast in bronze.

Individually, Quatre figurines sur piédestal (Figurines de Londres, version A) and Quatre figurines are testaments to Giacometti’s radical rendering of the human form and ability to imbue a sense of tension in his figures. Along with a masterful drawing from 1952, Rue de l'Échaudé (Quatre figurines sur piédestal) (estimate $200/300,000), the group documents an extraordinary narrative of the creative process of an artist at the height of his career and a ceaselessly imaginative mind in constant action.

Conceived in 1950-65 – the base cast in 1950 and the figurines cast in 1966 – Quatre figurines sur piédestal (Figurines de Londres, version A) was inspired by a group of nude women that the artist saw across the room while frequenting one of his favored Parisian brothels, The Sphinx, which later closed in 1946 (estimate $6/8 million). The Sphinx’s closure so affected Giacometti that he not only wrote about it in a seminal post-war text, but he also painted, drew and sculpted myriad recollections of his time there. In the present bronze work, the tall pedestal conveys the physical distance between the artist and the women, while the sloped trapezoid beneath their feet represents the vertiginous floor which further emphasized this dislocation of space and remoteness of the subjects. In this work, the haunting isolation of these women, a motif that Giacometti would explore repeatedly throughout the 1950s, is explored ensemble and without compromising the striking, visual impact of each figure.