CHRISTIE’S PRESENTS: YVES KLEIN’S ANT 118, THREE DECADES OF BRITISH PAINTING,
THREE MAJOR PRIVATE COLLECTIONS

London – Christie’s will bring together an international selection of over 250 artists in the Post-War and Contemporary Art Evening and Day Auctions on 11 and 12 February at London’s King Street.  This season’s evening auction is led by a strong core of British painting, with highlights including  Peter Doig’s The Architect’s Home in the Ravine (1991, estimate: £10,000,000 – 15,000,000) Francis Bacon’s Two Figures (1975, estimate: £5,000,000 – 7,000,000), Lucian Freud’s portraits of his daughters Head of Esther (1982-83, estimate: £2,500,000 – 3,500,000) and Head of Ib (1983-84, estimate £2,500,000 – 3,500,000); and David Hockney’s Beach Umbrella (1971, £1,000,000 – 1,500,000).  Featuring 62 lots, the evening auction is estimated to achieve a total of £50,360,000 to £75,210,000 and will be a centrepiece of 20^th-Century at Christie’s, a series of auctions that take place from 29 January to 12 February. 

Best of British

British Painting is a driving force of the February Auction season and is headlined by some of the biggest names in contemporary painting of the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. Executed on a monumental scale Peter Doig’s The Architect’s Home in the Ravine is infused with a magical atmosphere and rendered with rich, tactile, impasto across a delicately woven surface tapestry. Closely covered with verdant, evergreen trees, it depicts the modernist home of Canadian architect Eberhard Zeidler, situated in Rosendale at the heart of the Toronto Ravine. Both the rich panoply of colour used by Doig and the work’s formal, spatial and ideological properties recall modernist forebears including Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, and Vincent van Gogh. The Architect’s Home in the Ravine was created shortly after Doig’s graduation from Chelsea College of Art and Design. There he was awarded the prestigious Whitechapel Artist Prize, leading to a solo exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery in 1991, in which this work was included. 

Lucian Freud’s Head of Esther and Head of Ib, painted in an intimate 14 x 12 inch format, these works were both executed in arguably Freud's greatest period at the beginning of the 1980s when he painted the much celebrated Large Interior, WII (After Watteau) (1981-83), Two Irishmen in W11 (1984-85), and his famed self-portraits of 1981 and 1985 (see: A Father and His Daughters: Freud’s Portraits of Esther Freud and Isobel Boyt are United at Christie’s).  Another centerpiece, Francis Bacon’s Two Figures, is a self-portrait conjoined with the figure of George Dyer that was painted in Paris in the mid-1970s shortly after Dyer’s tragic suicide.  The work was acquired directly from Bacon by Michael Peppiatt, a close friend and confidant of the artist, and a leading biographer and curator of his work (see: Francis Bacon’s Two Figures to be sold by Biographer and Curator Michael Peppiatt). 

Another focal point of this group is David Hockney’s Beach Umbrella, a glowing evocation of light and colour, based on a photograph taken by Hockney whilst holidaying in the French Riviera town of Sainte-Maxime. Created during a highly productive period following the devastating end of the artist’s relationship with Peter Schlesinger, the work is a glowing testament to the therapeutic power of paint. Beach Umbrella is part of the Miles and Shirley Fiterman Collection and was included in the artist’s landmark touring retrospective of 1988, which travelled from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York to the Tate Gallery in London (see 20^th Century Masters from the Miles and Shirley Fiterman Collection to lead February Auctions).

European Masters  

With its blue corporeal form suspended within a pale void, Anthropométrie sans titre, (ANT 118) (Untitled Anthropometry, (ANT 118)) (circa 1960, estimate £8,000,000 – 14,000,000) is a monumentally-scaled example of Yves Klein’s ground-breaking Anthropométries.  Recording the trace of the human form in the artist’s signature International Klein Blue (IKB) pigment, these works sought to render visible the immaterial dimension of physical being. Executed in circa 1960, the same year that Klein inaugurated the series with a groundbreaking live performance in which nude female models, coated with paint imprinted their bodies upon paper and canvas under Klein’s choreographic direction, ANT 118 belongs to a select subset of Anthropométries in which the human form appears caught in a transcendental act of levitation. Contorted and disoriented into an abstract arabesque, two sets of breasts and torso intertwine at the base of the composition, curving upwards in a fluid gestural sweep – a record, perhaps of thighs dragged across the surface. Of all of Klein’s works, they perhaps best encapsulate the artist’s enduring mystical belief in mankind’s destiny, which he famously conceptualised as the ‘leap into the void’. The sister works Anthropométrie: Princess Helena (1960) is held by the Museum of Modern Art, New York while Anthropométrie sans titre, (ANT 130) (1960) belongs to the collection of Museum Ludwig, Cologne.

Painted in 1965, acquired directly from the artist and not seen in public since, Gerhard Richter’s Kleine Sekretarin (Little Secretary; estimate £500,000 – 700,000) is one of the artist’s early photopaintings from the mid-1960s in which he focused on images drawn from everyday advertisements rendered out in photoreal perfection. 

Three major private collections: The Collection of Marc and Frédérique Corbiau; The Collection of Miles and Shirley Fiterman Collection; The Arthur and Anita Kahn Collection

A selection of nine key Minimalist works from the collection of esteemed Belgian architect Marc Corbiau bring together some of the most well regarded names in European and American art from the 1960s to the present. Over the course of nearly 50 years Marc Corbiau has cultivated an architectural practice renowned for its linear elegance and visual harmony. Coming to prominence in the 1960s Corbiau was deeply inspired by the rise of Minimalism and the works offered for auction chart the changing currents of the movement, from precursors such as Lucio Fontana and Yayoi Kusama to international artists such as Donald Judd,

Robert Mangold, Richard Serra and Frank Stella.  Lucio Fontana’s Concetto Spaziale, Attese (1964, estimate: £1,200,000 – 1,800,000), with its five rhythmic slashes spread across the pristine white surfaces of the canvas, is a pure and lyrical example of Fontana’s tagli or ‘cuts’, whilst Donald Judd’s Untitled (1987, estimate: £200,000 – 300,000) epitomises his use of aluminium and Plexiglas, materials whose flawless surfaces heighten the work’s uncanny sense of optical apparition.

Highlights from the Collection of Miles and Shirley Fiterman include three works from David Hockney, alongside 20^th-Century masters including Jean Dubuffet and Andy Warhol.  From Minnesota to Palm Beach, New York, and beyond, the Fitermans held a lifelong and deeply shared affinity for fine art, and built a collection that was founded on not only the appreciation of scholarship and visual flair but also an understanding of the importance of establishing longstanding connections with artists (see: 20^th-Century Masters from the Collection of Miles and Shirley Fiterman to Headline February Evening Auctions).

Following the stand-out performance of the Arthur and Anita Kahn Collection in the November auctions in New York, this season London sees the opportunity to showcase works from this groundbreaking collection, including three works by Alexander Calder, currently the subject of a major retrospective at Tate Modern. Dr Arthur and Anita Kahn assembled one of the most remarkable collections of Post-War American art throughout a lifetime of collecting and their interest in and admiration for the creative process allowed them to build a collection which encompassed some of the leading artists of the post-war period.    

South London Gallery

Another highlight of the evening will be a section of the auction dedicated to the South London Gallery.  Two artists with a close association with the gallery have donated major works: Tracey Emin, who had her first solo show in a London public institution at the SLG has offered a neon sculpture Always More (2015, estimate: £40,000 – 60,000) and Sir Antony Gormley, whose studio was in the area for many years has provided Reserve II (2015, estimate: £250,000 – 350,000). In a remarkable act of generosity and in recognition of the SLG’s growing significance, an anonymous donor has made a gift to the SLG of a four storey former Fire Station, diagonally opposite the gallery’s main site. Due to open to the public in 2018, the gallery needs to raise £4m to renovate the Fire Station. The immediate success of the SLG’s application to the UK’s Heritage Lottery Fund is indicative of the importance and credibility of the project, with £1.5m pledged towards the overall target if match funds are secured by June 2016. As part of the drive to reach that target, all proceeds from the sale will go directly to the project, which Christie’s is proud to be supporting. The first exhibition in the new space, which is scheduled to open fully in 2018, will be a collaboration with the Solomon R Guggenheim Museum.  The exhibition ‘Under the Same Sun: Art from Latin America Today’, part of the Guggenheim UBS MAP Global Art Initiative, will span the SLG’s main site and the ground floor of the Fire Station, opening on 13 June. The South London Gallery focuses on presenting new work by British and international artists, the gallery places emphasis on profiling those who have rarely or never had a solo show in a London institution.

PRESS CONTACT: Belinda Bowring | 020 7389 2677 | BBowring@christies.com

About Christie’s

Christie’s, the world's leading art business, had global auction and private sales in the first half of 2015 that totalled £2.9 billion / $4.5 billion. In 2014, Christie’s had global auction and private sales that totalled £5.1 billion/$8.4 billion, making it the highest annual total in Christie’s history. Christie’s is a name and place that speaks of extraordinary art, unparalleled service and expertise, as well as international glamour. Founded in 1766 by James Christie, Christie's has since conducted the greatest and most celebrated auctions through the centuries providing a popular showcase for the unique and the beautiful. Christie’s offers around 450 auctions annually in over 80 categories, including all areas of fine and decorative arts, jewellery, photographs, collectibles, wine, and more. Prices range from $200 to over $100 million. Christie's also has a long and successful history conducting private sales for its clients in all categories, with emphasis on Post-War & Contemporary, Impressionist & Modern, Old Masters and Jewellery.

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*Estimates do not include buyer’s premium. Sales totals are hammer price plus buyer’s premium and do not reflect costs, financing fees or application of buyer’s or seller’s credits.

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