KollerView 4/19

ANDY WARHOL
The new spirit (Donald Duck). 1985.
Colour screenprint. 132/190.
Sheet size 95.2 x 95.2.
Estimate: CHF 24 000 / 28 000

The Superman motif is one of a series of comic icons that Warhol included in his work beginning in the 1960s. Among the most sought-after of these is his silkscreen series “Myths” from 1981, which included Mickey Mouse and this Superman. Most of the characters in Warhol’s Myths series come from old Hollywood films, early American comics, and TV programs from the 1950s. On the one and they are reminders of the great past of the American entertainment industry, on the other they took Andy Warhol back to the years of his childhood. When he was a young boy, Andy suffered from an autoimmune disease and was bedridden for months. During this time, he became enthralled by comics and movies. After completing his training as a commercial artist, Warhol collected striking magazine illustrations and covers, which he adapted – serially and repeatedly – into screenprints. He loved making repetitions, such as his Campbell soup cans or stacked Brillo boxes: “I love to do the same thing over and over again.”

How familiar Warhol was with the world of comics can also be seen in a formal detail, which he did not take from the historical Superman model, but which belongs quite naturally to the history of comic drawing: by duplicating and superimposing the motif, the artist creates the impression of movement that renders the image more active and dynamic. One of the archetypes of this artistic effect is Max and Moritz creator Wilhelm Busch’s unforgettable drawings of the piano-playing “Virtuoso”, who in the “Finale Furioso” ecstatically reaches into the keys and – as a symbol of the enormous speed of his musical performance – can be seen several times over. In a comparable manner, Warhol makes his Superman, fist forward and cape fluttering, dynamically ascend and nearly overtake himself. The fact that Warhol did not choose this type of depiction by chance is demonstrated by test prints of the motif in black and white, in which he had already doubled the image. The artist adopted the strong red and blue palette directly from the Superman original, and added diamond dust to the contours of the doubled motif. Both create a dramatic effect against the black background and thus continue the suspenseful narrative thread of the Superman comic in an independent work of art.

“The New Spirit”, a colour screenprint from Warhol’s 1985 “Ads” series, will also be offered in the 7 December auction. In this series of ten motifs, the artist not only staged the famous cartoon character Donald Duck, but also a whole potpourri of iconic images of the “American Way of Life” and the US consumer society: the logos of Apple, Paramount and Chanel, as well as portraits of Judy Garland, Ronald Reagan and James Dean. Warhol’s iconic comic figures have been in demand at Koller: in December 2018 his “Mickey Mouse” screenprint achieved CHF 168,500 – a new world record for this print.

02 GENEVIÈVE CLAISSE
H. 1970.
Acrylic on canvas.
86 x 86 cm.
Estimate: CHF 6 000 / 8 000

03 FERNANDO BOTERO
Cane. 1979.
Pastel on thin cardboard.
31 x 41 cm.
Estimate: CHF 24 000 / 32 000

04 GETULIO ALVIANI
Superficie a testura vibratile.
Aluminium on wood.
70 x 70 cm.
Estimate: CHF 40 000 / 60 000

02 Claisse was convinced that her art didn't need “the crutches of traditional painting” – and created inimitable works of geometric abstraction.

03 Whether with women, men with moustaches, children, birds, or – as here – a dog, Botero enchants with cheerful, bright colours and seemingly inflated forms.

04 The works of the Italian artist “Get” Alviani are magical illusions charged with pulsating energy. Since the 1950^s he has been experimenting with metal surfaces, which he furnishes with precisely applied, optically vibrating textures.

05 Itten, who came from the Bauhaus, directed the Kunstgewerbeschule (School of Applied Arts) in Zurich and taught at the Hochschule für Gestaltung (School of Design) in Ulm after the Second World War. He studied the interplay of colour and form throughout his life, which led to his own colour theory.

06 As co-founder of the avant-garde artists’ group ZERO, the representation of light was at the centre of Piene’s work: “In the past, paintings and sculptures seemed to glow. Now they do”.

05 JOHANNES ITTEN
Diagonals. 1962.
Oil on canvas.
60 x 60 cm.
Estimate: CHF 20 000 / 30 000

06 OTTO PIENE
Untitled (Fire Flower). 1987.
Pigments, gouache and fire on thin cardboard.
66,5 x 97,5 cm.
Estimate: CHF 12 000 / 16 000

08 ROBERT INDIANA
The Book of Love. 1996.
Portfolio with 12 colour screenprints and 12 poems,
also with the imprint. 50/200.
Estimate: CHF 80 000 / 140 000

09 LUCIO FONTANA
Concetto Spaziale. 1966.
Cracks and graffiti on white wove paper.
56 x 43 cm.
Estimate: CHF 35 000 / 55 000

10 SUBODH GUPTA
Untitled #11. 2006.
Aluminium. 3/3.
46 x 54 x 75 cm.
Estimate: CHF 15 000 / 25 000

08 Indiana’s LOVE design, created in the mid-sixties, is now world-famous and adorns T-shirts and coffee mugs, billboards and even a US stamp. “The Book of Love” combines poems with the logo in twelve different screen-printed colour combinations.

09 By scratching and cutting the surface, Fontana places the three-dimensionality of the work in the foreground and leads us into a mystical realm found on the back of the picture.

10 Gupta is one of the most influential figures in contemporary Indian art. The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung wrote that he is an artist who shows the everyday life of his homeland and transforms it into art – full of warm closeness to his origins.

11 Tobey spent the last years of his life in Basel thanks to Swiss art dealer and collector Ernst Beyeler. During this time he painted temperas like these, in which he continually created new textures.

12 Vasarely’s geometric abstractions built on formal inventions of the Suprematists, the De Stijl movement and the Constructivists to create mesmerizing optical illusions.

11 MARK TOBEY
Untitled. 1965.
Tempera on wove paper.
26 x 17 cm.
Estimate: CHF 40 000 / 60 000

12 VICTOR VASARELY
Kezdi-RSZ. 1970.
Acrylic on canvas.
160 x 160 cm.
Estimate: CHF 90 000 / 140 00

JEAN DUBUFFET
L'Aguicheuse. 1966.
Marker and coloured pen on wove paper.
25 x 16,5 cm.
Estimate: CHF 30 000 / 50 000

JEAN DUBUFFET
Personnage. 1965.
Black felt-tip pen on wove paper by Montgolfier S.M.
27 x 21 cm.
Estimate: CHF 15 000 / 25 000

In the 1950s, Dubuffet created a series of oil paintings as experiments with materials and textures; “Texturologie LII”, 1958, is a typical example from this series, to be offered in the 7 December auction. The vital surfaces created by dripping paint represent “teeming matter, soils, or even galaxies and nebulae”, according to the artist.

Dubuffet became well known as a result of exhibitions in the USA, featuring the colourful and strongly formal works with which his work became associated, created in his Paris studio beginning in 1960. Three examples in the 7 December auction typify this phase: “Personnage”, 1965, a felt-tip pen drawing reduced to the artist’s characteristic monochrome cell-like forms, “L'aguicheuse”, a coloured drawing made in 1966, and the sculpture “Le tétrascopique”, 1971, one of only five hors-commerce examples that were reworked by hand. This last example shows Dubuffet’s playful penetration into the third dimension, which began in 1966. Finally, “Site avec 5 Personnages”, 1981, evokes Dubuffet's enthusiasm for naive art. He began collecting outsider art in 1945 and donated his extensive collection to the Collection de l’Art Brut in Lausanne, where it has been on display since 1976.

JEAN DUBUFFET
Texturologie LII (pariétale mouchetée). 1958.
Oil on canvas.
66 x 80 cm.
Minimum hammer price: CHF 32 000

JEAN DUBUFFET
Le Tétrascopique. 1971.
Sculpture with four polychrome panels. Colour screenprint on polyvinyl, one panel is hand painted.
97.5 x 50 x 50 cm. With metal plinth.
Estimate: CHF 25 000 / 35 000

PAUL CÉZANNE
Bol, boîte à lait et bouteille. 1879-80.
Oil on canvas.
15,7 x 20 cm.
Estimate: CHF 300 000 / 500 000

The shifts in perspective that came to decisively shape Cézanne’s paintings can be seen in this work: while the bright, painted bowl is viewed from the front, one looks down into the taller jug to the left. Cézanne’s distancing from conventional representation is taking shape. His painting technique, his pictorial inventions and his experiments with perspective fascinated subsequent generations of artists, and the complexity and modernity of Cézanne’s creations continued to do so well into the 20^th century.

Like Picasso (“Cézanne was my one and only master”), Braque and Derain, Henri Matisse repeatedly referred to Cézanne as the “father of modern art”. Matisse’s lively depiction of three nymphs, which will also be offered in the 6 December auction, dates from 1945. Four years earlier, after a severe abdominal operation left him bedridden, the artist turned to drawing with charcoal. Through the partially effaced traces of underlying charcoal strokes, the creative process remains visible in the finished picture. The importance Matisse attached to the transformative conversion of a motif was impressively demonstrated at the opening exhibition of the Galerie Maeght in Paris in 1946, where the artist presented photographs documenting the creation of the six paintings on display. In the accentuated forms of the naked bodies, Matisse’s last creative phase, his cut-outs, is already apparent. In his last years, these cut-out and glued forms replaced his drawings, paintings and sculptures.

14 PABLO PICASSO
Françoise. 1946.
Lithograph. 2/50.
Image 59,5 x 48,5 cm.
Estimate: CHF 25 000 / 35 000

15 MARC CHAGALL
Repos sur coq et chevauchée au village rouge. 1975-78.
Gouache, tempera and ink on paper.
65,3 x 50 cm.
Estimate: CHF 120 000 / 180 000

16 PIERRE-AUGUSTE RENOIR
Paysage, vallée village sur la hauteur et fond de montagnes. 1900.
Oil on canvas.
26 x 36 cm.
Estimate: CHF 100 000 / 150 000

14 This is a portrait of Picasso’s lover and mother of their children Claude and Paloma, the painter and graphic artist Françoise Gilot, for whom Picasso ended his relationship with Dora Maar in the mid-1940s. For several years, this litho was the only portrait the artist had made of Gilot.

15 Every detail of Chagall’s painting is part of an entire pictorial narrative, as well as symbolically charged. From the 1960s he worked on several large commissions for murals and glass paintings, in Japan, Israel and the USA. At the same time he created stage and costume designs for the theatre.

16 Exquisite colours and enchanting light – with these ingredients Renoir created almost all his landscape paintings. With his early works, Renoir gave Impressionism an essential stimulus, and he conserved the liveliness of his style well into his advanced age.

17 Picasso’s drawings in particular demonstrate his mastery of the line. This work exemplifies a central theme of his oeuvre with its depiction of a three-way relationship. Begun on 11 July 1966, Picasso reworked and condensed the image several days later.

18 This painting was created in 1908, the year Giovanni Giacometti exhibited his work together with the artists’ association “Die Brücke” in Dresden.

17 PABLO PICASSO
Trois personnages. 1966.
Crayon and felt pen on paper.
50 x 61 cm.
Estimate: CHF 280 000 / 350 000

18 GIOVANNI GIACOMETTI
Waldinneres. 1908.
Oil on canvas.
38 × 46 cm.
Estimate: CHF 80 000 / 120 000

20 ALEXANDRE CALAME
Lac des Quatre-Cantons, près de Brunnen.
Oil on canvas.
64,6 × 87,5 cm.
Estimate: CHF 30 000 / 50 000

20 Calame's landscape paintings, often bathed in dramatic light, enjoyed success throughout Europe and left their mark on the artistic image of the Swiss Alps in the second third of the 19^th century.

PETER ROBERT BERRI
Lej da Suvretta.
Oil on canvas.
97,5 × 147 cm.
Estimate: CHF 60 000 / 100 000

GOTTARDO SEGANTINI
Maloja "Paesaggio paradisiaco". 1920.
Oil on canvas.
120 × 100 cm.
Estimate: CHF 100 000 / 150 000

Central to Berri’s work are views of the mountainous landscape around the Julier and Bernina passes. His paintings, in a style reminiscent of Giovanni Segantini, were created en plein air. “For ten years I worked for several months each winter on the Julier and Bernina passes, because I was particularly attracted to this altitude with its greater abundance of light and colour”, Berri later recalled. Berri captured the mountain ranges’ shimmering spectrum of light and colour in large landscapes, to which an application of impasto colour lends an additional dynamic. Berri’s feelings for nature found their counterpart in oil painting: “Last autumn, excited by the wonderful colour symphonies of the autumn landscape, I travelled about the mountains for weeks on end with coloured pencils and sketchbooks, following an irresistible desire to sketch. I soon came to the sad conclusion that the cold, hard coloured pencils were unable to reproduce my painterly sensations”.

Snow is particularly important in Berri’s work. In the two early summer pictures offered in the 6 December auction the shady mountain flanks retain remains of white splendour. In addition to landscape paintings, Berri created impressive portraits and self-portraits, as well as a number of works that reflect everyday life in the mountain villages of the Grisons, marked by traditions and centuries-old customs, hard work and little comfort

PETER ROBERT BERRI
Piz Julier.
Oil on canvas.
70,5 × 111 cm.
Estimate: CHF 50 000 / 80 000

A CYLINDRICAL BRONZE VASE DECORATED WITH A CICADA
Japan, Meiji period (early 20^th c.)
H 39,5 cm.
Estimate: CHF 5 000 / 8 000

The international exhibitions also affected the visitors and exhibitors who travelled from the Far East: Asian artists’ encounters with Art Nouveau led to a reverse flow of influence, especially after 1900. Japanese artists – in addition to their own roots such as those of the Rinpa school around Ogata Kōrin (1658–1716) – integrated design influences from the West into their painting, lacquer art and metal works. Art Nouveau in its heyday reached Japan through Japanese travellers to Europe, including the painters and woodcut artists Kuroda Seiki (1866–1924) and Asai Chu (1856–1907). The elegance of the naturalistic and ornamental decorations characteristic of Art Nouveau inspired the Japanese to make more creative designs. This complex network of exchanges and interrelationships gave rise to unique works such as the two Meiji bronze jars which will be offered in the 3 December auction.

The mutual transfer was made possible by the extensive social modernization and opening of the former feudal state of Japan in the last third of the 19^th century. The Meiji Restoration that began in 1868 with Tennō Mutsuhito favored yōga, Western-style painting, and sent young students to Europe to bring Western knowledge and technique to Japan. Western naturalism was clearly reflected in the sculptures of the Tokyo School, also represented in the 3 December auction. Traditional Japanese metalwork – especially the production of samurai swords – involved an extremely high level of craftsmanship. Metal alloys could be varied for different colour effects; gold and silver coatings were used for sword decoration on the tiniest surface. Bans on carrying weapons in public issued in the 1870^s led craftsmen to apply their technical mastery to new objects. Bronze work in particular experienced a new boom as a result. Alongside the artisan elite, new metalworking schools were developed, creating elaborate objects such as vases and sculptures.

A GREEN ENAMELLED DRAGON-JAR AND COVER
China, 19^th century.
H 20,3 cm.
Estimate: CHF 10 000 / 15 000