EVENING SALE PRAGUE - MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY ART
Sunday, March 19, 2023 at 4 PM in the Expo 58 ART EXHIBITION HALL
(Letenske sady 1500/80, Prague 7, Czech Republic)
Pre-auction exhibition at Expo 58:
February 18 - March 18, 2023 (Mon - Sun 10 AM - 6 PM)
March 19, 2023 (10 AM - 3:30 PM)
Open daily including Saturdays, Sundays and holidays
For 2023, we have launched an innovative new event that we call a selective auction of modern and contemporary art, during which only a very limited number of items of the highest quality will be offered. The auction will present major works by Czech and foreign artists with starting prices as low as CZK 100,000, all of which will form the pride of any art collection and, in our opinion, have great potential in terms of investment appreciation.
Auctioneers from home and abroad can look forward to one of the most important paintings of Oskar Kokoschka, Frau mit dem Sklaven (Woman and Slave), undoubtedly to form a highlight of any state or private museum or collection. Never, in the entire history of the Czech Republic, has a work of comparable quality been offered for such expense: the work entering the auction with a starting price of CZK 200,000,000. Rendered with the artist’s fingers in impasto, this unique painting from 1920, which depicts Oskar Kokoschka's ex girlfriend Alma Mahler as a slave-owner and Kokoschka as a slave, represents Kokoschka's artistic "reckoning" with his former muse and lover. Indeed, the affair that this Austrian artist had between 1912 and 1914 with Alma Mahler, the widow of composer Gustav Mahler, profoundly influenced his life and work.
Another unique work is Composition No. 3, based on the form of an equilateral triangle, by Jean Albert Gorin. This is also the first auction sale of the painting and it should be mentioned that Gorin‘s neoplastic paintings 1926-1927 almost never appear on the art market, as the artist destroyed most of his works in 1937, making them quite rare and unique. Piet Mondrian said of Jean Gorin that he was "the only French Neoplasticist". Both a Neoplastic painter and a Constructivist sculptor, Jean Gorin studied with Piet Mondrian and remained true to the concept of rigid geometrism and the use of primary colours, yet pushed the boundaries of Neoplasticism by introducing circles and diagonals. He was also famous for his three-dimensional reliefs.
Josef Sima's magical oil, Le ciel de pierre (Stone Heaven), will also undoubtedly be an attractive work. Coming to auction from a private collection in Paris, this work was painted by Sima in his final creative period in the 1960s.
The auction will also present two famous oil paintings by Bohumil Kubista. Portrait of a Reader (Portrait of Professor Antonin Matejcek) from 1910 is a famous portrait from the artist's breakthrough period, when he started his "path to cubism". Kubista painted the picture, depicting art historian and the artist’s close friend Professor Antonín Matejcek (1889-1950) reading, during his second stay in Paris. No portrait work of this quality and significance has yet been auctioned in the Czech Republic. The second work is Landscape with Heathland from 1907, which comes from an important private collection and is one of the first paintings of Czech Fauvism ever.
The auction will also include two highly attractive works, an oil and a drawing, by Alfons Mucha, celebrating the beauty of the Slavic woman.
The Jewish painter Georges Kars is represented in the auction by two early oils from 1910, painted by the artist in Mallorca and southern France.
The leading Czech painter Toyen, whose oeuvre is, alongside the work of Frantisek Kupka, a known speciality of the auction house Adolf Loos Apartment and Gallery, in fact holding the world auction record for sales of her work, will be represented in the auction by the oil Factory from 1920-1922. The painting is particularly important in terms of Toyen's early corpus. It is one of the first works to depict one of Smíchov's factories, as seen from Vltavská Street, where she was born and where her parents bought a house in present-day Kováku Street in 1908.
Several works by the important Czech cubist painter Emil Filla were acquired for the auction. One of them is a major work of the artist, of extraordinary gallery quality and significance for the history of Czech modern art, Still Life with Falcon and Tray. This oil has represented not only the painter but also the whole of Czech modern painting at numerous exhibitions both at home and abroad.
Last but not least, the oil Lovers at the Pond by Karel Cerny will be auctioned. The motif of lovers permeates his entire oeuvre and this 1951 work is one of the artist's most important works from this period.
Maria Bartuszova, one of the most highly regarded artists of the 20th century, will be represented at the auction by her unique plaster cast from 1986-1987. Bartuszová's work ranks among the most original contributions to the history of Czech-Slovak, Slovak and European sculpture. Currently, she is having a very successful exhibition at the Tate Modern in London.
The auction will also include two important works by famous Czech glassmakers. The personal and artistic partnership of Stanislav Libensky - Jaroslava Brychtova will be represented by their large glass object Bird from 1994, and Vaclav Cigler by his Concave Hemisphere made of clear optical glass.
The attention of collectors and investors will undoubtedly be attracted by other exclusive works, such as those by Vaclav Radimsky, Vaclav Spala, Frantisek Kupka, Frantisek Tichy, Jiri John, Kamil Lhotak, Zdenek Sykora, Kaja Saudek and contemporary artists: Michael Rittstein, Jiri George Dokoupil, Jiri Sopko, Jan Gemrot, Zdenek Trs, Jan Mikulka and many other leading Czech artists.
All of these top artworks that will appear in the auction have been carefully selected, consulted and confirmed by individual experts on the artist in question. The Adolf Loos Apartment and Gallery Auction House is the only auction house in the country that provides bidders with a lifetime guarantee of authenticity.
Auction catalog: here
