AUTUMN AUCTION ON NOVEMBER 12, 2023 FROM 4 PM at the exhibition hall Expo 58 ART
(Letenske sady 1500/80, 170 00 Praha 7)
Pre-auction exhibition at Expo 58
October 21 – November 11, 2023 (10 AM - 6 PM); then November 12, 2023 (10 AM - 3:30 PM)
(open daily including Saturdays, Sundays and holidays)
In 2023, we came up with a new form of a so-called selective auction of old, modern and contemporary art. In this auction, which will take place only twice a year, only a limited number of auction items of the highest collector's quality will be offered. The auction will present essential works by Czech and foreign artists that have great potential in terms of investment and that will adorn every art collection. The auction will take place in the afternoon in our gallery in the iconic Expo 58 pavilion.
The most important lot in the auction will be a significant painting by Marc Chagall, as well as oils by Alois Wachsman, Emil Filla, Vaclav Spala, Jakub Schikaneder and Jan Kupecky.
Marc Chagall's blue-toned, charming painting Maternité sur fond bleu (Motherhood on a Blue Background) depicts a mother holding her child in a calm, nostalgic scene in warm colours and a fine brush. This painting embodies Chagall's poetic visual language, reflecting his own experiences of love and family. This dreamlike composition depicts aspects of the artist's personal and family history and Eastern European folklore in general. In the painting you can notice the motifs of peasant life, animals and a dove, which gives the work a peaceful atmosphere. The painting was in the painter's collection until his death. This is the first auction sale of this work. The starting price of the painting is set at EUR 480 000.
Another key work of the auction will be Alois Wachsman's masterpiece Louis XVI, that has been exhibited and published many times. Firstly it was exhibited at the iconic exhibition Poetry 1932 in Prague. This exhibition was the first exhibition in our country that had a unified orientation to surrealism. The painting comes from the famous collection of Dr. Jaroslav Borovicka and was placed in the collections of the National Gallery in Prague for a long time after the confiscation. In the 90s, it was returned to Dr. Borovicka. From the collection of Dr. Borovicka and the restitution of the National Gallery in Prague also comes the oil painting of Karel Cerny In the Orchard, which has also undergone many exhibitions in the past.
The famous Czech painter Jindrich Prucha is in this auction represented by his beautiful oil Winter Landscape from 1911. At that time, the peak period of his work began, when, after getting closer to impressionism and pointillism, he inclined to fauvism and became one of its most prominent representatives.
The auction will feature Still Life with Fruit and Fish from 1928, by Emil Filla. This cubist oil from the painter's important so-called "white period" originally belonged to the collection of the prominent American collector and Nobel Prize winner Norman Hasco.
The "highlights" of the auction will also include Vaclav Spala's oils Bouquet with Tulips from 1939, Kamil Lhotak Koleska from the peak period of Group 42 and Zdenek Sklenar's Signs from 1979, which comes from the collection of painter Zdenek Sputa.
The Old Masters will be represented by Portrait of a Young Man by one of the most important Baroque masters, Jan Kupecky, which comes directly from the Liechtenstein princely collection, or Jakub Schikaneder's published and exhibited oil Meditation from 1877.
Non-traditional auction items represent two rare books. One of them is Francisco Goya's book Los Desastres de la Guerra with 80 etchings with aquatint and the famous Songbook with 56 original drawings by the painter combined by Jiri Trnka.
The attention of collectors and investors will undoubtedly be attracted by other exclusive artworks, for example by Vaclav Brozik, Vojtech Hynais, Oldrich Blazicek, Vaclav Radimsky, Joza Uprka, Jan Bauch, Josef Jira, Nikolaj Roerich, Vlaho Bukovac, Edward Cucuel and Oskar Kokoschka. Contemporary art will be represented at the auction by top works by Michael Rittstein, Jiri Anderle, Lubos Plny, Jan Mikulka and the comic king Kaja Saudek.
All works of art have been verified by the most important Czech experts and foreign experts. The auction house Adolf Loos Apartment and Gallery is the only one in the Czech Republic to provide auctioneers with a lifetime guarantee of authenticity.
