In addition to the selection of early Joan Miró works on offer, the auction features over 35 prints spanning the artist’s career, including large format prints from the late 1960s and early 1970s which illustrate the artist’s continuous innovation throughout his life: Équinoxe, one of the most important prints the artist produced in the 1960s (pictured left, estimate $50/70,000); and La Pierre philosophale, one of the largest prints Miró ever created (estimate $30/50,000).

PROPERTY FROM THE COLLECTION OF VIDEO GAME EXECUTIVE RYAN BRANT

Sotheby’s is offering property from the prescient and playful collection of pioneering video game executive Ryan Brant across a series of sales through 2020. Brant founded Take-Two Interactive, the company behind iconic series including Grand Theft Auto, Red Dead and NBA 2K. The Prints & Multiples auction offers a selection of 11 works by KAWS from the Brant Collection, including celebrated subjects such as KAWSBOB and the Companion. The group is led by a complete set of ten prints from Blame Game (pictured right, estimate $80/120,000).

PABLO PICASSO PRINTS

A selection of linoleum cuts by Pablo Picasso from the 1950s further highlight the sale, led by a rare proof of Portrait de jeune fille, d’apres Cranach le Jeune. II (B. 859; BA. 1053) (pictured left, estimate $250/350,000). Picasso began exploring linoleum cuts in earnest in 1953-4, making linocuts in different colors on separate blocks, which he would then superimpose on the same sheet of paper. On 4 July 1958, the artist first created Portrait de jeune fille, d’apres Cranach le Jeune in five different linoleum blocks – sepia, yellow, red, blue and black. He then printed different proofs, creating two states of the color blocks and three of the black to arrive at the final image. The present proof is printed from the first state of the black block, which served as the keystone of the composition.

The auction also features Portrait de Jacqueline au fauteuil (Ba. 1054), one of Picasso’s earliest significant works in the medium (estimate $150/250,000). Following Picasso’s move to the south of France in the late 1950s, the distance from Mourlot’s lithographic press in Paris motivated the artist to explore the linoleum cut as a creative outlet. While the present portrait of his wife Jacqueline employs the traditional linocut process of superimposing multiple blocks to achieve the final image, Picasso found it cumbersome, and as a result, the work is among the last works he created using the process before developing the reduction method.