Sotheby’s Impressionist & Modern Art Day Sale Totals $40.9 Million in New York Max Ernst’s Surrealist Bronze Les Asperges de la lune Sells for $3.1 Million to Lead the Auction World Auction Records Established for Georges Morren and Auguste Herbin Sotheby’s May Sales of Impressionist & Modern Art Continue With: Masterworks from the Collection of Morton and Barbara Mandel
NEW YORK, 16 May 2018 – Scott Niichel, Co-Head of Sotheby’s Impressionist & Modern Art Day Sales, New York, said: “Yesterday’s results were driven by strong global bidding for late-Impressionist, Fauve and Surrealist art across mediums. From an early scene by Paul Signac to a quintessential late work by Chagall, our top prices span a full century of art history. We are also proud to carry on the tradition of achieving great prices for Max Ernst’s Surrealist bronzes. The sale of Les Asperges de la lune marks the second-highest price achieved for a bronze by the artist at auction, following last year’s record-breaking $16 million sale of Le Roi jouant avec la reine.”

Julian Dawes, Co-Head of Sotheby’s Impressionist & Modern Art Day Sale, New York commented: “Following the successful sales of superb works by Rufino Tamayo and Joaquín Torres-García on Monday, we are thrilled to see the further enthusiasm for Latin American artists presented alongside their Impressionist & Modern peers.  In particular, there was great crossover from traditional Surrealist pictures for works by Matta and Tamayo. We also saw spirited bidding and buying for Modern Latin American property from the estate of Bernard Chappard, the prominent French Venezuelan collector, which was nearly 100% sold. The proceeds from the works offered today will benefit the Daniela Chappard Foundation, which Mr. Chappard created to continue his advocacy for sex education and HIV prevention.”

Max Ernst
Les Asperges de la lune
Conceived in 1935 and cast between December 1972 and May 1973
Estimate $1.2/1.8 million
Sold for $3.1 million

Yesterday’s sale was led by Max Ernst’s Surrealist sculpture Les Asperges de la lune. Cast in bronze during the artist’s lifetime in an edition of 8, this 5-foot-tall freestanding work is a fantastical sculptural tour-de-force, and one of the earliest examples of Surrealism manifested in sculpture.

Pablo Picasso
L’Atelier
1956
Estimate $1.2/1.8 million
Sold for $1,275,000

Twelve works by Pablo Picasso were sold over the course of the day, including paintings, works on paper and ceramics spanning the artist’s prolific career. The group was led by L'Atelier, an interior scene from 1956. In the years that followed Matisse’s death in November 1954, Picasso painted two series of Ateliers, also known as Paysages d’intérieur. As a mode of grieving, he produced new variations on the theme of studio scenes that the two artists had shared through their careers.
Marc Chagall
Les Amoureux aux trois
1980
Estimate $1/1.5 million
Sold for $1,155,000

Painted in 1980, Marc Chagall’s Les Amoureux aux trois bouquets is a quintessential example of the artist’s mastery in assembling an array of folkloric images in a dense and colorful composition. The painting contains several of the most crucial elements in the artist's pictorial iconography: symbols of his agrarian roots, bouquets of flowers and landscapes evoking the villages of his childhood home in Belarus.

Paul Signac
Le Pont de Suresnes
1884
Estimate $700,000/1 Million
Sold for $1,155,000

Created in 1884, Paul Signac’s waterfront landscape Le Pont de Suresnes is a wonderful example of the loose brushwork of the artist’s early manner, in which he embraced the stylistic and compositional strategies of the great Impressionists. The broad brushstrokes and vibrant colors illustrate his desire to capture the play of light and color in landscape, hinting at the landscapes to come when, along with Georges Seurat, he fully developed the Pointillist style.

Georges Morren
À l'harmonie (jardin public)
1891
Estimate $400/600,000
Sold for $915,000
RECORD FOR ARTIST AT AUCTION

Painted in 1891, the dazzling À l'harmonie by the Belgian Georges Morren is perhaps the most important Neo-Impressionist canvas of the artist's oeuvre, exemplifying the divisionist technique of small-scale, tightly-painted dots of saturated colors. Its final price of $915,000 shattered the artist’s previous auction record of $238,605, which was held for more than a decade.

Auguste Herbin
Route de montagne en Corse
1907
Estimate $500/700,000
Sold for $855,000
RECORD FOR ARTIST AT AUCTION
Two extraordinary examples of Auguste Herbin’s Fauve output from 1907 were sold yesterday.  Painted during the artist’s stay in Corsica, Route de montagne en Corse is characterized by the artist’s unique use of thick bands of color and vibrant hues, and provides compelling insight into the artist's ability to translate light into form. The work achieved a new world auction record for the artist.