Sotheby’s Modern & Contemporary Evening Auction in London is to be Led by Jean-Michel Basquiat’s altarpiece to an artist & a joyful cubist still-life by Pablo Picasso alongside artworks by Paula Rego, Cy Twombly, Alberto Giacometti, Pierre-Auguste Renoir & More.
Created in 1982, when Basquiat was only 22 years old, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Derelict dates to the pinnacle of the artist’s career. The work features many of Basquiat’s most iconic symbols, including the three-pointed crown, the self-portrait head, anatomical drawings, graffiti tags, Latin phrases and references to mortality. Instead of canvas, the work is constructed from pieces of reclaimed wood of various sizes connected by a collection of nails and hinges, with the final shape resembling a religious altarpiece.
The painting is titled after James Joyce’s critically acclaimed A Portrait of the Artist as A Young Man and pays homage to the novel’s exploration of a young man’s religious and intellectual awakening. The title also implies that the work is a self-portrait; Basquiat is here honouring his own rising success in the year he fully transitioned from street to studio.
A celebration of colour and form, Picasso’s Guitare sur un tapis rouge epitomises the artist’s bold stylistic evolution in the years following the First World War. Drawing on the Cubist idiom that he had pioneered alongside Braque from 1907-08, Picasso’s still lifes from this decade are characterised by a vibrant positivity – for which the archetypal motif of the guitar proved the perfect experimental vehicle.
The importance of this work is reflected in its provenance. First acquired by the celebrated dealer and collector Paul Rosenberg, who played a major role in promoting European Modernism in the United States, it was sold to Walter P. Chrysler Jr. of the Chrysler Corporation. Following this, the work entered the collection of Paul Odo Willert. What little is known about Willert paints a fascinating picture. Well-connected in England, in 1934 he married the daughter of the 2nd Viscount Cowdray and in the 1940s worked for Rolls-Royce. He lent the painting generously throughout his life, first in 1940 to the exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art in New York and to two important exhibitions at the Tate Gallery London, including their fêted 1960 Picasso retrospective (where the Duke of Edinburgh was photographed with this painting).
The sale will also offer Nu assis by Picasso (est. £3,500,000-5,000,000), dating to April 1960 – making its first auction appearance. The enigmatic female nude was inspired by the ever-present figure of the artist’s last love, Jacqueline Roque.
Leading the offerings by Cy Twombly is Formian Dreams + Actuality, a rare example of his works on paper. In its signature juxtaposition of haphazard handwriting, bold gestural ferocity, and expressive painterly language, this work articulates the full force of Twombly’s extraordinary abstract lexicon – but on a more intimate scale and medium. The materials used, oil, wax crayon and oilstick, devoid of any figurative references, evoke pure essence and organic materiality. Goldenberg acquired the work at Sotheby’s New York in November 1989, and it has been in his collection ever since.
Also from the Goldenberg collection is one of this beautiful and super important works of Robert Ryman’s celebrated oeuvre – Unfinished Painting (est. £1,500,000-2,000,000) from 1965.
Sotheby’s Modern & Contemporary Evening Auction, 25th June 2024, Sotheby’s London
