Major international artists such as Andy Warhol, Banksy, and Jim Nutt and Swedish stars such as Nathalie Djurberg, Hans Berg, and Karin Mamma Andersson will feature in Bukowskis' Contemporary Art & Design auction on 26 October. Among the design highlights are creations by Ettore Sottsass, Meret Oppenheim and Fredrik Nielsen. Later that day, the Important Timepieces auction will also take place, which includes watches from Audemars Piguet, Rolex, and Patek Philippe.
After studying at The Chicago Institute of Art, the American artist Jim Nutt, together with colleagues Gladys Nilsson, Art Green, Suellen Rocca, Jim Falconer, and Karl Wirsum, formed the artist group 'Hairy Who?'. Active between the years 1966-69, a time of protest and liberation, their art was deliberately gaudy and grotesque to convey their political messages. Nutt had his big breakthrough in 1972 when he commissioned to represent the United States at the Venice Biennale, after which several international exhibitions followed. In the early 1980s, his painting entered a new phase; his palette becoming more muted and his idiom tighter. Since 1987, he has painted only portraits of imaginary women, creating only one a year. The example here is from 1992 and the geometric shapes and brown colour scale are typical of Nutt.
Everyday impressions and art historical references merge in Karin Mamma Andersson's dreamy picture world that has made her one of the most significant Swedish artists on the international scene today. Her fine-tuned compositions can be called a kind of geography of memory – her works are stories that tell about childhood, love and the winding northern nature. In her paintings, the boundary between the inner and outer space is often blurred, as in this particular work where the dance floor flies together with the background. She returns to childhood memories, but she neither intends to romanticise nor condemn them. Andersson speaks the language of the low-key nuances, and the young people in Skoldans are portrayed with equal parts tenderness and melancholy. In 2003 she exhibited at the Venice Biennale and has since had solo exhibitions at the Moderna Museet in Stockholm and at the Louisiana Modern Museum of Art in Denmark.
Ettore Sottsass advocated joyful and enjoyable design. Colour, flair and above all humour were at the centre of his drawing, with everything from art glass, lighting, and furniture. The Ultrafragola mirror has today achieved icon status and has come to incarnate the bold and glamorous seventies. Sottsass is best known for founding the Memphis group, an international design collective based in Milan in the early 1980s. Their eye-catching and playful style broke with the pompous seriousness of modernism and has since come to be called postmodern.
Surrealism did not only strive to revolutionise art, but advocated a completely new world view where dreams and imagination were in focus. Meret Oppenheim's original Traccia table, first exhibited in 1938, is a clear example of this view. The bird's legs are an unexpected and evocative element, and with them Oppenheim thus brings an element of the fantastic into everyday life. Born in 1913 in Berlin, Oppenheim came to work in Switzerland during the interwar period and joined the surrealist movement of artists. She was fascinated by the forms and materials of the animal kingdom, and one of her most famous works is a fur-covered teacup that can be seen at the MoMA in New York. She is also represented in the Moderna Museet's collection in Stockholm with the work My Governess (1936), a pair of white pumps tied like a grilled chicken.
Hip-hop and graffiti may not be the first thing we associate with glass art, but Fredrik Nielsen does not strive for that expectation. On the contrary, Nielsen breaks both convention and the viewer's assumptions using bright colours and pop culture influences. Even as a child he was fascinated by the material possibilities of glass and studied at Orrefors Glass School, Pilchucks Glass School and the Royal Academy of Arts in Stockholm. His pioneering creations have been exhibited worldwide and are represented in the collections of the National Swedish Museum, the Borås Art Museum and the Corning Museum in New York.
Bukowskis also invites you to the Important Timepieces auction, which, with its 115 carefully selected pieces, is the Nordic region's foremost auction for collector's watches. Among the highlights is a Patek Philippe Nautilus in stainless steel, one of the brand's most sought-after models, whose original dial was inspired by the windows of a sailboat.