The Swedish auction house Bukowskis is hitting big with its sale of contemporary art and design. On 2 November, collectors will be able to find, among the hundreds of lots on offer, works that have marked the course of art history.
Among the highlights are Swedish and international art, graphic works, and photographs by Karin Mamma Andersson, Maria Friberg, Diane Arbus and Nathalie Djurberg & Hans Berg. A beautiful body of pieces signed by the big names in design (think Jonas Bohlin, Mats Theselius, Lindsey Adelman and Mark Brazier Jones) are also going under the hammer.
For more than half a century, Christo and Jeanne-Claude created monumental installations with fabric as their only material and buildings as their only support. Their work has transcended the limits of painting, sculpture and architecture by uprooting art from exhibition halls and returning it to public space. Their most recent project is none other than L'Arc de Triomphe, Wrapped carried out posthumously in the autumn of 2021.
The couple met in Paris in 1958 and settled permanently in New York in 1964. It was during this year that Christo began the Store Front series, which consists of architectural elements in which windows and doors are covered with paper or draped in fabric. What Christo reveals to the viewer is just a pretence: the windows of these imaginary stores suggest content one will never be able to discover, and the doors are securely locked.
Before the concept was realised in three dimensions, and life sized, it was put on paper in preliminary sketches, collages, drawings and scale models. The work Store Front (Project), dated 1964, is one of these studies and was acquired by the gallery owner William Aronowitsch directly from the artist, probably in the late 1960. It has been preserved in his family since.
American artist Tom Wesselmann made a real breakthrough with his Great American Nude series in the early 1960s, after which he produced more intimate and detailed paintings. This is the case with his Bedroom Paintings series, in which close-ups of various parts of the body are linked to everyday objects. Wesselmann's approach was to do preliminary studies, then select the designs he liked the most and enlarge them onto the canvas. He would then select the most successful oil paintings to make an even larger work, as he did with this painting presented for sale, Study for Bedroom Painting # 25. One of the drawings that served as a model for this painting is now part of the MoMA collection and bears the same title.
Ship is part of the ‘Toy Paintings’ (or Toy Series) by Andy Warhol, ordered from the art dealer and collector Bruno Bischofberger in 1983 in Zurich. For this particular commission, the artist was asked to create an exhibition for children. He thus created 128 paintings representing monkeys, dogs, cars and boats, among other motifs. The exhibition, titled ‘Paintings for Children’, was presented from 3 December 1983 to 10 March 1984.
Bischofberger and Warhol decided that the paintings, intended for the little ones, should be hung at eye level of a child aged 3 to 5. Adult visitors therefore had to walk around the gallery crouching down to see the works up close. Bischofberger also ruled that adult visitors who were not accompanied by a child under the age of six had to pay entry. The money was then donated to a charitable organisation for children in difficult circumstances.
The painting Ship was purchased from the Art Now gallery in Gothenburg. Of the 128 paintings Warhol had created, 38 were shown at the exhibition. It is said that Warhol, present at the opening, encouraged visitors to buy the works for their children and hang them (low) in their rooms.
Swedish photographer Lennart Nilsson was the first to photograph a human foetus from inside the womb. His experiments with electron microscopes and endoscopic cameras, as well as other techniques, enabled him to create high-resolution images of the development of human life. The project started in 1953 and Nilsson took 12 years to complete it. His book A Child is Born, first published in 1965, has sold over 30 million copies and has been translated into some 20 languages. In 1965, the American magazine LIFE published its 16-page report titled ‘Drama of Life Before Birth’, which is the magazine's best-selling edition, along with ‘The Assassination of John F. Kennedy’ (1963) and ‘The Moon Landing’ (1969).
Michel Ducaroy studied sculpture at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Lyon, which influenced his work and his way of approaching forms. In 1954, Ducaroy started working with Ligne Roset, a family business which produces high-end traditional seats. In the 1960s, Ducaroy was one of the brand's most important designers, his work characterised by organic shapes and complex synthetic materials, such as polyether foam, plastics and quilted textiles. One of his most successful works is the series of sofas and armchairs titled Togo. The Togo model was launched in 1973 and has since sold over a million copies. It is said that the idea for the series originated when one morning Ducaroy rolled up his aluminium tube of toothpaste.
After spending a few years in the United States, Ingo Maurer returned to Germany in 1963 and founded Design M (today Ingo Maurer Gmbh), a company specialising in the development and manufacture of lighting. Maurer started designing unique lamps in 1966 and quickly became known for his innovative designs. His first lamp, Bulb, a hand-blown model in the shape of an oversized electric bulb, was included in MoMA's permanent exhibition in New York just three years after its launch. The Uchiwa ceiling light, which will be featured in the sale, is made from fans and bamboo and fits both as an artwork and as a functional object.
At the end of the day of 2 November, the auction house will present ‘Important Timepieces’, a sale dedicated to watchmaking where more than a hundred exclusive and unique collection watches will be presented. The biggest brands will be there, from Rolex to Audemars Piguet, Patek Philippe, Cartier and more.
