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Nassau County Museum of Art Announces Exhibition by Fernando Botero artlover66778888888888888

Fernando Botero, "Venus", 2005. Oil on canvas, 67 1/2 x 50 1/2 inches. Photo; Courtesy: David Benrimon Fine Art LLC.

ROSLYN HARBOR, NY.- Nassau County Museum of Art (NCMA) will present a major exhibition that showcases work by one of the most honored Latin American artists working today. Fernando Botero includes a range of paintings, drawings and monumental sculpture that exemplify Botero’s most familiar themes: commonplace scenes of everyday life, life in the bedroom, life of the streets and people rapt in the excitement of music or family activities. Throughout, Botero’s characters are seen in their “Botero-esque” girth and grandeur. Works by this famed artist were previously seen at the museum in a major 2005 exhibition. Fernando Botero opens at NCMA on March 13, 2010 and remains on view through May 24, 2010. The exhibition is sponsored by David Benrimon Fine Art LLC. A native of Colombia, Botero has resided in New York, Paris and Tuscany. In the 1960s, he began to achieve acclaim for his satirical paintings of oversized, flesh figures with large limbs and small bodies. In 1971 he began making sculptures as well, an example of which is Man on Horseback —a self-assured gentleman in a suit and bowler hat, his legs as large as those of the horse. This work greets visitors along the wooded path leading to the museum and is a permanent part of NCMA’s Sculpture Park. Botero’s smooth rounded depictions of people and animals exhibit a comic disregard for correct proportions. This skewing of form is central to works by Botero. He has said: “In art, as long as you have ideas and think, you are bound to deform nature. Art is deformation.” Botero’s work and vision were honed in his studies of art history. He was strongly influenced by the masters of the Renaissance and Baroque period, most especially by Diego Velázquez. The greatest master of the Spanish Golden Age, Velázquez has traditionally served as both inspiration and challenge for artists, especially those from Spain and Latin America. Botero came into first-hand contact with Velázquez’s work in Madrid, in 1952 when he studied at the Royal Academy of San Fernando. Botero particularly connected with the humanity, individuality and compassion of Velázquez’s portraits of the dwarfs of the court of King Philip IV, employed as jesters and caretakers for the royal children. Botero is additionally one of the most well-known and respected of the late 20th-century still-life painters. His representations of fruits, flowers, vegetables, sweets, meats and cheeses embody many of the characteristics that are observed in his other subjects. They display a marked engagement with sensuality. There is a sense of the sacramental or the ritual in many of these paintings. A number of Botero’s still lifes have particular resonance within the context of Colombia, often displaying distinctively Colombian meals, birthday tables or references to other occasions celebrated in that country.

Cars by Warhol,

Cars by Warhol, Fleury, Longo, Szarek from the Chrysler Collection Opens at Albertina artlover7766558888888

A visitor takes a photo of Andy Warhol's Mercedes-Benz 300 SL Coupe (1954) at the Albertina museum, in Vienna, Austria, Thursday, Jan. 21, 2010. Under the title "Cars" the Albertina museum is showing an exhibition from the artists Andy Warhol, Sylvie Fleury, Robert Longo and Vincent Szarek. AP Photo/Ronald Zak.

VIENNA.- CARS presents works from the Daimler Collection, by artists Andy Warhol, Robert Longo, Sylvie Fleury, and Vincent Szarek. Common to all of the works is their examination of the history, the types, or the design of the Mercedes-Benz car. The core of the exhibit are the thirty-five silkscreen paintings of Andy Warhol’s (1928–1987) series CARS, which employ eight selected types of Mercedes to document the history of the automobile. This important late series by Warhol remained unfinished and after around twenty years is being shown again complete. Joining this series are drawings and airbrushed paintings by Robert Longo (*1953). Videos by Sylvie Fleury (*1961) blend the myth of the legendary Mercedes-Benz automobile with some of the most contemporary ideas from the art and fashion worlds. Vincent Szarek (*1973) uses design elements from the Mercedes-Benz SLR as the starting point for his group of sculptures, which were digitally developed as a modern form of drawing, rendered with 3D programs. Andy Warhol’s CARS series from 1986/87 can be seen as a highlight in the late working phase of the Pop artist. Commissioned on the occasion of the hundredth anniversary of the automobile, it would be the artist’s last series and remained incomplete. Of the eighty planned pictures, intended to use twenty selected Mercedes-Benz models to document the history of the car from the 1886 Daimler Motor Carriage and the Benz Patent Motor Car to 1986, Warhol completed thirty-five paintings (thirty-two of them belong to the Daimler Art Collection) and twelve large-format drawings showing eight different models. The first eight models were completed by early January 1987, each in two versions: a single and a multiple portrayal. The artist produced the three additional large-format works in the last two weeks before his death on February 22. Between 1988 und 1991, the Warhols CARS serie has been exhibited in museums internationally, starting in the Kunsthalle Tübingen and in the Guggenheim Museum New York as well as in Tokyo, Bern, Madrid und Barcelona. After around twenty years the series is again shown complete. The commission that went to Andy Warhol in 1986 was groundbreaking for the intense cooperation with artists as well as for the early international direction taken by the Art Collection. A second commission went to the New York-based artist Robert Longo in 1995, who created a sequence of five black-and-white automobile “portraits” and a “big-screen” grid profile of a compressor convertible. Vincent Szarek, New York, examined the phenomenon of individualized mass production, using his shiny-painted picture objects to connect the design history of the car with hybrid surfaces from the Baroque to the contemporary wireframe. In 2005, Sylvie Fleury created a series of six three-channel videos for the Mercedes-Benz Center in Paris. These films, which form an outstanding part within Fleury’s multimedia work created since 1990, blend the appeal of legendary Mercedes-Benz automobiles—from the Lightning Benz and the Gullwing to the C 111— with the latest contemporary ideas from the worlds of art and fashion. Since the eighties, commissions to design and realize site-specific works have gone to Max Bill, Heinz Mack, François Morellet, Walter De Maria, Nam June Paik, Robert Rauschenberg, Ben Willikens, Tamara K. E., Gerold Miller, Auke de Vries, Pietro Sanguineti, Franz Erhard Walther, Jan van der Ploeg, Nic Hess, Andreas Schmid, Stephane Dafflon, and other artists, who created large sculptures, wall objects, or murals for various company sites. The Daimler Art Collection is one of the most renowned German corporate collections. It focuses on the area of twentieth-century Abstract Art: from the circle of artists around Adolf Hölzel in Stuttgart in the nineteen-tens, Bauhaus, Constructivism, Concrete Art, the European Zero avant-garde, Minimalism, Conceptual tendencies, and Neo Geo, all the way to the most recent contemporary art. There are areas dedicated to photography and media art as well as a total of thirty large public sculptures in Stuttgart, Sindelfingen, and Berlin. In-house exhibitions, at the Daimler Contemporary exhibition space at Potsdamer Platz in Berlin, and at international museums as well as grants awarded to upcoming artists communicate the Daimler Art Collection to a wide audience.

Picasso and Renoir, Unseen for Over 40 Years, Go on Public Display at Christie's

Picasso and Renoir, Unseen for Over 40 Years, Go on Public Display at Christie's artlover223448888888 A Christie's employee looks at a 1963 painting entitled "Tete de femme (Jacqueline)" by Pablo Picasso on display at the auction house in London, Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2010. The painting is to be auction at 'Impressionist and Modern Art' sale on Feb. 2 with an estimated price of 3 to 4 million pounds (US$4.9 to 6.5 million or 3.5 to 4.6 million euro). AP Photo/Sang Tan.

A visitor looks at a the 1936 painting "Nu aux jambes croisees" by Henri Matisse, on display at the Christie's auction house in London, Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2010. The painting is to be auction at 'Impressionist and Modern Art' sale on Feb. 2 with an estimated price of 2.5 to 4 million pounds (US$4.1 to 6.5 million or 2.9 to 4.6 million euro). AP Photo/Sang Tan.

LONDON.- From 20 January 2010, Christie’s will host a public exhibition showing masterpieces by Pablo Picasso, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Natalia Gonchorova that have been unseen in public for nearly 40 years, as well as an outstanding masterpiece by Yves Klein and important works by Henri Matisse, Peter Doig, Rene Magritte, Frank Auerbach, Kees van Dongen and Martin Kippenberger. These are the leading highlights from the forthcoming series of auctions of Impressionist and Modern Art and Post-War and Contemporary Art which will take place at Christie’s in London from 2 February, and which is expected to realise in the region of £120 million. Jussi Pylkkanen, President of Christie’s Europe and Middle East: “Christie’s modern exhibition space in London allows us to present to the public works of art that have often been hidden in private collections for decades, and which may be sold to private collectors and be unseen for years to come. From 20 January we look forward to hosting a special exhibition that will show exceptional works of art from the 19th and 20th centuries, including important works by Picasso, Renoir, Matisse and Goncharova that haven’t been seen in public for over 40 years, alongside one of the most important works by Yves Klein ever offered at auction, and masterpieces by Peter Doig, Natalia Gonchorova, Frank Auerbach and Kees van Dongen.” Works of art on view: · Tête de femme (Jacqueline), 1963, by Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) is a portrait of the artist’s second wife. It has been unseen in public since 1967 and is expected to realise £3 million to £4 million. · Mademoiselle Grimprel au ruban rouge, 1880, is an important work by Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919) which dates to the highpoint of the artist’s portrait painting. It will be shown in public for the first time since the 1960s and is expected to realise £1.8 million to £2.5 million. · Relief éponge or (RE47II) is an outstanding masterpiece and one of only two gold sponge reliefs ever created by Yves Klein (1928-1962). It is expected to realise £5 million to £7 million. · Espagnole, circa 1916, by Natalia Goncharova (1881-1962) is one of the finest examples of the artist’s work to be offered at auction. It will be exhibited to the public for the first time since 1971, and is expected to realise £4 million to £6 million. Gonchorova holds the world record price for any painting by a female artist sold at auction. · Head of J.Y.M., 1973, by Frank Auerbach (b.1931) is one of the artist’s most important portraits and portrays his most famous Muse, Juliet Yardley Mills (estimate: £900,000 to £1,200,000). The artist’s Head of Helen Gillespie VI, 1966, will also be on view (estimate: £600,000 to £800,000). Auerbach is one of the most important living British artists alongside his great compatriot and one of his biggest fans, Lucian Freud. · Gitane, circa 1910-1911, by Kees van Dongen (1877-1968) is a striking portrait by the Dutch artist which was executed at one of the most important periods of his career. It carries an estimate of £5.5 million to £7.5 million. · Nu aux jambes croisées, 1936, by Henri Matisse (1869-1954) will be exhibited to the public for the first time since 1951 (estimate: £2.5 million to £4 million). · Anthropométrie (ANT 5) by Yves Klein (1928-1962) is the largest of only six works from this celebrated series to incorporate a mixture of fire and blue pigment (estimate: £1.5 million to £2 million) · Concrete Cabin West Side by Peter Doig (b.1959) is arguably the greatest example from the series that was the inspiration for the artist’s Turner Prize installation at the Tate in 1994 (estimate: £2 million to £3 million). · La robe du soir, 1955, by René Magritte (1898-1967) was painted for the celebrated Belgian writer Jan-Albert Goris (1899-1984) (whose pseudonym was Marnix Gijsen) and will be offered with an estimate of £400,000 to £600,000. · Untitled (from the series Lieber Maler Male mir / Dear Painter Paint Me), 1983, is an important self-portrait by Martin Kippenberger (1953-1997) (estimate: £800,000 to £1,200,000).

Henri Cartier-Bresson Foundation Presents Never Before Seen Photos by Robert Doisneau

Henri Cartier-Bresson Foundation Presents Never Before Seen Photos by Robert Doisneau artlover666777888888888

Two visitors to the Henri Cartier-Bresson Foundation look at photographs by Robert Doisneau. EFE/Lucas Dolega.

PARIS.- The Henri Cartier-Bresson Foundation opened an exhibition of approximately 100 photographs taken by Robert Doisneau. The photographs have been gatheres from the Foundations collections and other museum and private collections. The exhibition aims to show the viewer the world Doisneau wanted to prove existed. The catalog, published in French by Steidl, is accompanied by a text written by Agnès Sire and of a review made by art critic Jean-François Chevrier in 1983. "There are several photographs in this show that have always been presented in other exhibitions, but there are others that have never before been seen,"said the curator Agnès Sire to EFE. Robert Doisneau (April 14, 1912 - April 1, 1994) was a French photographer noted for his frank and often humorous depictions of Paris street life. Robert Doisneau was one of France's most popular and prolific reportage photographers. He was known for his modest, playful, and ironic images of amusing juxtapositions, mingling social classes, and eccentrics in contemporary Paris streets and cafes. Influenced by the work of Kertész, Atget, and Cartier-Bresson, in over 20 books Doisneau has presented a charming vision of human frailty and life as a series of quiet, incongruous moments. Doisneau has written: "The marvels of daily life are exciting; no movie director can arrange the unexpected that you find in the street." Among his most recognizable work is Le baiser de l'hôtel de ville (Kiss by the Hôtel de Ville), a photo of a couple kissing in the busy streets of Paris. The identity of the couple was a mystery until 1993, when Denise and Jean-Louis Lavergne took Doisneau to court for taking the picture without their knowledge. This action prompted Doisneau to reveal that he posed the shot in 1950 using actor/models Françoise Bornet and Jacques Carteaud. Françoise was given an original print as part of her payment. In April 2005 she sold the print for 155,000 € at an auction. Paris was one of the favorite photographic subjects of Doisneau. Doisneau's work gives unusual prominence and dignity to children's street culture; returning again and again to the theme of children at play in the city, unfettered by parents. His work treats their play with seriousness and respect. In his honour, and owing to this, there are several Ecole Primaire (Primary Schools) names after him. An example is at Veretz (Indre-et-Loire).

Van Gogh's Starry Night Named World's Most Popular Oil Painting of the Decade

Van Gogh's Starry Night Named World's Most Popular Oil Painting of the Decade artlover44558888688 Van Gogh's Starry Night Named World's Most Popular Oil Painting of the Decade "Cafe Terrace at Night" by Vincent Van Gogh. The second piece in the "Van Gogh Starry Night Trilogy". It's popularity in the past decade has soared and is a synonym for style and sophistication.

"The Kiss". Gustav Klimt.

WICHITA, KAN.- overstockArt.com, the leader in handmade oil painting art reproductions, has officially released its Top 10 list of the most popular oil paintings from the past decade. Topping the list is Vincent van Gogh’s irrefutable magnum opus, "Starry Night". “We release an annual Top 10 list and thought it would be interesting to look back over the past decade to determine the trendiest and most sought after hand painted oil painting reproductions,” said David Sasson, CEO of overstockArt.com. “Not surprisingly, the notoriously eccentric artist, Van Gogh, leads the list with his masterpieces "Starry Night" and "Café Terrace at Night".” According to overstockArt.com’s statistics, Van Gogh’s total sales numbers have far exceeded those of any of the other great masters. The top ten oil paintings sold online in the last decade according to overstockArt.com are: 1. "Starry Night" – Vincent van Gogh 2. "Café Terrace at Night" – Vincent van Gogh 3. "The Kiss" – Gustav Klimt 4. "Poppy Field at Argenteuil" – Claude Monet 5. "The Mona Lisa" – Da Vinci 6. "Le Rêve" (The Dream in French) – Pablo Picasso 7. "Luncheon of the Boating Party" – Pierre August Renoir 8. "The Scream" – Edvard Munch 9. "Red Cannas" – Georgia O’Keeffe 10. "Persistence of Memory" – Salvador Dali In the past decade overstockArt.com sold more than a million oil paintings. They are one of the Web’s most successful distributors of wall décor items with over 10,000 daily visitors and 100,000 loyal customers. “As the Modern Art movement was conquering the auction floors getting record breaking numbers in Sotheby’s and Christie’s, we slowly became the destination for art lovers who could not afford the high price tags of galleries, but wanted to enjoy the hand painted art of the great masters in their homes,” explained Sasson. One of the interesting points that the top 10 oil paintings of the decade presents is that the modern artists from the turn of the last century such as Van Gogh, Monet and Klimt are still the most desirable artists in the world. “Our numbers indicate that as the years turn and our world evolves some things remain consistent,” said Sasson. “People are still captivated by the elegance and beauty that the classic artists bring to their home. It will be interesting to see when, if ever, this trend begins to fade.”

David Hockney's Bigger Trees Near Warter Presented at Tate Britain

David Hockney's Bigger Trees Near Warter Presented at Tate Britain artlover4665588888888 David Hockney walks in front of his painting "Bigger Trees Near Warter" at Tate Britain in London. Photo: EFE/Felipe Trueba

British artist David Hockney poses for photographers near his painting "Bigger Trees Near Warter" at Tate Britain in London. REUTERS/Suzanne Plunkett.

LONDON.- David Hockney gifted Bigger Trees near Warter 2007 to Tate in 2008. The oil painting, his largest ever, was made on fifty canvas panels and was executed outside, en plein air. Measuring 4.6 x 12.2 metres (15 x 40 feet), its subject is a typical Yorkshire landscape, west of Bridlington. The work was first exhibited in 2007 at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition. David Hockney also presented Tate with two digital photographic renderings of the painting on paper sheets in the same dimensions as the oil. Focusing on the arrival of spring before trees have come into leaf, Bigger Trees near Warter features two copses, a mighty sycamore tree, buildings and a road curving to the left flanked by early flowering daffodils. Hockney’s ambition to paint such a large-scale canvas posed a problem as it was impossible for him to step back and view the whole work. He began by making drawings and used these to locate where each canvas would fit in the composition. From these a computer-mosaic of the picture was generated enabling him to step back, albeit in a virtual space. Hockney was then able to take the individual canvas panels to the site and thus create his enormous work over a six-week period. David Hockney said: ‘My picture is adaptable. You can split it in two and show one or both halves, or even a quarter of it. Or show the painting with two full-scale reproductions that would almost make a cloister.’ Commenting on the gift, Nicholas Serota, Director, Tate said: ‘Standing before David Hockney’s Bigger Trees near Warter, the viewer is overwhelmed by the beauty of the winter trees and the energy of the Yorkshire landscape. In this work he has deftly joined together the tradition of painting en plein air with digital technology on a monumental scale.’ East Yorkshire first engaged Hockney’s imagination as a teenager. As an adult, he has intermittently returned to this part of England when visiting his mother and sister at their home in the coastal town of Bridlington. However, he only became fully absorbed by the landscape over the past four years, making it the primary source of inspiration for his art. Five paintings from David Hockney’s East Yorkshire landscape series were exhibited for the first time in the UK at Tate Britain in a display entitled David Hockney: The East Yorkshire Landscape. There are seven paintings by Hockney in Tate Collection including The First Marriage (A Marriage of Styles I) 1962, acquired as early as 1963, the celebrated A Bigger Splash 1967 and Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy 1970 -71. The Collection also includes many works of paper. David Hockney was born on 9 July 1937 in Saltaire, Bradford. He graduated from the Bradford School of Art in 1957 and studied at the Royal College of Art from 1959-1962. While there he met RB Kitaj and became instrumental in the founding of the British Pop Art movement. Hockney settled in Los Angeles in 1978. He has been the subject of countless solo exhibitions worldwide including a major touring retrospective held at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York and the Tate Gallery, London in 1988.

Tormented Italian Master Caravaggio and Francis Bacon Connect in Rome Show

Tormented Italian Master Caravaggio and Francis Bacon Connect in Rome Show artlover6678888888 Visitors walk in front of Francis Bacon paintings during an exhibition at the Galleria Borghese in Rome. Photo: Reuters/Max Rossi.

A man looks at a Caravaggio painting during an exhibition at the Galleria Borghese in Rome November 11, 2009. Portraits by Italian master Caravaggio and Irish-born 20th-century painter Francis Bacon stand side-by-side in a new exhibition, connecting their tormented views of humanity despite contrasting approaches to realism. The show at Rome's Galleria Borghese marks 400 years since Caravaggio's death and 100 years since Bacon's birth and at its heart lies their shared fascination with the human form and their predilection for the expressive portrait. Reuters/Max Rossi. By: Ella Ide

ROME (REUTERS).- Portraits by Italian master Caravaggio and Irish-born 20th-century painter Francis Bacon stand side-by-side in new exhibition connecting their tormented views of humanity despite contrasting approaches to realism. The show at Rome's Galleria Borghese marks 400 years since Caravaggio's death and 100 years since Bacon's birth and at its heart lies their shared fascination with the human form and their predilection for the expressive portrait. Both were radical for their times: against the distorted idealism of high mannerism, Caravaggio was driven by obsessive attention to the real, while Bacon was derided for his refusal to relinquish the human figure in favor of abstraction. "Bacon can be compared to Caravaggio above all in terms of intensity," said art historian Michael Peppiatt, co-curator of the exhibition and Bacon's close friend and biographer. Both painters have been seen as icons of gay, tormented genius and their tragic natures and lives marked by violence -- Bacon's lover committed suicide and Caravaggio was condemned to death after killing a man -- are echoed in their works. "They were both conscious of the shortness of life and of the fragility of humanity, and each powerfully conveys this consciousness through his art," said Peppiatt in a statement. Seventeen works by Bacon are featured alongside 14 paintings by Caravaggio, six of which, including the "Madonna with the Serpent" and the "Sick Bacchus," belong to the Borghese's permanent collection. Many of the works by Bacon, including "Head VI," the result of his studies of Velazquez's portrait of Pope Innocent X, are on loan from London's Tate Gallery. The lavish entrance to the Galleria Borghese is devoted to Bacon's triptychs, painted after the suicide of his lover George Dyer, with chilling scenes of distorted, semi-naked male figures whose life oozes from them to form flesh-colored puddles. The show runs until January 24, 2010 and has already attracted well over 67,000 visitors, with the record numbers forcing the Borghese to extend its open hours and increase the number of tickets available for the daily tours by 30 percent.

Andy Warhol's Iconic 200 One Dollar Bills from 1962 Sells for $43,762,500 at Sotheby's

Andy Warhol's Iconic 200 One Dollar Bills from 1962 Sells for $43,762,500 at Sotheby's artlover44533888888888 Andy Warhol (1928 - 1987), 200 One Dollar Bills, 1962. silkscreen ink and pencil on canvas, 80 1/4 x 92 1/4 in. Est: 8,000,000—12,000,000 USD. Hammer Price with Buyer's Premium: 43,762,500 USD. Photo: Sotheby's

This photo shows a 1965 self-portrait by Andy Warhol. The painting belongs to Cathy Naso, who was 17-years-old when she got a part-time job as a receptionist at Warhol's Factory. The painting sold at Sotheby's for $6,130,500, soaring past the $1.5 million high estimate. AP Photo/Sotheby's.

NEW YORK, NY.- Tonight at Sotheby’s in New York, Andy Warhol’s monumental masterpiece, 200 One Dollar Bills, brought a remarkable $43,762,500, soaring past the pre-sale estimate of $8/12 million. Competition was fierce. Auctioneer Tobias Meyer opened the bidding at $6 million and was immediately met with an almost unheard of response - a bid of $12 million, twice his opening bid. Five more bidders raised their paddles before the winning bid was cast by an anonymous purchaser bidding on the telephone. The Warhol was the top-selling lot in a sale of Contemporary Art that brought an outstanding total of $134,438,000, far-above pre-sale expectations (est. $67.9/97.7 million) and with all but two lots finding buyers. The sale was 98.6% sold by value and 96.3% sold by lot – the highest sold-by -lot total by lot in about twenty years, with only one exception. New auction records were established for Alice Neel, Jean Dubuffet, Juan Muñoz and Germaine Richier; as well as for a sculpture by Willem de Kooning, a neon by Bruce Nauman and a work on paper by Jackson Pollock. “The desire for great art is very strong,” said Tobias Meyer, Worldwide Head of Contemporary Art. “In a market that has been characterized by pent-up demand, we were able to offer fresh material with conservative estimates, and our sellers were rewarded with the remarkable results we saw this evening.” Anthony Grant, International Senior Specialist of Contemporary Art, noted, “The stars aligned tonight. With an offering of true icons of post war art, we saw bidding from all corners of the world, from both dyed-in-wool collectors and new clients alike. The Myers Collection in particular offered a great international sampling of artists – Richier, Gottlieb, Appel and Neel - and attracted a great depth of bidding, both private and institutional.” “Andy Warhol’s 200 One Dollar Bills is a hugely important work for American art history,” said Alex Rotter, Head of the Contemporary Art Department in New York. “Not only was it one of the starting points of Pop Art, but this picture had the perfect ownership history – directly from Warhol’s dealer to the legendary collector Robert C. Scull, and then from his estate sale at Sotheby’s to the current owner who acquired it in 1986 for $385,000. We are immensely gratified by the extraordinary price of more than $43 million achieved for the work this evening.” In addition to 200 One Dollar Bills several other works by Andy Warhol achieved strong prices tonight. A Self- Portrait from 1965 that the artist gave to Cathy Naso, a young receptionist at The Factory, sold for $6,130,500, more than tripling the pre-sale estimate of $1/1.5 million. More than seven bidders fought for the painting, which had been kept in a closest for 42 years, giving the colors a stunning quality and freshness. “I think I am dreaming,” said Ms. Naso, who attended the auction this evening but chose to keep a low profile. “I’m simply overwhelmed, both by the amazing price and also by all the attention this painting received. After all these years in the closet, the painting has now come out and has travelled to London, to Hong Kong and has been seen all over the world. Andy has made me famous for fifteen minutes and I’ve come to realize that fifteen minutes of fame is more than enough.” An Untitled 1962 drawing of a roll of dollar bills, also by Warhol, that came from the collection of Leonard Newman, eventually sold for $4,226,500 against a pre sale estimate of $2.5/3.5 million with seven bidders competing. Other works that achieved strong prices include Jasper Johns’ Gray Numbers (lot 29), which saw seven bidders drive the price to $8,706,500 (est. $5/7 million). Orange, Red, Orange (lot 47) by Mark Rothko from the Estate of Lucia Moreira Salles had not appeared on the market for nearly 30 years and fetched $3,386,500 (est. $2/3 million) after a contest involving six bidders. Trinité-Champs Elysées (lot 48) by Jean Dubuffet made $6,130,500 (est. $4/6 million) and set a new record for the artist at auction. Violins Violence Silence (lot 27) by Bruce Nauman established a new record for a neon work by the artist when it sold for $4,002,500, comfortably in excess of the $2.5/3.5 million estimate. The sale began with a group of 20 works from the Collection of Mary Schiller Myers and Louis S. Myers, noted collectors and arts benefactors from Akron, Ohio. Two world auction records were set by works from the Myers Collection: a record was set for American artist Alice Neel when six bidders competed for Jackie Curtis and Rita Red (Lot 2), which brought $1,650,500, well exceeding its estimate of $400/600,000, while Germaine Richier’s La Feuille (lot 4) was sought-after by six bidders, driving the price past the previous auction record and its estimate to bring $842,500. A new record for a Willem de Kooning sculpture was achieved by Large Torso, which sold for $5,682,500, well over the previous record of $3.9 million. Untitled XV, an abstract landscape from perhaps the most exuberant period in de Kooning’s rich and complex career, brought $6,130,500 against an estimate of $5/7 million. Donald Judd’s copper Untitled also exceeded expectations, bringing $1,650,500 against an estimate of $800,000/1.2 million.

The Stadel Museum will Show the First Monographic Exhibition on Sandro Botticelli artlover999888778888888 Sandro Botticelli (1444/45-1510), Idealized Portrait of a Lady, ca. 1480. Mixed technique on poplar, 82 x 54 cm. Frankfurt, Städel Museum. Photo: Städel Museum

Sandro Botticelli (1444/45-1510), Minerva and the Centaur, 1480 - 1482, canvas, 207 x 148 cm. Florenz, Uffizien. Photo: Uffizien, Florenz.

FRANKFURT.- The Städel Museum will show the first monographic exhibition on Sandro Botticelli (1444/45–1510) in the German-speaking world from 13 November 2009 to 28 February 2010. Taking the artist’s monumental Idealized Portrait of a Lady, one of the Städel Museum collection’s highlights, as its starting point, the exhibition presents numerous works from all productive periods of this great master of the Renaissance in Italy about 500 years after his day of death (17 May 1510). The exhibition opens with portraits and allegorical paintings that illustrate the degree of sophistication with which Botticelli drew on this highly developed genre and enriched it with new impulses. While the second chapter centers on his famous mythological representations of goddesses and heroines of virtue, the third part is dedicated to his abundant religious oeuvre. With a total of more than forty works by Botticelli and his workshop, the show presents a comprehensive selection of his work surviving worldwide. Forty further exhibits, among them works by such contemporaries as Andrea del Verrocchio, Filippino Lippi, and Antonio del Pollaiuolo, will allow to understand Botticelli’s precious creations in the historical context of their genesis. The presentation is supported by outstanding loans from the most important collections of paintings in Europe and the United States. These include the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, the Louvre in Paris, the National Gallery London, the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin, and the Old Masters Picture Gallery in Dresden, as well as the Metropolitan Museum in New York and the National Gallery of Art in Washington. Sandro Botticelli’s painting has become a landmark of Italian Renaissance. The delicate beauty, elegant grace, and unique charm of his frequently melancholic figures make his work the epitome of Florentine painting in the Golden Age of Medici rule under Lorenzo the Magnificent. Initially trained as a goldsmith and then apprenticed to Fra Filippo Lippi, Sandro Botticelli soon ranked among the most successful painters in Florence in the second half of the quattrocento next to Verrocchio, Ghirlandaio, and the Pollaiuolo brothers. From 1470 on, he received prestigious public commissions and established himself as a painter of large altarpieces. Throughout his life, Botticelli was in the ruling Medici family’s and their supporters’ good graces. Fulfilling their wishes for innovative decorative paintings, the master could not only rely on his personal knowledge of Florentine traditions and of ancient art, but also on definite suggestions and concepts from the circle of humanists gathered around Lorenzo de’ Medici. Held in equally high esteem as both a panel and a fresco painter, Botticelli enjoyed a high standing beyond his native Florence and was thus one of the artists summoned to decorate the walls of the Sistine Chapel in Rome by Pope Sixtus IV in 1481. It was particularly his much-discussed late work that brought out the characteristic features of his original style in an extreme manner. Guided by the art of drawing – the exhibition includes an outstanding selection of preparatory sketches – Botticelli followed his penchant for presenting his figures with sharp contours, strong movements, and abundant gestures, grounding his compositions on textures of lines and surfaces rather than on spaces and volumes. In this respect, his painting had already stood out against his competitors’ works and current theoretical demands in his early years. This is one of the reasons why art-historical research, which has devoted a vast number of major monographs and work studies to Botticelli since the beginnings of the twentieth century, still assigns a special position to the artist without fail. The starting point and center of the cross-genre exhibition is provided by a main work from the collection of the Städel Museum not only very well known in Frankfurt: the master’s idealized portrait of a young lady, who is probably to be identified with Simonetta Vespucci, the beloved jousting tournament lady of Lorenzo’s brother Giuliano de’ Medici. This portrait is less aimed at a true-to-life likeness of the subject than at the ideal of a woman characterized by perfect beauty and equally perfect virtuousness, an ideal also reflected in the poetry of that time. Such an ideal defines itself not least through its rapport with antiquity: thus, the beautiful female wears a piece of jewelry round her neck which is obviously based on an ancient cameo showing Apollo and Marsyas, which will also be on display in the exhibition. In the Städel Museum, Botticelli’s famous portrait of Giuliano from the National Gallery of Art in Washington will offer itself for comparison with his beloved Simonetta’s likeness. Both paintings make up the center of the first part of the presentation, which is devoted to Botticelli’s art of portraiture and, drawing on prominent examples, illustrates the interplay between social norm and artistic form as well as the different genre conventions of the male and the female portrait. The second chapter of the exhibition deals with Botticelli’s mythological pictures, which number among the artist’s most original creations. The Uffizi Gallery in Florence, which safeguards the most comprehensive and significant collection of works by the artist in the world, supports the exhibition in Frankfurt with one of its most popular works among others loans: the famous Pallas and the Centaur, one of Botticelli’s monumental mythological paintings, to be seen in the context of Medicean self-presentation. Together with Botticelli’s Primavera, it once adorned the walls of a bedchamber in a Florentine palace owned by the family of bankers. We see Pallas taming the wild centaur indulging in his passions through her wisdom and virtue. The control and cultivation of emotions was a central issue in ancient philosophy and – combined with Christian thought – of the Renaissance, too; among the painters of the time, Botticelli offered himself as a congenial interpreter for such subjects. The political dimension and the reference to the patron family are symbolically present in the form of two intertwined diamond rings on Pallas’s gown, which were an emblem of the Medici family. Another great female figure featuring in the Florentine artist’s oeuvre is the goddess Venus. His life-size Venus from the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin is a repetition of the central figure of (the unloanable) Birth of Venus in the Uffizi Gallery, which he isolated from the context of the scene and set off against a black background. This work is one of the first monumental nudes of postancient painting. The third and last section of the exhibition is devoted to Botticelli’s religious pictures. Next to his portraits and mythological works, Botticelli has owed his continuing fame to his Madonnas. According to theological thinking, Mary stands out as the ideal woman among the saints: she is the most virtuous and the most beautiful female, the bride of the Song of Songs. Besides many other works spanning from Botticelli’s earliest works still revealing the influence of his teacher Fra Filippo Lippi to examples of his late style, the exhibition in Frankfurt shows one of the artist’s most beautiful Madonnas: The Virgin Adoring the Sleeping Christ Child. The Madonna’s physiognomy of this painting from the National Gallery of Scotland in Edinburgh, whose brilliant colorfulness has only been uncovered through restorative measures some years ago, is rendered in the vein of the same female model which the painter developed for his idealized portraits and pictures of ancient goddesses. This chapter also includes a number of narrative pictures, such as a removed Annunciation fresco once to be found in the vestibule of the hospital of San Martino alla Scala in Florence and preserved in the Uffizi Gallery today. Not only the enormous size of the fresco (243 x 550 cm), but also its qualities as a painting testify to Botticelli’s extraordinary importance in this medium. Four panels depicting scenes from the life of St. Zenobius, an early bishop and patron of Florence, offer a further highlight, with which the exhibition ends. Usually scattered to museums in London, Dresden, and New York, they have been brought together for the first time in Frankfurt again. Ranking not only among his most significant late works, but also among his very last, the panels are to be considered as Botticelli’s legacy as an artist