Skip to main content

Milton Avery at Auction

Christie's November 19, 2014





MILTON AVERY (1885-1965)
SEASIDE
$1,500,000 - $2,500,000




MILTON AVERY (1885-1965)
THE ORANGE SHIRT
$1,000,000 - $1,500,000




 Bonhams November 19, 2014


FLAG
BID






Christie’s 5 DECEMBER 2013  




MILTON AVERY | Mandolin with Pears
Estimate: $600,000-800,000
An important figure in the American Modernist movement, Avery was largely self-taught and experimented with color planes and patterns, bridging the gap between Matisse’s vivaciously outlined canvases and the American color field artists of the 1950s.  Mandolin with Pears was executed in 1945, after Avery had aligned himself with gallerist Paul Rosenberg.  Rosenberg had encouraged Avery to replace his painterly techniques with denser areas of flat colors and delineated forms, resulting in visually striking abstract works, such as the present example.  Mandolin with Pears exemplifies Avery’s unique ability to simplify a scene to its broadest possible forms while retaining tension and balance through color and shape.



Christie’s NOVEMBER 30, 2011





Milton Avery’s (1885-1965) Nude on the Beach, 1943 (estimate: $300,000-500,000), was painted during the most critical period in Avery’s career.  Avery’s bold abstractions exerted a highly important influence on Post-War American paintings and have been seen as critical forerunners to paintings by Mark Rothko and Adolph Gottlieb, among many others.  His use of color and form to indicate depth and dimension, presented in a compressed pictorial space, represents the breadth of the American Modern aesthetic.  As a key link between early 20th century art and Post-War art movements, Avery tends to appeal to collectors of both periods.


Bonhams May 31, 2014






Bonham's December 4,

2013 




MILTON AVERY
(American, 1893-1965)
Blonde 10 x 7in
Sold for US$ 25,000 inc.premium
CHRISTIE’S 23 MAY 2013

Six works from the Andy Williams’ collection will be included in the sale, including two important paintings by Milton Avery,


The Musicians (estimate: $400,000-600,000)


and Pale Flower (estimate: $250,000-350,000). 

The success of Milton Avery's art lies in his ability to modernize a familiar domestic scene through his carefully orchestrated arrangement of color and pattern. He translates his subject matter into a unique lexicon of shapes and forms that fit together to create a cohesive composition. Painted in 1949, The Musicians was executed during the most critical period of Milton Avery's career, when he incorporated the simplified, blocked forms for which he became known. In addition to their broad popular appeal, Avery's bold, abstracted shapes exerted an important influence on Post-War American painters, especially Mark Rothko and Adolph Gottlieb. His work also reflects the same painterly concerns that consumed the pioneers of French modernism. Like Matisse, Dufy, and Picasso, Avery arranges planes of saturated color while retaining the two-dimensional surface of the canvas.

Sotheby's May 2013

Avery’s Music Makers, on offer from the estate of screen star Gregory Peck and his wife Veronique, achieved $2,965,000 – double its $1.5 million high estimate.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

FREDERIC EDWIN CHURCH at AUCTION

Biography Frederic Edwin Church was born in Hartford, Connecticut, on May 4, 1826, the only son of a wealthy businessman. Although his father hoped he would become a physician or enter the world of business, Church persisted in his early desire to be a painter. In 1842-1843 he studied in Hartford with Alexander H. Emmons (1816-1879), a local landscape and portrait painter, and Benjamin H. Coe (1799-after 1883), a well-known drawing instructor. In 1844 Church's father, at last resigned to his son's choice of a career, arranged through his friend, the art patron Daniel Wadsworth, two years of study with Thomas Cole. Church was thus the first pupil accepted by America's leading landscape painter, a distinction that immediately gave him an advantage over other aspiring painters of his generation. From the first, Church showed a remarkable talent for drawing and a strong inclination to paint in a crisp, tightly focused style. In 1845 he made his...
Post a Comment
Read more

THOMAS HART BENTON at Auction III - Christie's, Doyle, Bonhams

Biography - Questroyal Fine Art, LLC, New York, New York By Amy Spencer Benton’s paintings were widely loved for their reassuring images of the American heartland during two World Wars and the Great Depression. I. Biography  Thomas Hart Benton is best known for his patriotic murals that heroically depict American life during the first half of the 20th century. Born into a prominent Mid-western family of politicians, Benton grew up moving between rural Missouri and the political arena of Washington D.C.. Rejecting his grooming as a future politician, Benton developed an interest in art at an early age. Despite this rebellion, over the course of Benton’s painting career, his outspoken comments, nationalistic views, and socially charged images, marked him as a politician’s son. At the peak of his career in the 1930s, Benton was a key member of the Regionalist movement along with fellow Midwestern artists, Grant Wood and John Steuart Curry. Thomas Hart Benton was born in ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Genius and Ambition: The Royal Academy of Arts, London

The Royal Academy of Arts announces the most significant touring exhibition of its Collection in its 246-year history. Genius and Ambition: The Royal Academy of Arts, London opened 2 March 2014 at Bendigo Art Gallery, Australia.  Spanning 150 years of the Academy, the exhibition focuses on a key period of the RA Collection: the so-called ‘long nineteenth century’ from 1768-1918. Comprising 56 paintings, twenty drawings, nine prints, eight historic books, two photographs and two sculptures, the display will also tour to four venues in Japan, between August 2014 – April 2015. Several works in the exhibition have never travelled outside of the UK before, including  Sir Joshua Reynolds PRA’s Theory (1789-90), and Sir Ernest Waterlow RA’s The Banks of the River Loing (1903)   Further highlights of the exhibition include  JMW Turner RA’s Dolbadern Castle (1800),  John Constable RA’s Boat Passing a Lock (1826),  Henry Fuseli RA’s Thor battering the Midgard Serpent...
Post a Comment
Read more