Special offer

Iconic Picasso prints to go on sale at Sotheby's auction

By
Real Estate Broker/Owner with Damianos Sotheby's International Realty

La femme qui pleure (Weeping woman) is expected to fetch up to £700,000 alone

The piece is one of 58 Picasso prints to be sold this month at Sotheby's in the "most important" sale of his prints in decades.

The artist's works are expected to raise up to £3 million in total and have been released by single private European collector who wishes to remain anonymous.

La femme qui pleure (Weeping woman) is an extremely rare print, with only 15 impressions of this particular run, and is expected to fetch up to £700,000 alone. It was created as a study for Guernica, the huge mural commissioned for the Spanish Pavilion of the 1937 International Exhibition in Paris. The weeping woman is intended as a motif to convey the plight of the Spanish victims of the victims of the bombing of the Basque town of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War. He used the Surrealist photographer Dora Maar, who was also his lover, as his model for the picture.

Other famous works include La Minotauromachie, seen as a masterpice amongst Picasso's printworks because of its complexity. Only three prints have appeared at auction of either print in the last thirty years and it is expected to reach up to £600,000.

Le repas frugal, executed during Picasso's blue period, recalls his youth spent in Montmartre in Paris. It is expected to sell for around £180,000.

James Mackie, Senior Expert at Sotheby's London Prints Department, said: "We are thrilled to be selling this superb collection of works by Pablo Picasso, which is characterised by a range and quality, the like of which has not been seen at auction for many years. We are particularly excited to have the opportunity to offer what are certainly Picasso's most important and groundbreaking graphic works."

He added: "Many of Picasso's print pieces were not sold on and remained in his studio to be passed on to his grand-daughter Marina Picasso. They simply did not come to market. This particular impression of La femme qui pleure belonged to her before it was sold on to the current owner."

The Sotheby's autumn sale of Modern and Contemporary Art also includes works by Henri Matisse and Edvard Munch as well as Andy Warhol and Damien Hirst.

The 176 lots are expected to raise around £5.3million in total at the sale at Sotheby's New Bond Street galleries on September 16.

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Damianos Sotheby's International Realty has been providing Bahamas real estate services since 1945. We are a member of the Bahamas Real Estate Association and the Bahamas MLS.

 

                 

 

Comments (1)

Gita Bantwal
RE/MAX Centre Realtors - Warwick, PA
REALTOR,ABR,CRS,SRES,GRI - Bucks County & Philadel

Thank you for the information. I am sure they will be able to raise a lot of money.

Sep 13, 2010 12:23 AM