In 1903, Alexej von Jawlensky traveled to Paris. There he discovered the avant-garde and the post-impressionism of Vincent van Gogh. Jawlensky, who first came into contact with realist painting in his native Russia, had expanded his use of colors and light in the Munich painting school of the Slovenian artist Anton Ažbe. Now he began to turn to an Expressionist style. He practiced it primarily through still lifes, which he preferred to paint in that phase of his work.
A work from this period, the oil painting Gedeckter Tisch (translating to Laid Table) from around 1904-1905, is one of the highlights of the modern art auction that opens the Contemporary Week at Vienna's Dorotheum auction house on May 23. It is a wonderful example of Alexej von Jawlensky's turn to Expressionism, when color became the primary focus and form was secondary.
Around the time that Alexej von Jawlensky was in Paris, Gustav Klimt was commissioned in Vienna to portray art patron Adele Bloch-Bauer, with whom he may have had more than a friendship. For this, Klimt made over 100 black chalk studies, including the present one, which shows Adele standing and facing the front. This study did not make it into the final version, Adele Bloch-Bauer I, completed in 1907, which shows the sitter in a sitting position. But when Gustav Klimt received another commission for a portrait of his patron (Adele Bloch-Bauer II, 1912), he went back to this sketch for inspiration.
Roberto Matta cast a rather gloomy view of the future of the art scene in 1954 with La Banale de Venise, which, according to the title, was a reckoning with the Biennale in the lagoon city. Matta was concerned about society's increasing consumerism, in which the artist became a robot, producing emotionless art on an assembly line and thus becoming a cog in the machine.
The offer of contemporary art, which will be auctioned in two parts on May 24 and 25, also has many highlights on offer. The top lots include two works by Lucio Fontana, including Concetto Speziale from 1956.
Around ten years earlier, Fontana had spoken out in favor of a dynamic in art that would break down the boundaries between the individual art genres. Fontana began creating works that he called Concetto Spaziale. After initially perforating monochrome canvases, he began adding pieces of glass to them in 1950 in order to achieve a new lighting effect. The present work can also be assigned to this series in that it combines painting, sculpture and relief.
The next highlight of the offer is from the year 1956. It was created by Manolo Millares and comes from his cycle Composicion con dimension perdida (“Composition with a missing dimension”). Millares, one of the most important Spanish artists of the post-war period, was initially inspired by Surrealism before turning to his own abstract, informal pictorial language. Influences from his homeland, the Canary Island of Gran Canaria, can also be found in his works, especially through the coarse jute fabrics that he used in his assemblages from the 1950s that are deeply rooted in Canarian culture.
While this work seems to be a Keith Haring, it is in fact by the American artist Elaine Sturtevant. From the mid-1960s, Sturtevant selected works by her contemporary colleagues in order to repeat them from memory. In a way, she took the ready-mades of Marcel Duchamp (who was her great role model) to the extreme. In the New York art scene, however, her approach was met with such rejection that she resigned her work for the time being. In the mid-1980s, however, the concept of Appropriation Art had emerged, though Sturtevant initially distanced herself from this movement. Haring Untitled January 1982 is an early work from Elaine Sturtevant's second creative period.
In addition to these and other masterpieces by modern and contemporary artists, Contemporary Week also includes jewelry, wristwatches and pocket watches, which will be auctioned on May 25 and 26.
The auctions take place in the Palais Dorotheum, Dorotheergasse 17, in Vienna. The Contemporary Week exhibition is currently open there.
