Three modern art masters dominated the world of art auctions this year – with portraits of women. Picasso, with the O-version of his Les femmes d’Alger, Gauguin with his Nafea faa ipoipo? and Modigliani with Nu couché.
Paul Gauguin (1848-1903), Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) and Amedeo Modigliani (1884-1920) were contemporaries.
Picasso was 22 when Gauguin died, but his appreciation for Gauguin is apparent, among others, from a painting he made shortly after Gauguin’s death and signed it “Paul Picasso” in the departed painter’s honour.
Picasso and Modigliani knew one another well, but they also differed widely from one another.
What the three of them had in common was that they were all womanisers.
And their portraits of women were also sold for record prices this year.
Gauguin holds the record for the highest price paid for his work in a transaction; Picasso holds the record for the highest price obtained at an auction, followed by Modigliani.
In February, Gauguin’s Nafea faa ipoipo?, 1892, was sold in a private transaction for $300m (R4.3bn at current rates). The buyer was apparently a Qatari museum.
The other two paintings, which were sold for record prices on overseas auctions, are Picasso’s Les femmes d’Alger (Version ‘O’), 1955, and Amedeo Modigliani’s Nu couché, 1917/18.
The Picasso was sold in May for $179.4m (R2.6bn) and the Modigliani in November for $170.4m. Both the paintings were sold in New York at Christie’s auctions.
The Picasso was sold to an anonymous Saudi. The Modgliani was bought by the Chinese businessman, Liu Yiqian.
Nafea faa ipoipo?
Paul Gauguin
1892
Oil on canvas (101cm x 77cm)
In 1891, Gaugin packed his bags and left for Tahiti, an island that he expected to be a primitive paradise.
Nancy Mathews, author of Paul Gauguin: An Erotic Life, 2001, refers to Gauguin’s depiction of Tahitians as people who live to sing and love.
Gauguin loved passionately and married three girls.
Nafea faa ipoipo?, which means, “When are you going to marry?”, is one of his most famous works for which there are many prints.
The figure in front is dressed in traditional Tahitian garb, while the girl in the back is dressed in Western clothes, which have also been referred to as typical “mission clothes”.
The paintings that he took from Tahiti to Paris did not really find favour. This particular work was not sold when it was exhibited in Paris in 1893.
Rudolf Staechelin bought this painting from the Maison Moos gallery in Geneva in 1917 and it was owned by the Rudolf Staechelin family trust until it was sold earlier this year.
Miner with hand drill
Anton van Wouw
1911
Bronze with brown verd-antique (height 61cm)
But the highlight of the auction was the record price fetched by a bronze statue by Anton van Wouw.
Van Wouw’s Miner with hand drill, 1911, with brown verd-antique, broke a record for this artist’s work when it was sold for R4.8m. In just two years, the price of this work more than doubled. In 2013 it fetched just over R2m when it was sold at a Strauss & Co auction.
This is an excerpt from an article that originally appeared in the 17 December edition of finweek. Buy and download the magazine here.