Fragile Goddess on display at the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore in 2006

Artist Louise Bourgeois, whose sculptures exploring women’s deepest feelings on birth, sexuality and death were highly influential on younger artists, died Monday, her studio’s managing director said. She was 98.

Bourgeois had continued creating artwork — her latest pieces were finished just last week — before suffering a heart attack Saturday night, said the studio director, Wendy Williams. The artist died at Beth Israel Medical Center in Manhattan, where she lived.

Continue reading — Influential French-born American Artist Louise Bourgeois Dies in New York City at 98

Henry Herbert La Thangue, Ligurian Grapes. Estimate: £200,000-300,000. Photo: Christie’s Images Ltd 2010.

The vitality of the market for Victorian & British Pictures including Drawings & Watercolours continues to gain notable momentum, as demonstrated by the multiple world auction records set at the December 2009 sale where ‘spirited bidding from buyers swept up with Victorian values’ was reported in the press. The summer 2010 sale at Christie’s London, on Wednesday 16 June, will meet the renewed vigor of demand with one of the strongest sales of its type to be offered on the international auction platform for many years. With estimates ranging from £3,000 to £1.5 million, the sale is expected to realise in the region of £6 million. This auction follows the morning sale of the Nicolette Wernick Collection of British Watercolours & Paintings (1800-1950).

Continue reading — Six Million Pounds of Victorian Paintings to Be Offered at Christie’s

A member of the public looks at The Charnel House as part of the Picasso: Peace And Freedom exhibition.

Lenin used the term “useful idiots” to describe Western liberals who turned a blind eye to the true nature of totalitarianism – and few were more idiotic or more useful to the Soviet cause than Pablo Picasso. It is perfectly understandable that he should have joined the Communist Party in 1944, in solidarity with those who had fought against fascism both in the Spanish Civil War and in the French Resistance. Harder to explain is why he remained a member even after the Soviet suppression of the Hungarian uprising in 1956, and actively supported Russia during the Cuban missile crisis.

Continue reading — Picasso: Peace and Freedom at Tate Liverpool

A lone thief broke into a Paris museum last night and stole five paintings worth €500m (£430m) including masterpieces by Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse, French police said today.

A police spokesman said works by Picasso, Matisse, George Braque, Amedeo Modigliani and Fernand Léger were reported missing early this morning from the Paris Museum of Modern Art.

L’Olivier pres de l’Estaque (Olive tree near Estaque), 1906, by Georges Braque.

The pictures are: Le pigeon aux petits-pois (Pigeon with Peas) an ochre and brown Cubist oil painting by Picasso; La Pastorale (Pastoral), an oil painting of nudes on a hillside by Matisse; L’olivier pres de l’Estaque (Olive Tree near Estaque) by Braque; La femme a l’eventail (Woman with a Fan) by Modigliani; and Nature-mort aux chandeliers (Still Life with Chandeliers) by Léger.

Continue reading — Paris art museum theft the work of lone robber

Domenichino, Saint John the Evangelist, late 1620s. On loan from a private collection, © Private collection 2010.

One of the greatest works by the Italian Baroque master Domenichino (1581–1641) is to remain in Britain and is now on public display in Room 32 of the National Gallery, having been acquired by an anonymous private collector.

This is a tremendous outcome for the nation and a triumph of collaboration between the Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art and Objects of Cultural Interest (RCEWA) and the anonymous private collector, resulting from the application of the ‘Ridley Rules’.

Continue reading — Baroque Masterpiece Goes on Display at the National Gallery

Christie’s mid-season Russian Art sale on 8 June will offer a strong section of more than 60 lots of Fabergé, including a private collection of 45 lots from a European Royal Family. Highlights of this fine and distinguished Royal collection include a two-colour gold-mounted nephrite table clock, with Henrik Wigström (estimate £80,000- 120,000) as well as a very rare miniature kovsh, which was supplied to the Imperial cabinet on 21 May 1909 and acquired by Emperor Nicholas II as a presentation gift (estimate: £8,000-12,000).

Boris Grigoriev, “Russian Man”, 1920. Estimate: £400,000-600,000

The picture section of the sale is led by Mikhail Klodt’s Riverside Farm, painted in 1858, a rare masterpiece by one of Russia’s greatest landscape artists (estimate: £700,000-900,000). It is likely that Klodt, confident that this singular work was of sufficient calibre to showcase his talent, selected the painting for submission as his graduation piece from the St Petersburg Academy of Arts for which he was awarded a gold medal of the first class and a significant travel bursary allowing him to spend the next three years studying and working in France, Germany and Switzerland.

Continue reading — Important Works by Russian Masters and Fabergé to Be Offered at Christie’s

U.S. sculptor Richard Serra, renowned for his large-scale metal structures, has been named the winner of Spain’s prestigious Prince of Asturias award in the arts for his innovative ability to integrate urban spaces in his work, organizers said.

The Prince of Asturias Foundation described Serra Wednesday as one of the “most relevant sculptors of the second half of the 20th century” and said his minimalist works were of “great visual power that are an invitation to reflection and wonder.”

Continue reading — Sculptor Serra wins Spanish Asturias award