SOTHEBY S TO OFFER THE VANTHOURNOUT COLLECTION

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Press Release FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Diana Phillips Matthew Weigman Kristin Gelder 212 606 7176 SOTHEBY S TO OFFER THE VANTHOURNOUT COLLECTION Pictured here: Francis Bacon s Version No.

1 Press Release FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Diana Phillips Matthew Weigman Kristin Gelder SOTHEBY S TO OFFER THE VANTHOURNOUT COLLECTION Pictured here: Francis Bacon s Version No. 2 of Lying Figure with Hypodermic Syringe, est. $9/12 million CONTEMPORARY, IMPRESSIONIST AND MODERN AND LATIN AMERICAN ART TO BE FEATURED THIS FALL FROM A PRIVATE EUROPEAN COLLECTION FRANCIS BACON S MASTERPIECE VERSION NO. 2 OF LYING FIGURE WITH HYPODERMIC SYRINGE IS EXPECTED TO BRING $9/12 MILLION New York, New York This fall Sotheby s will present approximately 90 works of sculpture and paintings from The Vanthournout Collection, a private Belgian collection, in a series of single-owner sequences in sales of Contemporary Art (November 14-15), Impressionist and Modern Art (November 7) and Latin American Art (November 20-21). The Collection, from Mr. and Mrs. Vanthournout s home and sculpture garden in the countryside near Brussels, Belgium, will feature a masterpiece by Francis

2 Bacon, Version No. 2 of Lying Figure with Hypodermic Syringe (est. $9/12 million), and seminal works by Damien Hirst, Roy Lichtenstein, Tom Wesselmann, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Gerhard Richter, Carl Andre, Donald Judd, Piero Manzoni, Lynn Chadwick, Barbara Hepworth, Henry Moore and Jean Arp, among many others. Highlights from the sale will travel to London and Hong Kong before going on exhibition this fall in Sotheby s 10 th floor galleries, and the Collection is estimated to bring $34.3/47.5 million*. Discussing the Vanthournout Collection, Tobias Meyer, Sotheby s Worldwide Head of Contemporary Art, said: The Vanthournout Collection is the result of the 40-year-long single-minded pursuit of quality by two extraordinary collectors, following their own instincts and their remarkable eye, to acquire the art that appealed to them. The Collection has the distinction of representing the aesthetic range of two artistic generations of European and American Modern and Contemporary Art. In Mr. and Mrs. Vanthournout s remarkable home, works by surrealists such as Magritte and Ernst were installed with sculptures by Moore and Hepworth, paintings by Bacon and Richter and artworks by the American minimalists. Few collections have continued to grow over the years as the Vanthournouts has, with acquisitions of Expressionists in the 1960 s right through to the acquisition of a Damien Hirst dot painting in the last few years. Contemporary Art November 14-15, 2006 Highlighting the Collection is one of the Vanthournouts earliest acquisitions, a Francis Bacon masterpiece, Version No. 2 of Lying Figure with Hypodermic Syringe (pictured on page 1), 1968, which was partly based on Henrietta Moraes, a key member of Bacon s inner circle and a fellow regular at Soho s Colony Club in London, which Bacon and his fellow artist Lucian Freud frequented. Bacon and Freud are considered Britain s pre-eminent painters of the last half century, both excelling in the area of figurative art and portraiture. While Freud painted from the live model, Bacon preferred to paint while sequestered in his studio, relying predominantly on the combination of memory and photographic material. This monumental painting is one of Bacon s first forays into the great proving ground of Western art: the reclining female nude. In Version No. 2 of Lying Figure with Hypodermic Syringe, the thrown-back arm, the long flowing hair and the riotous body manifest on its surface an inner turmoil as his expressive subject writhes in the grips of a very modern nightmare, a drug trip, although 2

3 Bacon claimed that the syringe had a purely visual purpose with no sinister connotations. The painting embodies and exemplifies why Bacon was Britain s greatest post-war painter: the psychological and physical forces conveyed by his unique handling of paint and by his expressionistic treatment of the human figure place him clearly in what his first dealer, Helen Lessore, has called The Great Tradition. The great Bacon scholar David Sylvester personally requested Version No. 2 of Lying Figure with Hypodermic Syringe for the last Bacon show he curated, Francis Bacon: the Human Body, as part of the twenty-three works that successfully highlighted his whole career. For Sylvester, it crowned nearly fifty years of writing, analyzing and proselytizing Bacon s achievements. In Bacon s painting, which combines ecstasy and overdose, pleasure and pain, sleep and death, he achieves a level of pure mastery and a visual poetry that is shocking and beautiful, brutally honest and yet profoundly empathetic, making Version No. 2 of Lying Figure with Hypodermic Syringe a masterpiece with few equals in the whole of his long and stellar career. The work is estimated to sell for $9/12 million. Bacon s masterpiece was prominently displayed in the Vanthournout home next to their last acquisition, Damien Hirst s dot painting, Alkaline Phosphatase-Polyethylene Glycol, 1992 (est. $650/850,000), and this pairing was emblematic of the interest in British art that extended throughout the Vanthournout collection. Also characterizing the work of a younger generation of artists is Jean-Michel Basquiat s widely-exhibited Sienna, 1984 (est. $1.5/2 million). Among the works in the section of American Pop Art is Roy Lichtenstein s Modern Painting with Fishes, 1967, from his major Modern Paintings series of the late 1960s and early 1970s, when Lichtenstein shifted his attention away from comic strip and advertising sources to the great artists of the early 20 th century. Modern art genres such as still-lifes were prevalent in this series, often referencing paintings by earlier masters such as Henri Matisse. (est. $1/1.5 million). Along with Lichtenstein and others such as Andy Warhol, Claes Oldenburg and James Rosenquist, Tom Wesselmann was one of the integral artists of Pop Art of the early 1960s, and his Great American Nude #96 is among the quintessential icons of this movement, combining the classic genre of the female nude with still-life elements culled from popular culture (est. $800,000/1.2 million). Another cornerstone of the Contemporary offerings is Gerhard Richter s large-scale, brightly-colored painting Maria (544-4), 1983 (pictured here, est. $2.5/3.5 million). Richter s creative vision, one that is centered on the artist s process and procedures as well as how the mechanics of painting affect the dynamic and structure of composition, is evident here in a 3

4 superlative example of his love affair with the physicality of paint. Its extraordinary interplay of brilliant explosions of fizzing color with dynamic sequences of soft, undulating grounds, injects this painting with a visual momentum that is unsurpassed in this period. Famed and influential Italian artist Piero Manzoni also sought to empty the canvas of its private and social responsibilities exploited in earlier practices, emphasizing the surface and materials as the true subject of art. Achrome, executed in 1959, is an outstanding example from Manzoni s most important series, which ranged in influence from Minimalism to Arte Povera (est. $900,000/1.2 million). Manzoni s Kaolin canvases were the creative nucleus from which much of the art of the 1960s evolved. The Vanthournouts fondness for Minimalist art is evident in such works as Carl Andre s Untitled modular floor sculpture from 1968, comprised of 100 copper parts ($800,000/1.2 million). Among the most paradigmatic of all Minimalist art, Andre s sculptures were constructed using ready-made metals in programmatic and geometric arrangements. His weighty metal floor sculptures contrast with Donald Judd s, whose suspended wall progressions and stacks are represented here by Untitled Progression, 1990, made of burgundy-colored and anodized aluminum, and based on the Fibonacci sequence, a mathematical concept applying to the progressive arrangement of units that are proportionately related to one another (est. $1/1.5 million). Impressionist and Modern Art November 7, 2006 Among the Modern works from the collection are five sculptures by many of the biggest names of Modernism -- Lynn Chadwick, Barbara Hepworth, Henry Moore and Jean Arp -- which will be offered in the Impressionist and Modern evening sale on November 7, Two monumental works by Chadwick, Seated Couple, 1984, and Pair of Walking Figures: Jubilee, 1977, were both acquired from the Marlborough Gallery in London. They are estimated to sell for $800,000/1.2 million each. Henry Moore s Two Piece Reclining Figure No. 4, from 1961 and estimated to sell for $1/1.5 million, was also acquired from Marlborough Gallery and was formerly in the 4

5 collection of the artist s daughter Mary. The leading female sculptor of the Modernist movement, Barbara Hepworth, is represented by Ultimate Form from the artist s renowned Family of Man series from The monumental bronze is estimated to bring $800,000/1.2 million. Figure Mythique, from 1950, by the Surrealist Jean Arp will also be offered and is estimated to sell for $400/600,000. Latin American Art November 20-21, 2006 Highlighting the sale of Latin American Art is Claudio Bravo s monumental painting Lingam, depicting the interior of his Moroccan home in a symphony in creams and beiges (est. $250/300,000), and a lyrical example of Jesus Rafael Soto s Kinetic work, Escritura a círculos Horizontales, 1977, comprised of metal and painted wood (est. $55/75,000). *Estimates do not include buyer s premium For more information, please kristin.gelder@sothebys.com. # # # 5

London Matthew Weigman Mitzi Mina Sarah Rustin

London Matthew Weigman Mitzi Mina Sarah Rustin Press Release For Immediate Release London +44 20 7293 6000 Matthew Weigman Matthew.Weigman@Sothebys.com Mitzi Mina Mitzi.Mina@sothebys.com Sarah Rustin Sarah.Rustin@Sothebys.com Global Participation from