GEORGES BRAQUE (1882-1963)
拍品 534 HIDDEN GEMS: THE COLLECTION OF DR. THOMAS CHUA

GEORGES BRAQUE (1882-1963)

Circe

已结束2021年11月13日

成交价

USD 462,500

更多信息

GEORGES BRAQUE (1882-1963)
Circe
signed 'G. BRAQUE' (lower right)
pastel on paper laid down on canvas
70 7/8 x 28 ¾ in. (180 x 73 cm.)
Drawn circa 1931-1932

Jacques Seligmann & Co., New York (acquired from the artist).
Mr. and Mrs. M.F. Feheley, Toronto (acquired from the above, 1958); sale, Sotheby & Co., London, 28 June 1972, lot 13.
G.K. Leech (acquired at the above sale).
Anon. sale, Christie's, New York, 13 May 1980, lot 67.
Argyro Enterprises, Ltd., Toronto.
Acquired by the late owner, March 1989.

专家说明

“As for me, at the moment I’m illustrating a Greek text, and why not! Isn’t the art of today allowed to offer a vision of earlier times?”
- Georges Braque

Alex Danchev has written, “From his desk or his bed—he was a night reader—Braque fed the inner man. This one was the gourmet. The past is a hypothesis, he said, but it was the ancient world, more hypothetical than most, that held his attention” (Georges Braque: A Life, New York, 2005, p. 194). Braque, the avid bibliophile, was well-read in Ancient Greek literature. In 1931, Ambroise Vollard came to Braque to commission a series of etchings for a special edition artist’s book to accompany a well-known text of antiquity. Braque immediately chose Hesiod’s Theogony, an epic poem from 730-700 BC detailing the origins and genealogies of the Greek gods. It was through this project that Braque indubitably put pastel to paper to create two large scale panels: Circe and Odysseus. During this period, an interviewer described Braque as “seduced by the names, tracing the ancient letters like a magic spell” (ibid., p. 196). The Greek text provided ample inspiration, leading Braque to create several different explorations through oil, pastel and even plaster.