Dorotheum’s Contemporary Week, including its Modern (23 May 2023) and Contemporary Art (24 and 25 May 2023) auctions has an international slant.

One of the highlights of the Contemporary Art sale on 24 May 2023 is undoubtedly a work by the Italian artist Alighiero Boetti: one of his famous “biro” works, valued at 400,000 to 600,000 euros. This particular work of ballpoint pen on paper dates to 1981 and is considered rare as it is in four parts, measuring more than four metres long in total. The title of the picture, “non parto non resto”, taken from the Aeneid, is revealed through a curious and unusual game: the constellation of signs on the panels is interrupted by commas at certain points. These 16 commas refer to the alphabet on the first panel and are the key to deciphering the title, which translates as “I will not leave, nor will I stay”, attributed to the lovesick Aeneas. 

Lucio Fontana’s golden “Concetto Spaziale” from 1966 (€600,000–900,000) moves between cosmological euphoria and sacred transcendence.

Ever since Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon”, possibly the best record cover of all time, the colour wheel discovered by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe has become instantly recognisable: spectral colours are created when white light is refracted through a prism and the colours are fanned out into their different wavelengths. Heinz Mack, an artist who has addressed the malleability of light as a medium and material since the beginning of the Zero group, places the sequence of spectral colours at the centre of his recent works. The best example of this is the present untitled large format created in 2017 (€200,000–300,000).

François Morellet is considered a pioneer of light art. As early as 1963, the Frenchman integrated neon light into his works, making him one of the very first artists to do so. The witty title of the work “Lunatique neonly - 16 quarts de cercle n. 5” from 2005 is composed of the French words for moon, madness and neon and the English word only (€80,000–120,000).

Elaine Sturtevant (Lakewood, Ohio 1924-2014 Paris) is known for her imitations of various works by contemporary artists. This “appropriation art” is also evident in her work “Haring Untitled January 1982” from 1986 (€80,000–120,000). Other pieces include works by Imi Knoebel, Hans Hartung, Jirí Georg Dokoupil, Robert Longo, Antoni Tàpies, Cy Twombly and Jean-Paul Riopelle …

Austrian art is well represented with, among others, two monumental splatter paintings by Hermann Nitsch (€100,000–200,000, €90,000–160,000), a work on newsprint by Franz West and a portrait of a woman by Maria Lassnig (€40,000–70,000, €70,000–120,000).

The Modern Art auction on 23 May 2023 contains a captivating still life by Alexej von Jawlensky from 1905 (€ 400,000–600,000). Jawlenksy said that in the early days of his artistic development he preferred still lifes as a subject through which to find himself and his style: “I have tried to go beyond material objects in these still lifes and to express in colour and form what resonates within me, and I have achieved some good results.”

The range of Italian modernism is covered by works by Giorgio Morandi (flower painting, €200,000–300,000), Roberto Sebastian Matta, Gino Severini and Giorgio de Chirico, among others.

Several pencil drawings by Gustav Klimt are on offer, including “Lady with cloak, frontal, standing”, a study for the artist’s famous portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer (€30,000–50,000).

The painting “Blossoming Almond Tree on Mallorca” is radically modern. It was painted in the last years of the life of the exceptional Austrian artist Jean Egger, who died in 1934 at the age of 37. It is exemplary of Egger’s style, in which figurative representation and gestural brushstrokes interpenetrate and dissolve. The Lentos Kunstmuseum Linz is dedicating a retrospective to the artist, who was celebrated in 1930s Paris, until 7 May 2023, stating: “the liberation of colour in his painting and the radicality of the dissolution of form make him one of the most important artists of the interwar period” (€60,000–100,000).

Also on offer at this auction: works by Wilfredo Lam, Alexander Archipenko, Albin Egger-Lienz, and many more.