Dorotheum is continuing in the vein of its outstanding results for Italian and German avantgarde of the 1960s, especially works from the Pittura Oggetto (picture-objects) and the ZERO group, offering artworks from these ground-breaking movements in the forthcoming Dorotheum Auction Week 31st May – 3rd June 2016. Aside from modern and contemporary art, the Auction Week will also feature historical silver and jewellery and watches.

International Contemporary Art Highlights on 1st June include works by Anish Kapoor, Heinz Mack, Adolf Luther, Georg Baselitz, Maria Lassnig, Agostino Bonalumi, Enrico Castellani, Giulio Paolini, Turi Simeti, Carla Accardi, Cy Twombly, Robert Rauschenberg, Pablo Atchugarry and Tom Wesselmann.

Liberating cuts
Lucio Fontana’s Concetto spaziale works transcend their surface, either through holes (buchi) or slashes (tagli). The striking electric blue single-slash Concetto Spaziale, Attese from 1967/8 offered by Dorotheum in the upcoming 1 June auction is the perfect example of the artist’s spatial concepts that explore the ‘other’ dimension which Fontana was so intrigued by throughout his artistic career. The Concetto Spaziale, Attese dates from the last year of the artist’s life, making it even more poignant in its radiant blue colour (Estimate €600,000 – €800,000).

Figure of light
Light has always been an essential part of art, both aesthetically and on a transcendental level, and light plays a particularly important role in several of Dorotheum’s highlights. In Otto Piene’s sculpture ‘Weißer Lichtgeist’ (White light spirit), from a series of ‘electrified glass sculptures’, light itself is the subject, the main protagonist: the opaque glass, consisting of four individual tapering and bulging glass bodies, comes to life with a light bulb pulsating within, that is set to the rhythm arranged by the artist, causing the hand-blown glass to radiate various shades of white. The sculpture acquires a life of its own, exuding a ghostly quality that is referenced in its title (Estimate €230,000 – €280,000).

Grotesque artificiality
Photography is the only medium capable of providing accurate information, even though it may be technically flawed and its subject barely recognisable, according to Gerhard Richter’s comments on amateur photography. In the late 1960s, the artist used photographic images as a basis for a series of blurred black and white paintings and portraits. Dorotheum is thrilled to present a work from this series of Richter’s oeuvre, in this instance the portrait of Karl-Heinz Hering, the long-time chairman of the Düsseldorf art society. It is a painting which is ‘a radical painterly reflection of an artistic template (…) What, at a first glance, appears to be unfinished is revealed as something so artificial that it borders on the grotesque’. (Estimate €400,000 – €600,000).

Pursuit of transcendence
Light plays a major role in Richard Pousette-Dart’s large-format painting Suspended Light from 1979/80. The North American artist, co-founder of Abstract Expressionism, used many layers of dotted paint to produce vibrant, complex surfaces in black and white that create the impression of light sources; its particular texture makes this type of transcendental Op-Art appear almost animated. Similar to Mark Rothko, Ad Reinhard or Clifford Still, Pousette-Dart believed that abstract painting had the power to evoke transcendence. (Estimate €200,000 – €300,000)

Men and masks
The highlight of the Modern Art Auction on 31st May, featuring also works by Alfons Walde, Gino Severini, Jean Arp, Rudolf Bauer and Wassily Kandinsky, is a painting by James Ensor. Baptême des masques offered by Dorotheum with an estimate of €300,000 – €500,000. It is one of two versions of a 1891 composition with the same title, inspired by a family costume party. Ensor himself appears in the centre of the painting which is based on a photograph and shows masked friends of the artist. While Baptême des masques exists in two later versions, this work is a new discovery.

Lucio Fontana: VIDEO please use and share
James Ensor: VIDEO please use and share

PRESS RELEASE Colourful Jewels & Complicated Clockwork, Auction Preview 2nd/3rd June 2016

AUCTION WEEK 31st MAY - 3rd JUNE 2016
Silver Tue 31st May 2016 1pm
Modern Art Tue 31st May 2016 6pm
Contemporary Art Wen 1st June 2016 part 1 6pm 
Thu 2nd June 2016 part 2 5pm
Jewellery Thu 2nd June 2016 2pm
Wrist and Pocket Watches Fri 3rd June 2016 4pm
Public Viewing from Sat 21st May 2016
Venue Palais Dorotheum, Vienna 1, Dorotheergasse 17