![Ivan Constantinovich Aïvazovsky (1817-1900), ‘Ship in Rough Seas’, 1893, oil on canvas [detail]. Photo © Rossini](https://images.prismic.io/barnebys/5769c175-4aee-4220-af3f-7d63f6301463_Cover.jpeg?auto=format,compress)
Modern and Contemporary Art is a major part of auction house Rossini's activity. Each year, three to four prestigious sales are organised to highlight the greatest artists and movements of the 19th and 20th centuries. Within each sale, the department offers works produced in a wide range of mediums covering the modern, post-war and contemporary periods, with a focus every now and then on a theme such as photography or street art.
On 14 April, collectors will be delighted to find a catalogue of 189 lots tracing modern and contemporary creation from the 19th century to the present day. Rossini invites us on a journey to the heart of different periods, movements and styles with, among others, a marine work by Ivan Constantinovich Aïvazovsky, two paintings by the orientalist Édouard Verschaffelt, an abstract oil by Gustave Singier and a sculpture by Arman.
The undisputed master of marine painting, the Russian-Armenian artist Ivan Constantinovich Aïvazovsky is represented in Rossini’s sale with a late oil on canvas testifying to the play of light and the emotional approach for which he is famous. Aivazovsky painted from memory, basing himself on sensation rather than preliminary studies, and translated the movement of the waves and the transparency of water and light in an absolutely unique way. Like all the works that take up his subject of excellence, this marine painting of 1893 gives off a luminous atmosphere that is almost like a dream.
Édouard Verschaffelt succeeded the genius of Aivazovsky with two orientalist paintings, Un repas sur un marché en Orient (A Meal in a Market in the East) and Enfants écoutant une conteuse orientale (Children Listening to an Oriental Storyteller). An artist of Belgian origin, Verschaffelt painted Algeria like few others before him: deeply attached to the country, he was able to transcribe his reality with passion, without falling into the stereotypes of colonial and academic Orientalism of the time.
With disregard for this 'trendy' or stereotypical representation of exoticism, Verschaffelt produced an authentic depiction of the daily life of Algerians, of which he had a front row seat after settling in the town of Bou Saâda in 1919 (a decision motivated by his desire to flee the German occupation of Belgium during the First World War). His meeting with Etienne Dinet, who was also installed in Bou Saâda and converted to Islam, was immediately apparent. Trained at the School of Fine Arts in Antwerp, Verschaffelt bore the influence of Flemish painting and his attraction to Impressionism in his orientalist scenes.
A set of works by Jean-Jules-Antoine Lecomte du Nouÿ, another painter of the orientalist and contemporary movement of Verschaffelt, will also be presented.
On the side of the School of Paris, we find the French painter and illustrator Marie Laurencin with Trois femmes jouant avec un chien (Three Women Playing with a Dog), a watercolour on paper from the artist's archives. A portraitist of Paris during the Roaring Twenties, Laurencin then established herself as the favourite illustrator of the poets and writers of her time, preferring their company to that of painters. She nevertheless followed the same modernist approach as many of them, seeking to combine painting with music and dance, working for the Russian Ballet and other performing arts companies.
Laurencin's painting is often associated with a certain fantasy, delicacy and a suave palette, enhanced by the graceful poses of her models. It’s a watercolour, one of her favourite mediums, which made the artist known in 1911 during an exhibition organised by Wilhelm Uhde.
Rossini will also present Seated Woman, a mixed oil on canvas by the Colombian-German artist Guillermo Wiedemann. Qualified as ‘degenerate art’, Wiedermann's painting was the object of Hitler's persecutions against modern art, pushing the artist to flee Germany for South America in 1939. Installed in Buenaventura then in Bogotá, the painter was, from the first moments of his stay, overwhelmed by the tropical environment and the Afro-Colombian aesthetic, two influences that marked his painting since then.
An oil on canvas by the Franco-Belgian painter, engraver and lithographer Gustave Singier will punctuate the session. Nuit d’automne (Autumn Night) was created in 1951, when Singier took up his post as a teacher at Ranson Academy, where he stayed for three years. The artist, associated with the movement of lyrical abstraction, has produced a vast, thrilling and ambiguous work, where the absence of a human figure gives way to rhythm and colour and to his vision very much in tune with the time.
Among the abstract paintings in the selection, it’s worth noting a work by the Franco-Russian Léon Zack, a composition in brown tones from 1962. This oil was executed after Leon Zack's transition to abstraction, "a slow evolution but logic” as he himself said, which occurred in the 1940s. Thus, portraits of Cubist influence gradually gave way to expressionist works, before seeing a non-figurative aesthetic take over, as represented here. This plastic development is the result of a revelation by the artist, according to which the figurative element was not essential to him, but hindered his personal expression.
The selection of sculptures will be led by Archets (Bows), a work by the Franco-American artist Arman. A founding member of the New Realists group with Pierre Restany and Yves Klein, Arman used everyday objects from mass production and integrated them into his sculptures. This work is one of his famous ‘accumulations’, a series developed between 1959 and 1962 consisting of ‘heaps’ of objects, all produced according to a quantitative logic, emphasising the perishability of mass-produced products.
Fans of this work presented here will want to pay attention to Rossini on 14 April. For all the information relating to the sale and the health security measures in force, we invite you to consult the auction house's website.
