Name: Auction: Desmond Morris (British 1928- ) Premonition of Life, 1958
Brand: Lyon & Turnbull
Price: 6300 GBP
Availability: OutOfStock

Avant Garde : Art from 1890 to Now

Sale number: 743&nbsp; This dynamic new auction – combining paintings, sculpture, works on paper, photography and prints – seeks to encapsulate avant-garde spirit in art in the 20th &amp; 21st Centuries – from the beginnings of Modernism through to the incredibly diverse world of Contemporary Art today. &nbsp;The sale is truly global - featuring work from Britain, Europe, the Americas, the Middle East, Africa and the Far East – and includes works by both established names and new discoveries.&nbsp;The sale offered 63 works from some of the most progressive art movements of the 20th and 21st centuries.&nbsp; The highlight of the sale was Mädchen Mit Katze (Girl with Cat) (1942) painted by Polish artist Jankel Adler (1895-1949) when he was in exile in Britain during the Second World War. Adler was very much part of the German avant-garde in the 20s and 30s, before his work was declared “degenerate” by the Nazis. His arrival in Britain injected real-world experience of European Modernism into a British art scene often reliant on catching the latest movements second-hand.&nbsp;&nbsp;Mädchen Mit Katze was selected for reproduction in Stanley William Hayter’s 1948 monograph on Adler, by which time it had been acquired by the collector Peter Watson, an important patron of the arts at a time when many artists struggled to make ends meet, whose collection of British and European Modern and Contemporary art was second to none. The painting had an estimate of £50,000 - 80,000 but led the series when it took £105,200*.&nbsp;&nbsp;One of the major ‘discoveries’ in this sale was a prime period work by British proto-Surrealist John Tunnard (1900-1971). The meticulously painted gouache on paper - Composition, 1947 - was acquired by the vendor’s father directly from the artist in the 1960s and had not been seen in public since. Likely painted during the Second World War and finished just after, this other-worldly landscape combining futuristic structures with ancient megaliths is one of just 13 known gouaches dated 1947. Of a similar style and quality to others held in American museum collections, it is generated plenty of interest at its guide of £30,000 - £50,000 and sold for £42,700*.&nbsp;&nbsp;Continuing the theme of ‘rediscoveries’, the sale also included a drawing by Amedeo Modigliani, on the market for the first time in 91 years – which sold for £50,200*. The delicate pencil sketch of a girl had all the hallmarks of Modigliani’s style – the face reduced to an elemental minimum, inspired by both African masks and Cycladic figures, with beautiful almond-shaped eyes, left empty. The drawing was originally in the collection of the Modern British painter Christopher ‘Kit’ Wood, who first visited Paris in 1920, just a few months after Modigliani had died. Wood later sold the drawing to his London dealer, Alex Reid and Lefevre Gallery - at the time the place to go for contemporary European art. In 1932 the dealer sold this drawing to a private collector: it had remained in the same family ever since.&nbsp;

Diego

Simon Hucker | Modern British Art Auction Specialist

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Buy & Sell at Modern British Art Auctions

Michael Ayrton | British 1921 - 1975

Jankel Adler | Polish 1895 - 1949

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Art from 1890 to Now

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Lyon & Turnbull | Online Auction Specialists

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initialled and dated (lower left), signed, titled and dated (verso) oil on canvas

Desmond Morris (British 1928- )
§

Premonition of Life, 1958

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