DIALOGUES: MODERN & CONTEMPORARY ART ONLINE-ONLY FROM 26 JUNE TO 14 JULY 2020

London – As part of the expanded online programme to accompany ONE: A Global Sale of the 20th Century, Christie’s presents Dialogues: Modern & Contemporary Art, an online auction running from 26 June to 14 July 2020, featuring painting, sculpture, works on paper and photography. Constructivism, Fauvism, Art Brut, Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism, Pop: the past century of Western art has been a period of vast change. As artists responded to events happening around them and the evolution of artistic practice, they also engaged with the work of other artists past and present. Dialogues: Modern & Contemporary Art highlights a selection of these conversations. Some dialogues are formal, as in the sharp, flat hues of Walter Dexel’s Constructivism and Josef Albers’ post-Bauhaus Homage to the Square: Oracle (1961, estimate: £220,000-320,000). Others are more visceral: an early work, Kallmünz – Regentag (1903, estimate: £150,000-200,000) by Wassily Kandinsky, from before his own revolutionary turn to abstraction, emits a sunny energy that echoes in Jack Butler Yeats’ bright, fluid California (1937, estimate: £500,000-800,000). Jean Dubuffet’s Art Brut figures share the totemic power of sculptures by Eduardo Paolozzi and Henri Laurens. Tamara de Lempicka’s glamorous portrait, once owned by Madonna, La couronne de fleurs II (c.1932/c.1950, estimate: £300,000-500,000) was reworked by the artist to reflect changing ideas of beauty, while a pair of bright, elegant 2018 portraits by Ghana-born painter Amoako Boafo take up an Expressionist approach to celebrate what he has called ‘new ways to approach blackness.’ Illuminating recurring themes, shared techniques and evolving genres from the start of the modern era to the present day, Dialogues locates each artwork as part of a rich, densely interwoven fabric of creative endeavour.