PIONEERS OF ABSTRACTION
The Evening Sale will offer a number of works by artists fundamental to the birth of abstract art in the early-20th century, including László Moholy-Nagy, František Kupka and Wassily Kandinsky. The selection features two works by Moholy-Nagy that were most recently on view at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, as part of the acclaimed retrospective Moholy-Nagy, Future Present.

Conceived in 1922 and executed in 1923, EM 1 Telephonbild is a masterwork of 20th-century conceptual art (estimate $3/4 million). In the early 1920s, Moholy-Nagy fervently sought a new mode of expression that would place him at the forefront of the avant-garde. In addition to Duchamp and the readymade, Moholy-Nagy turned to the ideal of the engineer-artist and joined in the Constructivist and Productivist belief that easel painting was dead. In its place, industrial technologies could make prototypes of art that would later be produced for the masses. Despite his interest in this avant-garde means of production, the Telephonbild enamel series was Moholy-Nagy’s only painting executed solely by machine.

A CUBIST COMPOSITION BY DIEGO RIVERA
Presented this season as part of the Impressionist & Modern Art sales is iconic Mexican artist Diego Rivera’s Sans titre (composition cubiste), painted circa 1916 (estimate $500/700,000). As a young artist, Rivera traveled to Europe to continue his artistic training. He lived in Paris for over a decade, where he was immersed in the world of other young artists who had gathered from all over the globe. Rivera’s cubist works from this period – of which Sans titre is a prime example – are often compared to those of Pablo Picasso, with whom he formed a strong friendship after meeting in 1914.