This is a bumper year for El Anatsui, who will not only represent Ghana at the Venice Biennale but also has his largest retrospective to date—El Anatsui: Triumphant Scale, currently at Munichs Haus der Kunst and travelling to Mathaf Doha and the Guggenheim Bilbao. One of the glittering metal tapestries that El Anatsui is best known for, this 2007 work is made from aluminium bottle caps and copper wire, and references the traditional kente textiles of the Ashanti people of Ghana. The price seems conservative as it is not uncommon for El Anatsui to fetch over £1m at auction—last year, a similarly sized tapestry sold at Christies for £1.1m.
Gino de Dominicis, Senza Titolo (Untitled, 1992). Thinking Italian Milan, Christies Milan, 3-4 April. Estimate €100,000-€150,000. Gino de Dominicis is a rather elusive figure—his death in 1998 was treated with suspicion due to the artist falsely reporting it in a biographical essay some years before. Taking inspiration from Sumerian mythology, this work merges abstraction with ancient symbolism, depicting the flattened profile of an eagle, an animal central to the Sumerian belief system. Thanks to an ongoing investigation into fakes of De Dominiciss work, solid provenance is increasingly important and this painting has a long exhibition history, shown at both the 1993 Venice Biennale and the artists 2008 solo exhibition at MoMA PS. A similar, though considerably smaller, painting sold at Sothebys in 2018 for €112,500.
Whites charcoal drawing of Caliban—the enslaved character of the same name integral to the plot of The Tempest—is his only known rendering of a Shakespearean figure and has not been shown publicly since it was bought from the artist by the consignor. Calibans dramatic, muscular form embodies Whites interest in “depicting black figures on a heroic scale”, says Nigel Freeman, Swanns director of African-American Fine Art. Whites work has been fetching ever higher prices at auction, fuelled by the current travelling retrospective dedicated to him. The sale of the 1965 drawings Oh Freedom and Nobody Knows My Name, both of which sold for around $500,000 at Swann in 2018, set the current auction record for the artist.
Water towers are one of Bernd and Hilla Bechers most recognisable motifs. Part of a series of photographs taken during the German couples travels through the US and Europe to capture industrial structures—what they called “anonymous sculptures”—most of these works were done in a large-scale format, though this smaller set of images is a bit of an exception: the six gelatin silver prints mounted on board are each approximately 16in tall.
Félix Gaspard Tournachon moonlighted as a journalist, caricaturist and balloonist under the pseudonym Nadar before he and his brother, Adrien, launched a Paris portrait studio in the early 1850s under the same name. Yet, as brothersRead More – Source
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