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Setdart opens the year with a special auction of antique frames, made up of a rich variety of styles and periods: from Renaissance architectural-type frames to Empire-style frames, passing through excellent pieces of the Baroque period in fine carving.

The auction will take place on January 7th, and will gather, for example, Spanish marks from the Golden Age, in wood gilded with fine gold, carved with fleshy plant elements and rockery motifs, as was typical of the time. This is illustrated by lots 35205256, 35119847 and 35205255. Respecting the lines of the fine moldings that delimit the interior frame and the exterior perimeter, the decoration, despite its almost sculptural thickness, is subordinate to the structure, respecting the base symmetry. This is a criterion that was clearly applied during the Baroque period, and that will make a basic difference with respect to the future Rococo style.

On December 29th, Setdart will be auctioned a canvas corresponding to the artist’s first stage. Made when he was only 18 years old, when he was studying at the San Fernando Academy of Fine Arts, Tomelloso’s painter gives us an intimate portrait of a woman immersed in her thoughts.

José Hernández began painting through realistic rendering, but from the mid-sixties he began to cultivate his own language: dreamlike symbolism with surrealist connotations as a common factor in his works. His pictorial style is given by reflection and critical observation of reality, a vision where the decadent, the inexorable passage of time, loneliness or decrepitude, occupy a prominent place.

Sentences may always seem the same, but good wishes are honest. Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

We inform you that due to the Christmas holidays our rooms in Barcelona, Madrid and Valencia will be closed on December 24 and 25, 31 and January 1st.

Salvador Dalí left his masterful mark wherever he passed. The versatile artist, in his Californian years, collaborated with the most brilliant film directors. In 1946, while he was working on the famous dream sequences that would make up the sets for “Remember,” Hitchcock’s film, he befriended Walt Disney.

It was a dinner in Hollywood, when through the mediation of the director of Warner studios, a friendship was born that would be long and fruitful between the Disney couple and Dalí with Gala. It seems that at that meeting the idea of making a film was already hatched, a project that would materialize in the short film “Destino”, for which Disney would travel to Cadaqués in order to finalize details.

The history of the Olympic Suite dates back to 1892, when a French pedagogue, Baron Pierre de Coubertin, took the lead in the recovery movement of the Olympics that would lead to the celebration of the first Olympic Games in Athens.

100 years later, in 1992, the Olympic committee commemorated this event by creating the Olympic Suite, a set of 50 lithographs and serigraphs by the most renowned international artists that will be auctioned on September 28th on Setdart.com.

Hermés, and Rolex are two of the most reputable companies and luxury brands in the world, as well as the most desired, according to the results of our auctions.

Both represent exclusivity, quality and excellence through exceptional advertising creativity and a clear and distinctive brand identity that has been the main base of their continued growth, making them continue to position themselves as two of the most desired firms and that make them undisputed leaders in the world of luxury .

Great personalities from the world of sports, politics and the star system from around the world have been and are faithful users of these signatures . Jane Birkin, Grace Kelly (both with Hermes design in her honor), Paul Newman, George Clooney, Roger Federer and Obama among many others.

Setdart, brings together some of the most iconic models of both firms, already available on the web. The auction of the pieces of the famous Swiss watchmaker and the bags of the well-known French “maison” will end on December 22, 2020.

La isla de Mallorca fue un yacimiento inagotable de inspiración para los pintores impresionistas y simbolistas. Santiago Rusiñol ha sido uno de los artistas más estimados por los mallorquines, a partir de un idilio que empezó en 1893, en su primera estancia en la isla balear. A su muerte el Ayuntamiento de Palma le proclamaría hijo adoptivo y daría nombre a una de sus calles.

Entre los centenares de cuadros que pintó en Mallorca, “Castillo gris” (1902) ocupa un lugar destacado. Se trata de una vista sublimada del Castillo del Rey de Pollensa, refulgiendo su perfil pétreo con las luces ambarinas de un suave atardecer de primavera. El punto de vista bajo engrandece las ruinas de la antigua fortificación de época romana, antecedidas de un valle de irregular orografía sembrada de verde fulgor.

In the mid-eighties Josep María Subirachs was at the peak of his career. That is why he began the first sketches for the sculpture group of the Passion facade of the Sagrada Familia. In parallel to the large public commissions, he carries out sculptures based on the theme of the “workshop corner”, like the one at hand, entitled “El motlle” (1985).

It is a bronze piece representing a shelf covered with a fine cloth, draped with attractive folds, on which workshop utensils rest (a pencil, a brush and a bowl dripping paint on its outer walls). At the other end of the table, a bust worked with a negative female image, as is usual in the author’s work.

Despite the naturalistic treatment of objects, the theme of the still life is permeated with metaphysical cadences.

It is a unique piece, signed by the artist and by the founder Manuel Parellada.

Subirach’s personality, which was defined by a group of contrasts and dualisms between painting and sculpture, between figure and symbol, is expressed in this piece in a masterful and suggestive way.

Setdart presents at auction a careful selection of furniture, dated between the 15th and 19th centuries, which show the important evolution of this genre depending on the period and the artistic taste of each territory.

Among the pieces that will be auctioned, an exceptional German chest from the 17th century stands out. from a Renaissance heritage, it is a type of cabinet that continues the models established in Augsburg, a German city that became one of the main centers of furniture production, particularly famous for its fine and intricate marquetry (see lot 35110693).

Most important names in 20th century plastics compete in the next auction of select lots in Setdart. Except for the Ecuatorian Oswaldo Guayasamin, they are mostly Spanish artists, all of them with a resounding international projection: Miquel Barceló, Antoni Tàpies, Antonio Saura, Manolo Valdés, Francisco Leiro, Luis Feito, Eusebio Sempere, among others …

Several of these paintings come from the Valencian gallery Puchol, such as the magnificent “Taula” by Miquel Barceló (lot 35214478), dated 1985, a time when the Mallorcan artist was imbued with disparate influences that converge here: the heritage of abstract expressionism American and the Baroque legacy. The objects in the still life melt into the ocher-colored chromatic magma that refer to the chiaroscuro of the Castilian tradition, on the one hand, and on the other, it evokes the lands and fillings of Dubuffet, Fautrier and Tàpies, important references for Barceló.

Polifacetic and versatile, Javier Mariscal has made creativity his reason for being. After 40 years of career, the creativity is still for him, a need as basic as breathing. Naif, irreverent and ironic as always, Mariscal lives immersed in a continuous artistic development that he faces with the enthusiasm and commitment of those who have managed to make their vocation their way of life. Proof of this are the 12 pieces that Setdart will bid on the next 23rd of December in an unprecedented monographic auction, dedicated entirely to his pictorial production. The artist’s involvement in the process of the pieces gives added value to the set of oils, acrylics, watercolors and inks gathered in what is Mariscal’s first collaboration with an auction house. The collection can be visited in Setdart Barcelona and represents a unique opportunity in art world.

On December 10, Setdart will auction a total of nine superbly crafted sculptures by José Cubero Gabardón (Málaga, 1818-1877), a careful selection of unique pieces that highlight the artist’s interest in the world of bullfighting and Andalusian folklore.

Outstanding works from the Renaissance, Baroque and Rococo periods coincide in the auction on Thursday, December 10.

Of the most important pieces collected by Setdart in his Alta Epoca online gallery, it is worth mentioning, in the first place, the portrait of the monarch Felipe III made by the Valladolid painter Juan Pantoja de la Cruz (see batch 35119802). The artist translates the regal bearing with singular skill, faithfully describing an outfit characterized by the richness of the qualities and the presence of symbols such as the Golden Fleece, which is arranged on the armor. This one, full of brocades and allegorical allusions, is inspired by the garrisons commissioned in Milan when the monarch was an infant (currently kept in the Royal Armory of the Royal Palace in Madrid). With a long bust and against a background in which the drapery stands out, the work presents aesthetic patterns similar to those seen in the portrait of Felipe III by Juan Pantoja in the Prado Museum.

“Anatomy fascinates me,” says Jaume Plensa: “anatomy is governed not only by organic elements, but also by inexplicable things. And these are the things that interest me. ”

We could say that all the work of this great sculptor and engraver revolves around the body, although approaching it from a great variety of languages and symbolisms. It is significant that Plensa has collected anatomical engravings from an early age. The attention paid to these medical plates is felt in the “Atlas of imaginary anatomies” that is being auctioned these days in Setdart. It is a folder with nine large woodcuts on paper designed by the artist (made by hand by Toni Serdá), which are mounted on panels, like puzzles of great expressive force.

Giovanni Battista Piazzetta was one of the most influential artists of Venetian settecento. The rococo theatricality of his style developed especially in religious themes, devoting instead to genre painting and portraiture a more intimate and personal treatment.

The latter is evident in two canvases that can be purchased at Setdart Auctions, in which the portrait genre reaches a high quality. In both cases, the painter prioritizes the expression of the person being portrayed, whose face occupies the major part of the painting and whose features appear naturally carved through a daring light modulation.

The commitment of Ecuadorian Oswaldo Guayasamín with the oppressed classes and aboriginal cultures, made him one of the most appreciated Latin American painters, a status that decades after his death he continues to preserve.

His indigenous roots are showed in each of his creations, from those early expressionist works in which he remembered the death of so many children (including his best childhood friend) in the Four-Day War, to the mature works in which the great themes are universalized: the mourning of a mother, the burden of colonialism or xenophobia.

He’s one of the leading artists of the contemporary Cuban art, and despite the vastness of iconography that his imagination displays, when we contemplate any of his works there is always a magical feeling that only he is capable of summoning.

We are talking about Roberto Fabelo, a painter and sculptor whose work has been gaining deserved recognition in recent decades, as well as high prices. At Christie’s auctions, for example, a work on silk very similar in theme and treatment to several of those currently being auctioned at Setdart, reached a record high of $ 437,500 (specifically, the title “A Journey to the Fantastic Garden, by 2016). Also “The Fantastic Garden” from 2006 was auctioned at Christie’s for € 271,060, this being a painting with similar characteristics to “De madrugada al Rocío”, a 2009 oil painting currently in Setdart Auctions (see lot 35011322).

One of the recurring themes in Picasso’s production was that of the artist and the model. We see it in the engravings of the Vollard Suite, in paintings from the sixties, and in ink drawings like the one at hand.

This original piece by Picasso comes from the heirs of Joan Junyer, an artist very close to Malaga’s painter, who we see here represented together with the painter and Maria Thérèse Walter, Picasso’s muse and partner in those years (the drawing is dated 1931 ). From Junyer and Picasso’s friendship there are infinite letters and gifts such as this drawing that the master dedicates to his protégé.

Manolo Valdés and Rafael Solbes revolutionized the Spanish art scene in the last years of the Franco’s regime. They founded Equipo Crónica, and they were leaders of a politicized and corrosive pop unprecedented in the country. In his works, mass culture and art history overlapped in ingenious palimpsests.

Solbes died in 1981, which meant for Manuel Valdés the start of alone career that, without abandoning the interest in dialoguing with the painting of the past, would be characterized by a greater reflective refinement to the detriment of the irreverent humor and self-confidence of his previous stage.

This portrait of Felipe IV, made a year after Equipo Crónica was dissolved, testifies to this process of plastic purification. Part of a Velazquez portrait in which the monarch was represented full-length. In Valdés’s homage, features disappear under synthetic brushstrokes that economize on forms. The ruff is reduced to geometric planes, the same as the court dress. Valdés will return to this portrait in later years, versioning it in a series of “Knights” holding a collage in their right hand, instead of the original letter that Velázquez painted. However, in this first version in oil, the king is represented in half body. The chromatic reduction to black, yellow and white endows the figure with spectral intensity, as an archetype with symbolism because it is the depository of a long history of representation of power.

The paintings and engravings of Manolo Valdés show a deep knowledge and a frank admiration for the great masters, from whom he freely took what he considered appropriate instead of contemplating them on their throne, as untouchables. Reinterpreting, versioning and recreating was his motto.

A woman rests by the hearth, in which a soup pot hangs. A bundle of dry branches, ready to burn, are heaped on the ground. Nicolás Massieu captures with great sensitivity this peaceful, magical moment of meditation.

He subtly introduces us to the rustic room, where the young peasant woman remains lost in thought, oblivious to our intrusion. We only agree to see her profile skewed, veiled by black hair that falls in unruly locks over her semi-closed eyelids.

The surprising auctions that Cuban art has recently achieved in the most prestigious international auctions, make the bidding on December 2, a real claim for the collecting sector.

The Setdart auction house presents through its website www.sedart.com one of the most representative Spanish collections of Cuban artistic production developed in recent decades. The more than thirty pieces that will be auctioned, materialize the spirit of the most relevant Cuban artists of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries that led to the contemporary art revolution in the Caribbean island. The scale of the set of works that a national auction has managed to gather for the first time makes it one of the unavoidable events offered by the art market this season.

The multifaceted character of Antoni Clavé’s work reveals the essence of a universal creator who, in his artistic career, conquered fields as diverse as painting, sculpture, engraving, illustration or set design. The renewal and creative freedom that championed him shines through a path in continuous evolution that consecrates him as one of the great art figures of the second half of the 20th century. Among the diversity of stages through which his work passes, the one that concerns us here comes to demonstrate the unmistakable abstract stamp with which Clavé achieved international recognition.

His artistic activity prior to the Civil War ranged between wall paintings, ornamental decoration and advertising design. As a result of then, and especially in the stage as a poster artist, he began a process of experimentation with the new avant-garde techniques and the introduction of new materials. After living the first years of the conflict at the war front, in 1939 he was forced to leave Spain and settle in France. Paris, which at that time was a hotbed of Republican exiles, will play an essential role in the career of the Catalan artist, who, eager for artistic experiences and immersed in a process of continuous exploration, would soon become, along with Ismael de la Serna, Oscar Domínguez or Francisco Bores, among others, in one of the main characters of the second generation of artists who, under the protective wing of Picasso, made up the School of Paris. How could it be otherwise, the friendship they maintained from 1944 until the death of the man from Malaga played a decisive role in the path to abstraction that Calvé’s work experienced from then on.

In the post-symmetry of the 19th century, the plastic arts and the agrarian tradition of our country were forever twinned thanks to painters who, like Salvador Clemente, captured the essence of the bond that united man with the cultivated land, through Despite the evolution of times and technology, we remain closely linked. The three pieces that we will be auctioned in Setdart next December 1st are an exhibition of 19th-century Sevillian customs that found in Salvador Clemente’s prodigious brush one of its greatest and most recognized exponents.

It was the year 1899 when Salvador Clemente, recently arrived from Paris, decided to settle in Seville, a city that at that time was experiencing a frenzied artistic effervescence. The popularly called “house of artists”, where Clemente and many others established their studio, brought together the most significant creators of the moment, an artistic and bohemian group that was defined by the poet Juan Ramón Jiménez as “the Limbo of Painters “.

Paintings by two of the most renowned Philippine artists of the 19th century, Félix Resurrección Hidalgo and Miguel Zaragoza Aranquizna, coincide in Setdart. Born in a time when the archipelago was still a Spanish colony, both received scholarships to train at the San Fernando Academy, and later traveled to other European capitals.

Several decades before the invention of reality TV shows and the impact of social media on the blazing rise to fame, the father of pop art, Andy Warhol, laid the foundation for today’s celebrity culture by predicting, in which it is probably his most remembered phrase, a future where everyone would have their 15 minutes of fame. Since his adolescence, a fragile and misfit Warhol dreamed and drew from his bed a world of celluloid that at that time seemed inaccessible. Undoubtedly, New York, a city in which he made his way into the field of illustration in the late 1940s, would mark a defining turning point in his career. The Big Apple was also the city where he was able to observe closely the glamour that surrounded the lives of characters that, like the writer Truman Capote, had fascinated him since his youth. At that moment he was clear about the great goal he wanted to achieve: fame, money, luxury and an entourage of journalists in his wake.

The vital importance that Picasso gave to his graphic production is materialized in two of his pieces that will be auctioned Through his extensive production as an engraver, Picasso once again gave a masterful lesson both in his technical mastery and in his creative and expressive capacity, which also enshrined him as one of the great masters of chalcographic techniques. Likewise, the two engravings that we present are also an opportunity for those lovers of art and in particular the genius of Malaga, to acquire one of his works without having to invest the high amounts to which we are generally accustomed.

From a very young age, the Malaga’s artist felt a great passion for the art of engraving experimenting throughout his long career, and especially more intensely from the 30s, with his multiple procedures. This decade in which he began in the aquatint technique would mark a turning point in his work as an engraver. Despite its difficulty, the ability to create gradients and tonalities fascinated Picasso who despite continuing to use other methodsdid not cease in its efforts to improve and refine this technique until acquire the highest levels of expressiveness and richness that have led him to consecrate himself, together with Goya, as the best aquatint engraver in history in Spain.