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Museums and institutions play an irreplaceable role in the preservation of our historical heritage, working diligently to document, restore and exhibit works of art that are fundamental to defining our cultural identity. However, there is an equally invaluable artistic treasure that lies in private hands, a substantial part of our history that has been safeguarded by passionate collectors. Through this collecting, we have been fortunate to receive some of the most outstanding masterpieces, thus rewriting art history and sharing it with the world. The work of patrons and collectors is essential to understanding art conservation.

In our next catalog of Old Masters auctions at Setdart, we want to highlight how private collecting has played a crucial role in enhancing the value of this artistic legacy. Each piece tells a unique story and represents the intimate connection between the collector and the work he or she has chosen to preserve. This auction is not only an opportunity to acquire exceptional pieces, but also to reflect on the importance of those who have assumed the role of passionate guardians of art.

If it were not for the brave collectors of the past, masterpieces such as Bartolomé Esteban Murillo’s “Christ Carrying the Cross” might have disappeared into the darkness of time. This particular lot, commissioned for the Convent of La Merced in Seville, as referred to by Don Enrique Valdivieso, was kept by its owners for two centuries, after the institution was disentailed in 1835 and its contents were put up for public sale.

An exceptional portrait of Isabella of Bourbon, modeled after Rubens, has its own fascinating history. It belonged to the collection of the renowned painter and humanist Valentín de Carderera, who worked in the service of Isabel II and was a member of the Royal Academy of San Fernando and the Board of the Prado Museum, where he left a large part of his collection.

These pieces are not just works of art; they are witnesses to history. Labels, stamps and inscriptions on the canvases offer clues that allow us to trace their past. From the Murillo that passed through the Bilbao Fine Arts Museum to the François Clouet that was saved during the Civil War in Barcelona by the Junta, each work has its own unique narrative.

We invite you to immerse yourself in this exciting journey through works by Snyders, Seghers, Baburen, Arellano, Maíno and Clouet. In this auction, the works are presented at their finest, offering not only exceptional pieces but also a vibrant connection to our rich visual heritage. To all art lovers and collectors, we urge you to participate in this unique opportunity to be part of history by acquiring pieces that tell stories that have endured through the centuries.

Glass vases have gone from being treated as secondary objects to being considered essential accessories in interior decoration, providing a plus of uniqueness and personality to the space we want to enhance.

Thanks to their ability to transform any room into a unique and magical corner, as well as their visual strength, these decorative accessories have become an essential element in interior design, allowing us to play with the effects of light, vibrant contrasts and optical illusions that the nature of the material offers us. Simple, extravagant, chic or with a classic touch… Whichever option best suits your style, there is no doubt that glass vases are pure trend and an indisputable ally with which to “dress” any space.

Therefore, from Setdart we propose an original and exclusive selection of pieces made by some of the great names that have taken the art of glass to the highest levels of virtuosity and sophistication:

ERCOLE BAROVIER

Throughout his fifty years of professional activity Ercole Barovier has become a key figure in the renewal of glass art in the twentieth century. From the 1920s onwards, Ercole’s production made a great impact on the art glass scene, thanks to designs that undoubtedly departed completely from the strictest tradition.

Milestones such as his successful “Ephesus” series, in which he applies his innovative technique of “thermal coloring without fusing” to obtain surprising effects, demonstrate why he is considered one of the great renovators of glass.

CARLO SCARPA

Carlo Scarpa is considered one of the world’s greatest Italian designers, occupying a key position in the evolution of Italian design. His passion for glass as a material led Scarpa to invent, in the 1940s, the technique known as hammering, with which he managed to give glass an appearance similar to that of beaten silver or worked stone. The creations he created using this technique, such as the “Battuto” vase on auction here, were presented for the first time at the 20th Venice Biennale and at the 7th Milan Triennale, where they earned him the title of honour.

FULVIO BIANCONI

Starting as an apprentice in the glass furnaces of Murano under the direction of Michael Pinto, Bianconi’s career took a qualitative leap when he met Paolo Venini in 1946. As a result of this meeting, they established a fruitful and brilliant collaboration with the pioneering glass production house of Venini. The language that Bianconi developed for Venini was based, as we can see in models such as “Scozzese” or “Ritagli”, on the use of striking colors and simple shapes of organic or geometric inspiration, resulting in a magnetic visual impact.

Discover the complete collection in our auction on 22 November!

Juan Muñoz is, without a doubt, one of the references in the renovation of contemporary sculpture. His short but brilliant career has left us one of the most disturbing, radical and lucid artistic testimonies of the existential crisis of modern man. Halfway between sculpture and installation , the Madrid artist directly challenges the viewer by creating an image that encourages us, and even forces us to get involved in the work.

As a paradigmatic example of the production he developed in the 80’s, the sculpture in bidding “Balcony and crank”, becomes one of the few occasions in which his work goes on sale within the auction sector.

Since his first solo exhibition in 1984, Muñoz became a member of the first generation of artists to reintroduce figuration into the art scene. However, his aesthetic conception will soon make him stand out thanks to his extraordinary ability to build atmospheres and spaces charged with a mysterious drama, in front of which indifference is not possible.

The beginnings of his career are intimately linked to the work with architectural fragments that, such as stairways, doors or balconies, will be considered as transitional spaces. However, the decontextualization and spatial isolation to which he submits these elements gives them a strong conceptual component that enhances a symbolic narrative in which the psychological charge challenges the viewer, confronting him with his own existence.

By isolating those elements that carry meanings linked to the threshold, transit or opening, Muñoz manages to give an almost theatrical twist to their significance. These balconies, which, as in the case of “Balcón y manivela” from 1986, appear decontextualized and unused, become inhospitable places behind which hides a subjugating metaphor about the human inability to communicate and, consequently, the impossibility of building a community narrative. Both through the introduction of human presence and its absence, Muñoz materializes through the architectural element the metonymy of a subject enclosed and lost in his own identity.

In short, as places from which to see and be seen, Juan Muñoz’s balconies become, by appearing empty and walled up, spaces of absence that suggest to us and awaken the uncertainty of that which no longer exists or which we are unable to see.

The artistic corpus bequeathed to us by Juan Muñoz stands as a relentless narration of a world that, having lost its way, has condemned human beings to abandonment and alienation. The powerful and shocking vision of the human condition, with which Muñoz questioned us, managed to conquer and astonish, also, the art world until became the most prestigious and sought-after sculptor of his generation, being the first to exhibit his work in the Turbine Hall of the Tate Modern in London.

Very often we make the mistake of extolling painting to the detriment of other techniques that, like drawing, have had and still have a vital importance in the development and evolution of the history of art.

As one of the oldest forms of expression we know, drawing has accompanied man since his origins, driven by his need to express and bear witness to his ideas, emotions and experiences. In fact, if we think about the academic training of an artist, we will see how drawing has been a fundamental stage in the learning and development of artistic skills, being very often the first medium that every self-respecting artist must master.

Despite being one of the most traditional artistic techniques in the history of art, it was not until the end of the 19th century that it was recognized as a form of artistic expression in its own right. Until then, it was relegated to the background in relation to painting and considered as a simple tool of the artist in the process of creating the true work of art.

Within the Spanish field, there were many artists who either with charcoal, pastel or watercolor brought the drawing technique to its maximum splendor. Among them, the figure of Mariano Fortuny played a stellar role in the international artistic culture of his time, awakening in the art of our country a real desire to emulate everything that had given fame to the Catalan master to the point of becoming the catalyst that led the watercolor technique to its peak period.

In fact, it was thanks to Fortuny’s technical prodigy that, as Théophile Gautier said, watercolor became equal in technical quality to oil painting. Gautier’s words reflect in themselves the way in which Fortuny conceived drawing techniques, using them not only to capture his impressions but also to develop in them fully autonomous works from which a clear pictorial intention is evident.

With the same excellence and virtuosity that characterized his best works in oil, Fortuny found in watercolor an inexhaustible creative source that he developed freely and independently. From his extraordinary facet as a watercolorist we can extract the incessant search for a beauty that, far from sticking to strict reality, he found through imagination and the deployment of technical resources that only emphasize the exquisite taste of the artist, both for the preparation of the scene and for the treatment of the characters, objects and qualities.

An example of this is the pair of tender watercolors whose absolute technical mastery explains the unparalleled recognition he achieved.

The individual treatment of characters, types or objects that, like this peasant girl, were part of the setting of a genre scene, will be a frequent resource during his second stay in Rome. However, far from representing a preparatory or partial study of a later composition, the portrait, which as the attached certificate indicates could correspond to that of the model Ersilieta di Anticoli, brings together each and every one of the premises of his independent works: with a virtuoso mastery of drawing and displaying the preciosity and meticulousness that characterized him, Fortuny captures the subtle qualities of the costume and headdress, as well as the expressiveness of the female face whose soft and somewhat melancholy features contrast with the folkloric character of the costumes.

On the other hand, “El almuerzo del borriquillo” exemplifies Fortuny’s unique ability to synthesize the elements of the costumbrista scene, extracting the essential thanks to a quick and agile execution with which he elevates to a timeless status any daily situation until capturing the beauty that hides behind them.

Thanks to this anecdotal production, which already foreshadowed his famous house paintings, Fortuny reaped unprecedented success, not only among the artists who followed him, but also among the most prestigious collectors and dealers of the time. His interest in careful observation and the extreme refinement of his creations, soon consolidated him as an artist of international fame, originating the term known as “fortunyismo”, to define the style developed by several generations of artists imbued with the irrepressible creative and innovative spirit of the painter.

Collections such as the one presented at auction on November 6, show us the infinity and variety of options that collecting graphic art and photography offers us.

The twentieth century marked a radical change in collecting, not only in the object of the collection but also in who collects. In this regard, the dissemination of graphic art and photography through art auctions has brought about a substantial change in the way of conceiving art collecting, whose history has been inextricably linked to the social elites.

Both by their seriable nature and by their involvement in social transformations, engraving techniques symbolized the beginning of the democratization of art, making it more accessible to the general public and allowing us to fantasize about the possibility of acquiring a Picasso or a Miró without having to shell out large sums of money. However, this very characteristic has very often and erroneously led us to consider it a minor art. On the contrary, we must think of graphic art as an artistic technique with a series of particularities that have allowed us to discover, experiment and open up an endless number of new aesthetic paths.. Therefore, far from conceiving it as a minor art, we should consider these artistic techniques as their creators do: that is, as an artistic expression with its own entity that opens the door to a creative universe full of possibilities. In fact, since its inception, graphic art has been one of the techniques through which great masters have given free rein to their creativity and need for experimentation.

The collection we present to you focused on contemporary graphic production is an excellent example of the technical and expressive richness that printmaking techniques have allowed to develop. Thanks to artists such as Feito, Barjola, Canogar or Genovés and the virtuosity and mastery of the different intaglio procedures they display in works such as those we present today, graphic art has reached its maximum expressive potential. In this sense, the combination and simultaneity of techniques that we see in many of the specimens in bidding, leads us to a variety of shades, textures and finishes that turn them, in spite of their serial nature, into works of unquestionable aesthetic value. In fact, the artist’s involvement in the process may include the incorporation of techniques applied after the printing process, such as collage or manual intervention, which will undoubtedly give the piece an extra touch of exclusivity.

As far as photography is concerned, since its invention in 1839, it has become a fundamental communication tool for society, but also a key element in the evolution of fine arts. However, its consideration and value as an artistic practice in its own right has been evolving and consolidating as photographic techniques and procedures have advanced. Thus, while at first the daguerreotype was created as a tool for science, later it was the element that made the daguerreotype the most important tool in the field of science.Once and for all it freed the pictorial practice of its mimetic function until it became, during postmodernity, the ideal medium to convert any object into a fetish.

The multitude of creative procedures and aesthetic possibilities that photography encompasses shine through in the set of tendered works whose architects are undoubtedly synonymous with international success and prestige. With a radically different proposal and language, great photographers such as Josep Fontcuberta, Liliana Porter, Rosa Muñoz or Hanna Collins explore under a critical eye the challenges and complex realities of today’s world, but also face in their creations, the own challenges that the evolution that this artistic practice poses to them. In this sense, the double intentionality intrinsic to photography, given by both its documentary and artistic value, makes it one of the most significant arts for man and his evolution.

Thanks to this type of techniques that have managed to connect with the reality of our time, art has achieved a greater degree of accessibility and therefore a more direct impact among the new generations of collectors, who see in them a reflection of their concerns and interests, but also of their aesthetic preferences. In addition, the wide range of prices offered, depending on the type of product, is the type of technique used, the number of copies per edition, the dimensions of the pieces or if there is a subsequent work by the artist on the piece, has contributed to expand a niche that, like collecting, has always been highly specific.

Undoubtedly, the selection of works under bidding represents an excellent opportunity both for those collectors who are new to this field, as well as for those who have a long experience and knowledge within the sector.

Fashion is an art that is constantly reinventing itself, but it also has a nostalgic side that allows us to relive the trends of past decades. One of the most iconic elements of fashion are handbags, and vintage handbags from big luxury brands are a real gem for fashion lovers. Collecting these fashion treasures is not only an exciting hobby, but can also be an investment. We’ll explore why collecting vintage handbags from major luxury brands is so fascinating and what considerations you should keep in mind if you want to get started in this exciting hobby. Plus, we’ll talk about the opportunity fashion enthusiasts will have at the upcoming auction on November 2 to purchase vintage handbags from luxury brands.

The Charm of Vintage

Vintage handbags are much more than just accessories; they are witnesses of fashion history. Each bag represents the aesthetics and craftsmanship of its era. By collecting vintage handbags, you can explore the evolution of fashion trends and discover how styles and materials have changed over the years.

Fashion is cyclical, and many styles that were once popular come back into fashion at a later date. Having a vintage handbag allows you to incorporate retro fashion elements into your current style, which adds a unique and personal dimension to your look.

The Value of Luxury Brands

Luxury brands are known for their quality, craftsmanship and attention to detail. This is reflected in her bags, which are true masterpieces of fashion. By collecting vintage handbags from major luxury brands, you are acquiring one-of-a-kind pieces that have stood the test of time.

In addition, many luxury handbags increase in value over time, making them solid investments. As the demand for certain vintage models increases, their market price also rises. Therefore, if you choose wisely, your vintage handbag collection could become a profitable investment.

Tips for starting your collection

If you’re considering starting to collect vintage large handbags, here are some tips to keep in mind:

1. Research: Research the brands, styles and models you are interested in. Learn about the authenticity of handbags and become familiar with the distinctive characteristics of each brand.
2. Condition and authenticity: Make sure the bags you buy are in good condition and authentic. You can consult authentication experts or use reputable vendors.
3. Budget: Establish a realistic budget. Luxury handbags can be expensive, but there are also more affordable options in the vintage market.
4. Collecting networks: Join communities of collectors online or in your local area. You can get valuable tips, meet other fashion lovers and discover shopping opportunities.
5. Maintenance: Once you have your collection, take proper care of your bags to maintain their quality and value. Storing them in protective bags and keeping them clean is essential.

The Exciting Opportunity of the November 2 Auction

If you are passionate about fashion and eager to expand your collection of luxury vintage handbags, you have an exciting opportunity on the horizon. On November 2, an auction will be held that will give you the opportunity to acquire vintage handbags of great brands that will delight any collector.

This auction will be the perfect setting to find unique and rare pieces that may not be available on the conventional market. With the ability to bid on vintage handbags from luxury brands, you’ll be competing for authentic fashion masterpieces that will add a touch of elegance and style to your collection.

Collecting vintage handbags from major luxury brands is an exciting hobby that combines a passion for fashion with investment. Each bag tells a unique story and adds a touch of glamour to your style. If you are passionate about fashion and are willing to invest time and effort in researching and caring for your handbags, this hobby will bring you lasting satisfaction and the opportunity to own true fashion masterpieces. Not only will you be accumulating stylish accessories, but you’ll also be part of a community of passionate collectors who share your love of luxury vintage fashion. And don’t forget to mark your calendar for the exciting auction on November 2, where you can find fashion treasures that will add a touch of luxury to your collection!

Different artists have sought to contribute their vision on such a passionate subject as the adultery of Venus and Mars. Each part of the mythos may be better suited to express some kind of teaching. Lying, lust or vanity are always present within the context of the scene, the result of which discredits the sins within an orderly life. The powers of the gods and their superiority over men go unnoticed in the face of something as human as passion, the deep attraction between two people and the desire it awakens between them. Joachim Wtewael seems to understand these feelings perfectly as he manages to capture them in all his versions.

There are two features of the work that we must take into account in order to get to know it: its format and its level of detail. These two characteristics provoke an intimate relationship between the spectator and the work. We cannot fully appreciate the quality of the painting and its meticulousness if we do not get close enough to the work to almost touch it with our eyes. Contemplating it in this way makes us not only a spectator, but almost a character. The immersion causes there to be no audience other than us and the gods who are situated around Venus and Mars. We are then like Vulcan or Hermes, one more in the story. Achieving this power of attraction in the viewer is not easy, however, Wtewael’s success in this theme shows that he solved it as only a genius could.

This autograph version is the largest and perhaps the most elaborately composed. In the comparison we see that the arrangement of the elements changes between the paintings, being, more than versions, paintings with their own entity, even though they represent the same concrete event of the story. The works, kept in the museums of the Mauritshuis in The Hague and the Getty in Los Angeles, differ from each other. However, if put in comparison, it is obvious that they are like the negative of a photograph, a reverse replica of each other, just like an engraving.

Versions of the Mauritshuis Museum and the Getty Collection

Certain tangible elements are shared among the three versions. Why are they repeated? In our opinion, these are clues that the author has considered fundamental to understand, not only an iconography, but also a moral. Mars’ breastplate and weapons are in all cases lying next to the bed. This tells us how love leaves us defenseless. The condition of nudity is explicit, both for the act itself and the feelings it evokes. The love between the two has apparently robbed them of their divine condition.

Wine is represented by a luxurious decanter on a covered table near the bed. Linking liquor and drunkenness is recurrent in the history of art, its presence in a scene alludes directly to the same effects of wine. It acts as a disinhibitor and in a certain way as an aphrodisiac, causing the deepest desires to come to light. As the Latin saying goes, “et in vino veritas”.

The sense that the painting takes on thanks to details like these would be that love ends up imposing itself without taking into account its own rules, its power sweeps away our defenses leaving us completely naked. Surprise, embarrassment and sensuality are three concepts that immediately strike us with a single glance. The true depth of the painting transcends the sensuality of its content, passion as an expression of love and love as an overwhelming force.

The history of art has featured countless women whose talent and significance was systematically ignored and made invisible. The old structures that governed the art system and the exclusionary dynamics that condemned them to oblivion and relegated them to the simple role of muses are now collapsing as a symptom of the sign of an era that can no longer reproduce the discriminatory clichés of times past. The need to introduce and integrate women artists into the historiographic narrative has promoted new research methods and methodologies whose impact has led in recent years to a symptomatic increase in their presence within museum institutions, as well as in the approaches that have dominated the traditional hegemonic discourses.

This incipient change of paradigm has been translated into the growing interest of the art market in his work, whose presence and price has experienced a significant boom, doubling during the second decade of this century the value of the figures recorded during the first decade.

But what factors led to the marginalization of these women until their absolute disappearance? The nineteenth-century conception of most art history manuals excluded them despite the fact that they included women court portraitists, chamber sculptors and religious painters. One of the most insightful examples can be found in E. H. Gombrich‘s magnum opus “History of Art”.The best-selling art book in history in which not a single woman artist appears: neither Sofonisba Anguissola, a Renaissance painter recognized and admired by Michelangelo and included in Giorgio Vasari’s dictionary; nor Lavinia Fontana, official painter of the Court of Pope Clement VII or Angelica Kauffman, appointed in 1765 as a member of the Academy of St. Luke. Absolutely none appear in it.

Apart from this biased view of historiography, the great difficulties of access to the profession definitely marked the trajectory of these women, who came to be vetoed access to the Academies. Without training, how could they develop their artistic personality? In order to understand their struggle, their biographies are extremely illustrative, showing the difficulties they had to overcome to practice their profession or how, after their death or after a brief moment of glory, their figures fell into oblivion. They were silenced and censored and their rescue from oblivion deserves all our efforts.

Coupled with the enormous difficulties in training, they were forced to fulfill what was considered to be their natural function: to be mothers and housewives. In fact, for centuries there was a belief that, by her very nature, woman was devoid of “genius” and, consequently, was considered as a passive element within creation, never as a proactive subject. In this sense, Virginia Woolf’s research is clear-sighted, where she compiles a huge amount of books written against the concept of women as creative beings. These are not the isolated opinions of certain critics and historians, but a vision that has taken root among intellectual circles and, by extension, in society, and has lasted almost to the present day. However, women were artists, despite being women. And with difficulties. Since they could neither charge nor sign their works, they lost the authorship that was erroneously (and in many cases intentionally) attributed to their husbands, teachers or parents.

In this sense, our next high period auction has the presence of 3 great artists, whose trajectory and talent only corroborate the bias with which the historiographic narrative has been constructed.

Lavinia Fontana

The painter of Bolognese origin, Lavinia Fontana, was undoubtedly one of the most important portrait painters of late Mannerism, to the point of becoming the official painter of the Court of the Pope Clement VIII and later appointed portrait painter to the court of Pope Paul V. In fact, Lavinia was the first woman to open her own studio and be recognized as an art professional, thus breaking with any stereotype of the time.

“Portrait of Francesco Panigarola” is one of the few works we know of today signed and dated by Fontana, making its bidding an essential event within the art collecting sector. In fact, this would not be the only occasion in which the artist portrayed the bishop of Asti, as evidenced by the homologous portrait in the Palazzo Pitti.

Anne Vallayer-Coster

Considered one of the most important still life painters of late 18th and early 19th century France , her portraits also came to be immensely admired by her contemporaries.

Thanks to his father’s relations with the aristocracy, he was able to have a good pictorial training that allowed him to enter the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture in 1770 when he was only 26 years old. In 1779 she began working as an official painter at the royal court under the auspices of Queen Marie Antoinette, which gave her great prestige and social success.

Matilde Malenchini

In this case, the work under bidding is an example of the existing problem of erroneous attributions. For a long time this portrait of Vincenzo Camuccini and his wife Maddalena Devoti was attributed to the Roman neoclassical painter himself. However, subsequent studies have rectified this attribution, considering that the sweet naivety it reflects is more in keeping with Malenchini’s pictorial style than that of Camuccini.

The paradigm shift that took place from the 15th to the 17th century with the emergence of the Renaissance found in Italy the center of reference par excellence. It was then that the rest of the European countries began to introduce the innovations coming from the transalpine country.

In order to understand the idiosyncrasy of this artistic period, we cannot avoid the decisive imprint left on European culture by its own classical past, palpable both in the medieval cities and in the spirit of patronage of the Church and the aristocracy.

In this sense, the splendor that the arts and humanities experienced during the Renaissance is largely due to the role of great patrons, such as the Medici in Florence, the D’Este family in Ferrara, the Sforza in Milan, the Gonzaga in Mantua, or the Popes Julius II and Leo X, who promoted and financed most of the magnificent artistic projects that were developed at that time.

This successful model initiated by the Italian Courts of the 15th century will become, logically, the model that the rest of the European Courts will later establish and amplify. In this way, the stay of Italian artists in these courts or, on the contrary, the presence of French, Spanish or German artists in the Italian courts, will favor and dynamize the contact and exchanges between both “worlds”.

The mannerism of Fontainebleau

In this aspect, the case of France is paradigmatic, whose court adopted the most classical style of the Italian Renaissance by the will of the iron monarchy that ruled with an iron fist. The tensions that arose between different powers during the first decades of the 16th century favored the growing relevance of art, which then reflected the immeasurable propagandistic power it could deploy.

Success in battle or economic prosperity was disseminated and exalted through an artistic production that, under the monarch Francis I, lived a glorious period.

It was then that, at the king’s request, some of the most brilliant scholars of their time arrived at the French court, such as Leonardo Da Vinci, Rosso Fiorentino, Andrea del Sarto and Luca Penni, who were partly responsible for establishing the principles of the Renaissance in France. The epicenter of all this great plan would be located in the residence of Fontainebleu whose palace, as in the case of Versailles, would serve to captivate and surprise allies, enemies and subjects, as another instrument of royal power.

As we have noted above, classical antiquity served as a pretext to give prestige and support to the new dynasties, rescuing, through art, the ancient forms and narratives with which, as in the case of “Muccio Escevola before King Porsenna”, they resort to the glorious past to extol the French monarch through the association with the figure of the hero (Muccio is compared to King Francis and the tyrant Porsenna to the Emperor Charles V).

Aesthetically, the work follows the characteristic features of the First School of Fontainbleau, whose aesthetic refinement, compositional complexity and use of chromatism denote the influence exerted by Italian Mannerism in shaping the art that developed in France under the rule of Francis I.

Vouet’s Baroque

One of the key figures of the French Baroque is undoubtedly Simon Vouet. Thanks to his stay in Italy and the deep knowledge he acquired in relation to its different schools, Vouet was able to bring together and incorporate into his work both the aesthetic line of Bolognese classicism and the theatricality and Roman and Neapolitan tenebrism.

In the case of the present work, both currents are evident, with special interest in the tenebrist style, whose dramatic charge is intensified here thanks to the accentuated light contrasts.

The religious theme is treated with a high degree of realism in terms of its verisimilitude, however, the gestures and the foreshortening of the angel lead us, as is typical of this theme, to a higher plane. The martyrdom of St. Catherine reflects a well-studied composition where her figure occupies all the protagonism. The radiance of the nude, as well as the intensity of her gaze, provokes in the viewer a direct emotion that reaffirms us in her spiritual nature. The success of this model and of its Roman period is evidenced by the existence of a replica of this painting, the version in the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Strasbourg.

The two paintings that are part of the exhibition and auction, entitled “Old Masters” (October 17, 2023) mark two milestones in the history of French art, as both perfectly combine the importance of Italian influences as a starting point to give birth to an art with its own identity.

From the second half of the 19th century, Valencian art experienced a golden age in which Joaquín Sorolla and his contemporaries initiated the well-known Valencian luminism. A whole generation of artists as heirs of the features and values of this style, who sought in the typical scenes of Levantine costumbrismo the most pleasant reality of life, belonged to this prolific current. The so-called new golden century of Valencian painting finds in our auction on October 10, a magnificent representation that, from the hand of its great figures, comes to show us the indelible mark they left behind them in Spanish art.

Sorolla’s important mark is reflected in artists who, like José Mongrell, reached a level of excellence far beyond the simplistic considerations that reduce them to mere disciples. In this sense, the artist will absorb the teachings of his predecessors without losing that more classical and disciplined character that will give him his own identity. Mongrell’s landscapes, worked with real care, become the ideal setting to show the dignity of some common characters who, carrying out their daily chores, stand as true heroes of modernity. The solidity of his protagonists, combined with the warmth of his palette and the agility of his brushstroke, transports us to the most intimate and vital vision of Valencian customs, overflowing, as always, with the hypnotic luminosity of the Mediterranean.

However, in contrast to these representations of costumbrista character, associated in an unappealable way with Valencian luminism, a special predilection also developed for themes of a mythological nature in which an intentional dramatic and epic effect was manifested, which was unleashed in European nineteenth-century painting as a result of Romanticism. In this sense, we can consider Antonio Muñoz Degraín as one of the most unique figures of Valencian painting of the late nineteenth century whose fanciful and imaginative character is reaffirmed by works such as “La laguna estigia”.

The Styx Lagoon in Greek mythology was the boundary between the earth and the world of the dead where angry and furious souls were condemned to end up drowned in its putrid waters. Degraín uses this mythological fable as a pretext to shed light in this work on his most fanciful side. In an apotheosic expressive and chromatic exercise, the artist offers us a vision of nature that, in its dramatization and theatricalization, is close to the romantic taste and symbolist precepts.

This vision, besides reflecting the artist’s own fears in relation to hell, reveals the deep knowledge he acquired about nature and its destructive power. However, as did the romantic painters, Degraín knew how to extract, even in the most terrible catastrophes, their most untamed and poetic beauty.

In a post-war artistic context in which artistic practice was torn between figuration and abstraction, the French painter Bernard Buffet rose to fame at the age of 19 thanks to a completely unique and personal style that gave us one of the most fascinating pictorial works of the last century.

The fame he achieved until he became one of the most successful French artists of the time is due, in part, to the unconditional support he received from such prominent figures in the art world, as his protector Pierre Bergé, Jean Cocteau, Maurice Granier (owner of the Visconti Gallery) or one of the most renowned French Ministers of Culture that France has ever had, André Malraux.

Considered by many as the last great painter of Paris, Buffet renewed the stylistic and formal repertoire, immersing himself in his own path of existentialist inspiration, alien to any prevailing fashion and current. In fact, if there is a movement with which we can relate Buffet’s painting it would be that of the philosophical current of miserabilism, whose thought in the wake of existentialism, led by Sartre and Camus, was developed during the nineteenth century as a reaction to the unfulfilled promises of socialist utopias. Thus, miserabilism, as an artistic current, translated into an art that painted human misery in a sublimated form.

In this sense, the human tragedy that Buffet symbolized through figures, landscapes or still lifes of flowers such as the one presented here, will be completely determined by the horrors of war and the death of his mother. Dominated by a deliberately angular graphics and a thick line stroke that he subjected to a process of geometrization and stylization, Buffet managed to transfer to the canvas the deep state of melancholy in which he found himself. In addition, the austere color palette and the absence of any superfluous element will increase the unpleasant atmosphere of his still lifes, symbolically expressing the state of uneasiness that prevailed in occupied France.

His style, quickly recognizable, contributed to the brilliant success of the painter, whose prestige and quotation, far from decreasing, has been maintained to this day thanks, in part, to monographic exhibitions that, like the one dedicated to him at the Pompidou Center in Paris in 2017, have contributed to the revaluation of his work.

José Guerrero has established himself as one of the fundamental references of contemporary Spanish painting. His career, as intense as it is personal, shows us the incessant experimentation and continuous evolution of an artist who, even shortly before his death, continued to create with the same dedication with which he achieved success and resounding recognition at an international level His land of origin, his link with Federico García Lorca or his American adventure, are just some of the events that deeply marked the development of a professional career, intimately linked to his life experiences.

The Granada-born artist arrived in the United States in November 1949 to begin the stage that would forever transform his work. With a background marked by the work of the great masters of the European avant-garde, Guerrero settled in the capital of modern art. In a city of New York that was dominated by the apogee of abstract expressionism, the painter from Granada was able to come into direct contact with the trends of action painting. The shock caused by Pollock’s works awakened in him a voracious hunger for modernity and freedom, which led him, years later, to become one of the members, along with great names of the movement such as Rothko, Klein or Motherwell, of the so-called New York School.

After an American journey that placed him on the map of international contemporary art, Guerrero decided to return to Spain motivated by two key factors: the opening of Juana Mordó’s gallery in Madrid in 1964 and the meeting with Fernando Zóbel, who would inaugurate the Museo de Arte Abstracto Español (Museum of Spanish Abstract Art). Thus, the artist settled in the town of Filigrana (Malaga) where, in the midst of the nature of his native Andalusia, he found the refuge in which to develop his new creative stage.

Despite the brevity of this period, Guerrero reached a maturity that, as the work on tender testifies, would mark the rest of his artistic career. In this evocative work, the artist recreates in an abstract and lyrical way the landscape of Frigiliana. Moving away from the gestuality of action painting that marked his previous stage, Guerrero turns the reality of Andalusian villages into a visual poetry, where the subtle use of glazes and color fields that remind us of Rothko’s influence, recreate the unique and concrete atmosphere of the place where Guerrero spent the last years of his life.

The large surfaces of color barely stretched by the discordant stripes that have been common since then, are translated in this canvas into a blue monochrome background that reminds us of the gates and lattices of the white villages of Andalusia. The tension contained within the limits of the canvas itself emerges thanks to the subtle touches of black and pink with which it evokes the flamingos that populate the salt flats of the area, achieving a visual rhythm that transforms the painting into a window into the artist’s most intuitive and emotional creative universe.

Works like the present one remind us that Guerrero’s work would never have been the same without the overflowing gushes of color of Pollock, the color fields of Rothko, or the large black structures delimited with absolute precision of Motherwell. But neither without the indelible residue of his roots, in which his friendship with the Garcia Lorca family or the trace of the black Spain of the Civil War shaped that battlefield turned into a canvas, where Guerrero undressed and confronted his life experiences.

The freedom and purity that his canvases shouted since then continues to captivate us as much as when his name was recognized around the art world as one of the great exponents of international abstraction.

Resale is on the rise and has been for some time. According to a study by Bain & Company, the luxury secondary market grew 65% from 2017 to 2022, with no signs of slowing down. Some even predict that resale, in this field, may even surpass retail.

The consumer has now gained confidence and security in buying pre-owned luxury goods in a way that was never expected before

So we talked about the attractiveness and importance of luxury resale and why everything “old” can be “new” again.

Quality parts made to last

Luxury is synonymous with quality, and quality promises longevity. Many high-end fashion garments are hand-sewn by specially trained craftsmen and are made from the finest materials. Unlike fast fashion, they are built to last, and these quality items can be staples in a closet forever.

More than ever, consumers are choosing to invest in key pieces that will last longer and become part of their arsenal and fashion vocabulary for the long term.

When you buy vintage luxury, you are selecting an item that has been cared for by its previous owner, but also examined by a team of experts, which guarantees its authenticity and quality.

Reducing carbon footprint

The fashion industry is one of the biggest contributors to carbon emissions problems, which is why luxury items, made from higher quality materials, have more durability and are therefore more sustainable, a key aspect for many when choosing to purchase luxury items over fast fashion or disposable items.

Fast fashion” consumes large amounts of water and energy and can also pollute through the dyes and pesticides used in textile manufacturing. All this has a negative impact on the environment and its fragile ecosystems.

When buying for resale, consumers limit their environmental impact by transporting an item from one place to another. Because they are built to last, they can also be resold, contributing to a more sustainable way of buying and selling.

Participating in the circular economy

The circular economy is an essential element of sustainable living, helping to conserve finite resources and limit greenhouse gas emissions.

Buying second-hand is not only a positive environmental decision but also a beneficial economic choice. Instead of a single transaction between supplier and consumer, the resale market allows for multiple transactions of the same item, stimulating the economy and extending the life cycle of that particular item. This extension is also a benefit for the environment, as it not only reduces the carbon footprint, but also keeps these garments out of landfills.

This marriage of environmental and economic reuse is called the circular economy and prevents materials and resources from becoming waste, while promoting sustainable economic growth.

Choose from a wide variety of designs, including rare and limited edition styles.

As fashion houses introduce new collections, some models are withdrawn or discontinued. When buying at resale, the consumer can choose from a wide selection of vintage designs and styles. This means having access to limited editions, discontinued colors and rare pieces that are no longer available from the brands themselves.

The consumer now looks at designer pieces and compares the purchase of a new item to that of a used one. This reality is, to say the least, revolutionary.

When considering what to buy, a consumer/collector may be attracted to the resale market because of its wide range of offerings. In many cases, the only way to get hold of a particular accessory is second hand, which often increases the value of the market as a whole.

Creating an offer of second-hand luxury goods is not easy. In Setdart we always seek to offer, in this category, luxury items and classic pieces, always looking with collector’s eyes and this is what differentiates us from many stores that are dedicated to selling second hand items, in general.

The passage of time has always been one of the constant enemies of human beings. Great feats as a species are our monuments and works of art, which have been created with the intention of enduring and surviving their own time, thus leaving a legacy that survives generation after generation. In this sense, the material that composes them is one of the essential elements to achieve it, being the stone one of the most suitable.

There is a rock, a singular type of alabaster, which is only found in the region of Ayacucho, and whose translucent quality, as well as its malleability, made it one of the most prized materials by collectors since the sixteenth century, the Huamanga.

We have no evidence that this rock was used by the natives before the pre-Hispanic period, since the first sculptural examples in Huamanga appear at the end of the 16th century. Castilian tastes stamped their seal on the artistic production of the viceroyalty, taking into account the success of other European alabasters, such as those from Malines or Trapani. At this time sculptures were both a source of wealth and the vehicle for the expansion of faith. Thus, the religious themes of these small statues aided the evangelizing task of the colonists.

As in European alabasters, a subtle polychromy was initially chosen, following the canons of the Renaissance. In this way, the whitish and translucent texture of the stone prevailed with small details of color or gold for clothes or hair. An example of this is this sleeping baby Jesus. In this vanitas, the mineral achieves its full prominence and the small spots of the veins give a more realistic aspect to the child’s skin and the skull. The golden curls of the hair are enough to highlight the divine character of the protagonist.

One of the most important features of huamanga is its malleability. This ability allows carving details with extreme meticulousness as if they were clay or wax. One of the sculptures that will be put out to tender on the 19th, shown below, is a perfect example of this characteristic and is arguably one of the highest quality examples of the Viceroyalty of Huamanga.

This piety is carved from a single block of stone from which the various free-standing figures emerge. Its reduced format does not exempt it from rigor in terms of the expressiveness of gestures, faces, musculature or cloths and fabrics that dress the figures. The high quality of his carving is evidence of the hand of a master who, unfortunately, remains anonymous today. The sparse golden details give way to a polychrome that is combined with the subtle application of rubies. The eye of the beholder transforms his own gem into the flowing blood of Christ.

We can compare this sculpture with the one preserved in the Museum of America in Madrid. Although they would be two sculptures of the same school and period, in the second one, the huamanga is visible only in the incarnations while the polychrome covers most of the surface.

During the 18th century we observe how polychromy acquired a greater role in the sculptural production of Huamanga. The bright colors characteristic of the Peruvian school contrast notably with the delicacy of the stone, making it look more opaque. In this way, its appearance changes from crystalline to ivory-like.

The sculptures in Huamanga were in demand by Spanish collectors during the XVII and XVIII centuries, attracted mainly by the exotic and distant character of the stone. However, many of them have been lost or have come to us distorted by the damage received by the passage of time. The three pieces we have mentioned are an exceptional example, both for their state of preservation and for their high sculptural quality. The historical relevance they represent undoubtedly makes them the key to a collection and there are few museums, such as the Museum of America in Madrid or the Museum of Pedro de Osma in Peru, that have similar examples to those of our next auction, being, therefore, on September 19 a unique opportunity for lovers of Viceroyal art.

Considered one of the key figures of the new Asian postcolonial art, the painter of Philippine origin Manuel Ocampo has been proclaimed as one of the enfants terribles of the current art scene.

Throughout his career, Ocampo has given birth to a creative corpus to which it is impossible to feel a hint of indifference. Under a neo-expressionist language, Ocampo destroys any pictorial imposture or conventionalism with the aim of questioning and questioning the foundations on which our social and cultural identity has been historically built.

Fusing styles and multiple iconographic references, both religious and profane, Ocampo builds a visual narrative where the subversive, burlesque and satirical character of the images is elevated to the maximum power thanks to a caricatured and unbridled staging that oscillates between the scatological and the abject. Thus, the artist’s plastic universe, composed of already iconic elements such as crucifixes, penises, swastikas, money, knives, worms, cartoons and excrement, stand as emblems of his irreverent and absolutely critical attitude towards imperialist thought, discrediting to the point of annihilation the paradigm of the Eurocentric canon.

The iconoclasm of his creations attests to the magnitude of registers that his work reaches, where Ocampo immerses us to end up engulfing us in the maelstrom of multiple and disturbing references that question the violence, sex, religion and politics that are hidden behind his pictorial mannerisms.

In this sense, the work in question (“El motivo compensatorio en la economía libidinal de la mala conciencia de un pintor”), belonging to an early stage in his career, evidences the coherence with which Ocampo has structured his work, and we can already detect in it the plastic character that will define his artistic career.

Behind a Mexican wrestling mask, with swastikas on his bare arm and Luciferian wings, this pop singer with a necklace of skulls gathers on his body a compendium of symbols that Ocampo empties of meaning to create a delirious mixture that short-circuits any simple interpretation. “Minima Moralia”, the title that accompanies the figure, refers to Theodor Adorno’s essay, a courageous book in which the author analyzed what capitalism inherited from Nazism. As the French philosopher did, the Philippine painter shreds through the field of painting the hoaxes of capitalist imperialism. With an aesthetic halfway between expressionism and pop, Ocampo intermingles the references of Mexican popular culture with the iconography of political propaganda with which he became known in the art world. In fact, the “grunge” frankness in talking about the moral dilemmas of modern society that characterized this stage, gave him a remarkable critical prestige that placed him at the top of the international contemporary map.

His work is undoubtedly the most accurate proof of the rebellious character of this “outsider” of the art scene, and of his firm belief that the world and our existence are completely dominated by chaos and absurdity.

On September 6, our contemporary art auction returns with a careful and varied selection of Victor Mira’s production, through which we will be able to discover the richness and depth of his creation.

Considered by international critics as one of the great creators of Spanish art in the last decades of the 20th century, Víctor Mira reflected in his different artistic facets the existential torment that accompanied him throughout his life . Qualified as a transgressor, eccentric, visionary, weird, mystic and enlightened, Mira was above all an artist who delved through his art into the depths of the human being. His work, as heartbreaking as it is poetic, acquires a violent spirituality whose feeling is reflected in this revealing statement:“as a man happiness is desired, as an artist I am not interested and I am dominated by the artist. Under this premise, Victor Mira transformed pain into a philosophy of life that would undoubtedly become his everlasting source of inspiration. And it is precisely this aspect that moves us in his work, the brutal and sincere contemplation of a soul, that of the artist, in which loneliness, inner ordeal and death are revealed to us as the only and unappealable certainties of life.

In her creative universe, Mira constantly turns to the cultural references that she absorbed with voracious curiosity from literature, cinema and music, as well as from religion and philosophy.Thus, he has created a particular compendium of concerns, reflections and obsessions that are ostensibly manifested in his pictorial works.

In this sense, the works under bidding allow us to trace a journey through the iconographic and plastic universe of Mira, who from his beginnings developed his work in series that overlapped in time. In them we can glimpse the Aragonese artist’s constant fondness for the primitive and that link with the origins of humanity that he found in the cave paintings. In series such as “Death Paintings“, Mira summoned a universe inhabited by archers, shamans and nomads who, with their arms raised as a sign of offering, celebrate enigmatic ceremonies.

Mira will also develop in parallel a type of landscape with surrealist roots visible in his series “Cantabrian Women” and “Miraniana of the Clock”. In these works we will see an endless parade of animals and human figures that, mating or gathered next to the trees of science and life in the Garden of Eden, take us back to the origins of humanity and to that lost Paradise that acts as a metaphor for an artist who, through his work, pursued in an eternal search for the way back home.

On the other hand, the theme of still lifes occupied a special significance within Mira’s artistic corpus to the point of becoming another icon of his career. Following a variegated aesthetic typical of expressionism, the artist approaches the tradition of baroque vanitas, introducing significant elements such as the crosses, the thalamus or the skulls that remind us of the finite nature of time and the inescapability of death.

It is also worth mentioning the continuous references to other disciplines to which, as in the case of music, he dedicated several series. In fact, from the 1990s onwards, Mira will produce an extensive body of work based on Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 in which the artist, reducing his palette to the trichrome of black, red and yellow, represents the four notes of the initial motif of the score, whose significance has traditionally been associated with the idea of destiny.

In an era in which the great deeds and heroic feats of romanticism seem to have no place, Victor Mira embodied like no one else the figure of the outsider, the cursed artist who, as is evident from the image of his characters, lives apart from everything and everyone, following only the dictates of a deeply restless and nonconformist spirit that he carried with him to the ultimate consequences. That complex spirit with which he gave birth to an excellent metaphor of death, as lyrical and beautiful as it is sordid and stark.

From a private collection of genuine museum pieces, Setdart brings together in the Haute Epoque category masterpieces by leading figures from different periods and places: Italian Renaissance, Neapolitan Rococo, Madrid Baroque and Danish Romanticism.

Firstly, Portrait of a Girl, from the Italian school, belonging to a transitional period between the Renaissance and the Baroque, but in which the portrait formulas of the Cinquecento can still be appreciated.

The portrait is executed with a virtuoso technique and tight brushstrokes, making it a true piece of goldsmith’s work. This canvas can be compared to the portraits of royalty painted by the painter Sofonisba Anguissola. More specifically, it is worth comparing it with the portrait of Isabella de Valois, wife of Philip II, commissioned from the Cremona painter when she was her lady-in-waiting.

Note the stylistic and compositional similarities between the Setdart portrait and the one in the Museo del Prado: in both figures, the black velvet of their costumes is decorated with precious stones and gold thread trimmings. The snowy ovals of the face, illuminated by a subtle halo, are framed by a fine ruff and a diadem of rubies and gold. Even the posture of the figures and the gestures of their hands match: Isabella holds a portrait of her husband and the girl rests her hand on a bouquet of flowers.

Another piece worthy of being in a museum, and which is in fact on a par with a version of it in the Museo del Prado, is Portrait of Charles III, King of the Two Sicilies, by the Neapolitan Giuseppe Bonito. It depicts Charles III in military uniform, wearing a helmet and holding a flare. In the Prado painting the background is open to the landscape, while in the present work the focus is on the figure, which stands out against a neutral background. In both cases, the artist expresses the artistic brilliance of Neapolitan Rococo, of which Giuseppe Bonito was one of the greatest exponents. The imprint of his exquisite style is evident in the satin colours of the sumptuous velvet coat, the gold thread brocade and the fine lace on the sleeves.

The delicacy of his portraits opened the doors of the Neapolitan court to Bonito as a court painter. Around 1745 he painted portraits of Charles VII of the Two Sicilies, the future Charles III of Spain, and his wife Queen Maria Amalia of Saxony in portraits that are also in the Prado.

Wandering through the rooms of the Prado Museum, specifically in the rooms dedicated to 17th century Flemish painting. Here we find a collection of paintings with scenes featuring monkeys, a theme worked on by artists such as Pieter Brueghel and David Teniers the Younger. To the circle of the latter belong the two oil paintings on copper (“Costumbrist scenes with monkeys”) that are on offer in our fine period collection at Setdart. These interior scenes (monkeys eating, learning to play instruments, baker monkeys…) were used by the artists to ridicule man’s follies, but sometimes they also highlighted his more endearing aspects.

Continuing with the creations of chamber painters, we can see Juan Carreño de Miranda’s Lactancia de San Bernardo (“Breastfeeding Saint Bernard”), a theme that this distinguished painter of the court of Charles II treated with subtle variations in a painting preserved in the Museum of the parish church of the Collegiate Church of Pastrana. This oil painting, fully Baroque in style and execution, narrates the scene in the saint’s life in which the Virgin appeared to him to nourish him with her breast. A mystical triangle is established between Mary, the Child Jesus and the saint. The richness of the chromatic nuances, the luminosity of the break of glory and the tenderness of the plump cherubs are typical of the painter’s work.

Miranda had important ecclesiastical clients, such as Toledo Cathedral, as well as being a court painter. Today he is represented in the world’s leading museums, from the Hermitage to the Louvre and the Prado.

The Neapolitan still life school of the Baroque, highly appreciated within the antiquarian market, as well as among collectors and art historians, enjoyed a spectacular development, leaving behind the splendour of the 16th century and progressing within a fully Baroque style in which Gasparo López, together with Tommaso Realfonso and Nicola Casissa, occupied an unquestionable place.

A pair of vases by Gasparo López (nicknamed Gasparo Dei Fiori) is another of the pieces to be highlighted in Setdart’s current tenders on 20 and 21 February. The exuberant bouquets contrast with the simple parapets and vases that hold them.

We now change time and place to admire an iconic painting by the nineteenth-century Dane Harald Jerichau, The Plain at Sardis, Asia Minor. In theme and composition, this cornerstone of Danish Romanticism follows the same model as Jerichau’s 1878 painting The Plain at Sardis, now in the Statens Museum for Kunst in Denmark.

Harald made use of this view on numerous occasions and popularised the scene, which has become the cover of Birgitte Fink’s biography of the artist.

In both versions, the sublime landscape transcends Orientalist genre painting and takes on a subjugating atmosphere. The presence of the columns adds a documentary, almost Vedoutist element, but the warmth of the colours leads us into a panoramic view of an almost mystical mood, projecting a lyrical vision of Turkey.

As the last piece in our tour of the great works in our high-period gallery, all of which come from a private collection that was simmered over decades of painstaking research and careful selection, let us mention a singular pastel with an allegorical theme, from the French school and Rococo period, for which the painter was inspired by the still lifes of Johann Rudolph Feyerabend. Symbolism, trompe l’oeil and virtuosity are combined in this enigmatic still life.

The “golden Twenties” or happy twenties were a time of prosperity and progress so vertiginous that it filled society with optimism, prompting extremely ambitious projects to be carried out.

In New York this furor could be appreciated better than anywhere else, as the best example of success was manifested by its skyline, the skyscrapers. One of the most obvious megalomaniac ideas came from the prestigious Rockefeller family. His goal was to create a city of his own within the heart of Manhattan. Several buildings connected by squares would house theaters, offices and stores under the emblem of this dynasty.

The crash of 1929 meant bankruptcy for a significant part of the population and led to the period we know as the Great Depression. This adverse scenario did not intimidate the Rockefellers; on the contrary, it was an incentive to offer an echo of hope and revitalization of the city’s economy with a discourse based on American values and the progress recently experienced.

The complex, which would become an iconic symbol of the city, consisted of several buildings with an entrance hall to the main building, one of the most significant spaces, which has survived to the present day full of history, culture and energy that encapsulates the vibrant essence of New York.

This lobby would be covered by huge murals with the proposed values. The goal was, like a viewer in the Sistine Chapel, to be so overwhelmed that it would lead to reflection. The first names proposed for this commission were Pablo Picasso and Diego Rivera. He ended up deciding in favor of the Mexican master, who was engaged in the colossal work for months. Weeks before the space was to be inaugurated, everything fell apart. Criticism of the socialist and anti-capitalist content was unbecoming of the spirit of the nation. We must not forget the degree of political involvement that Rivera and Frida Kahlo’s marriage had. Despite the fame he enjoyed at the time, the Mexican’s work was thrown away and lost forever. The murals were completely covered while waiting to find another great painter who would fit the required ideas.

This is how the Spanish painter Josep Maria Sert enters the scene. His fame was already recognized outside the Spanish borders. He had worked in castles and mansions in England, in apartments of the Parisian bourgeoisie and in America he had commissions from Buenos Aires to Palm Beach. His figure had considerable international fame and he was one of the most suitable muralists for the assignment.

In 1931 he made his first paintings in the hall of Rockefeller Center, which were an overwhelming success. He perfectly captured the idea of exaltation of American values. The propagandistic content included in the speech covered scientific and industrial advances, social welfare and, of course, the power and guarantee of the capitalist system and the Rockefeller family. The objective was more than satisfied, to the point that this commission led to other important commissions, such as the dining room of the Waldorf Astoria Hotel or the League of Nations. At the end of the decade, the Rockefeller family would entrust him again with the paintings for the ceilings and, in this way, the space was completed in the same iconographic style.

The work presented by Setdart at the September 14 auction has a fundamental historical value. This is the sketch of the main mural of the set “American progress”, the first that we find frontally when entering the hall and, both for its theme and its location is the mural that crowns the set. This work perfectly follows the outline that would be placed on the wall so, together with its format, it may be one of the sketches presented by Sert to the family to approve its execution.

The historical and artistic value of this work is not limited to Sert’s biography; its true value is evident in the fact that it is part of one of the symbols of New York City and is a faithful reflection of the artistic scene of the interwar period.

How does a museum come to build its collection? Museums are institutions designed to expand the knowledge and history of each place and its society, a beacon of knowledge that evolves over time and, therefore, must move forward. Take, for example, the most important museum in Spain and, arguably, one of the richest in the world: the Prado Museum.

At the beginning of the 19th century, during the reign of Ferdinand VII, it was decided to transfer some of the masterpieces of the royal collection to a public gallery. Let’s think that since the time of the Habsburgs, many of the treasures were, relatively, within the reach of the public in, for example, the Alcazar of Madrid or the Escorial. But it was the Prado that definitively brought art closer to the people in Spain, becoming a source of pride for them.

The institution was expanding its holdings thanks to additions such as the Museum of the Trinity, with goods from the ecclesiastical disentailments or from important donations, as is the case even today (see the legacy of Plácido Arango or Óscar Alzaga). These great patrons, as well as other anonymous ones, have considerably expanded the catalog with respect to the original one. However, curators have an essential job, not only to guard and research the existing pieces, but also to find the “missing” pieces of the puzzle that represents history. Their deep knowledge makes them always alert to the works that appear on the market or in private collections. His quick action and good eye allow the state or the museum itself to acquire that crucial gear that will allow us to continue writing our past in order to understand it better.

Setdart is deeply proud to be part of this process. During the last year, several Spanish institutions have found in our auctions fundamental pieces for their collections.

Continuing with the thread of the Prado Museum, last March it acquired in the sale of the Old Masters auction a canvas by the painter Claudio Coello “Christ served by angels”. This magnificent canvas could not have found a more appropriate destination. Autograph work by the master of the Madrid Baroque when he was only nineteen years old.

Two museums located in the city of Valencia discovered four works of great value for their collections. The Fine Arts Museum of Valencia was awarded an exceptional portrait by Allori representing the great Duke of Tuscany Comes I de Medici and a masterpiece of the Renaissance of the Crown of Aragon, the Nativity of John of Burgundy.

The National Museum of Ceramics acquired two canvases by two Valencian geniuses, Agustín Esteve and Vicente López Portaña, a very wise purchase since the portraits were linked to the headquarters itself, the palace of the Marqués de Dos Aguas.

We have mentioned only a few examples, but we can also mention as buyers of works in Setdart the National Sculpture Museum of Valladolid, the Capricho Museum, the Ducal House of Osuna, the Sorolla Museum or the National Museum of Decorative Arts. Part of our job is to bring to light the treasures hidden in the private sphere and this task influences a fundamental part of the life of each museum.

Thus, we encourage you all to gradually visit our museums since, as we affirm, they are in constant change and progress.

See more at https://www.setdart.com/setdart/destacados/newlang=spanish.html

The holidays are coming and with them the moment to enjoy all those plans that we have been waiting for for a long time. Among all of them, cultural leisure will always be a great option to escape from our routine, traveling through art to bygone eras and multiple geographical enclaves.

From Setdart we encourage you to spend a vacation full of art with a selection of some of the most interesting exhibitions that this summer’s cultural agenda offers us within our borders:

“André Butzer” at the Thyssen Bornemisza Museum in Madrid.

An interesting retrospective, the first of this German artist outside his country, brings together, until September 10, an elaborate selection of his works made between 1999 and 2002. Arranged chronologically, the 22 large-format canvases take us into the particular pictorial universe of the artist whose genesis stems from influences as diverse as German Expressionism, Henry Ford and Walt Disney. As a result of this fusion, the artist creates a pictorial universe called “science fiction expressionism” that oscillates between darkness and explosion of colors, between abstraction and cartoon figures.

“Calderón and Painting” at the Museo del Prado

The exhibition itinerary proposed by the Prado aims to invite the public to contemplate the Baroque painting of its permanent collection from the poetics and aesthetic subtlety of Pedro Calderón de la Barca (1600-1681). The exhibition tour, according to the museum, consists of three approaches or readings that complement and dialogue with each other. One of them shows a selection of Calderonian quotations hung on the walls, proposing a dialogue between the lucidity of the writer and the language of the Baroque painters; the next one gathers a series of commented paintings in relation to the Calderonian theater, which allows to go through some of the concerns of the writer and his time. Finally, through a careful selection of texts, the author’s thoughts in relation to painting are put into context.

“Velázquez” at the Tech Museum

The exhibition gives us the opportunity to approach the work of the great master Diego Velázquez in a much more immersive way thanks to technological advances. In total there are eight interactive rooms where visitors will find amazing digital resources that will make them rediscover the entire legacy of one of the greatest exponents of all time of painting in Spain. During the tour, visitors will be able to marvel at Las Meninas in four dimensions, an integral experience that unites present, past and future. The five senses will be in contact with Velázquez’s masterpiece, which can now not only be seen, but also felt and heard in a completely innovative way.

“The will of Picasso. The ceramics that inspired the artist” at Disseny Hub Barcelona.

On the occasion of the Picasso Celebration 1973-2023, the Disseny Hub Barcelona exhibits and puts in dialogue the sixteen ceramic pieces that the artist himself donated and a selection of those that he himself was able to see in 1957 at the exhibition The Spanish ceramics, from the 13th century to the present day. The exhibition highlights the value of the collection of historic Spanish ceramics it houses and explains the influence these pieces had on Picasso’s creations.

“The human image” at Caixa Forum

Through a diversity of pieces from ancient civilizations from the British Museum combined with a selection of contemporary artworks from the Fundación la Caixa Collection and the Museo del Prado, the exhibition explains how human beings have represented themselves over time.

The discourse of the exhibition is divided into five thematic sections(Ideal Beauty, Portraits, The Divine Body, The Political Body and Corporal Transformation), all of which bring together representations from different periods, connecting and enriching the different conceptions of the exhibition narrative.

Carmen Calvo at the Picasso Museum

This exhibition will be a magnificent opportunity to review the artistic career of Carmen Calvo, whose trajectory, rooted in the heritage of the artistic avant-gardes, deserves a resounding recognition. Through his work, Cavo critically, as well as poetically, investigates the vestiges of the past and the memory of our country. The exhibition begins with a small retrospective of his artistic production, followed by a group of pieces created during the pandemic and closes with works made expressly for the occasion that are inspired by and in dialogue with Picasso’s work.

“Fernando Botero. Sensuality and melancholy” at the Bancaja Foundation.

Sensuality and melancholy, represents the first retrospective in Valencia of the Colombian artist, considered one of the most outstanding figures of the international art scene. The exhibition offers a journey through his artistic production over seven decades, from his first creations in the 1960s, made during his time in New York, to pieces from 2022. The exhibition offers a journey through the evolution of Botero’s creative universe, built from the beginning at the margin of the prevailing stylistic currents of his time, such as action painting or informalism, and opting for figuration. The exhibition is divided into five sections that respond to the central themes of his work: carnival, circus and dance; the plein air; still life; female universe; and the nude.

“The darkest Sorolla” at Fundación Bancaja

The exhibition is a great opportunity to discover the lesser known side of the painter usually associated with the representation of the light of the Mediterranean. The exhibition is divided into four thematic blocks in which we can see the use of black and gray tones that Sorolla used mainly in portraits and genre scenes. The blocks deal with portraiture, symbolism and the meaning of the dark tones that permeate the social context of the time; the value of black as a source of contrast and a means to enhance light and color; and the use of monochrome in the work of the Valencian painter.

If you are an admirer of his work, you should not miss the exhibition Masaveu Collection. “Sorolla” The exhibition is presented in the year of commemoration of the centenary of the death of Joaquín Sorolla, which brings together fifty extraordinary pieces belonging to one of the most important private collections in Spain.

“The constellations of Julio González: between representation and abstraction” in Gallery 2 of IVAM

The exhibition, curated by the historian and art and architecture critic Juan José Lahuerta, proposes a new reading of Julio González’s collection , far removed from certain myths about his life and work. For the occasion, 42 works by one of the most important sculptors of the 20th century have been selected, all from the IVAM collection, in dialogue with 11 sculptures by artists such as Andreu Alfaro, Martin Chirino, Georg Herold, Jacques Lipchitz, Miquel Navarro, Jaume Plensa, Reiner Ruthenbeck, Joel Shapiro, David Smith and Tony Smith, which demonstrate the validity of their artistic contributions.

Richard Avedon, internationally known for his work in fashion magazines such as Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue, lands at Setdart with one of the greatest icons in the history of fashion: Dorian Leigh.

Few photographers in the 20th century have been as decisive as the American Richard Avedon, who not only revolutionized the world of fashion by creating a new aesthetic, but also became one of the most prestigious portraitists in the history of photography. Both as a fashion photographer and as a portraitist, Avedon managed to break with certain myths or pre-established standards, freeing his protagonists from the rigidity and distance that until then had been projected especially from the world of fashion.

In this sense, the bidding photograph is completely enlightening about the work of this acclaimed photographer. In it, Avedon unites his skills as a portraitist with his vision of the fashion world, capturing with his lens one of the first icons of modeling in the industry: Dorian Leigh. In fact, the working relationship between the two would become one of the most fruitful in the industry, forming one of the most iconic and influential tandems in recent history.

“I often feel that people come to me to be photographed like they would go to a doctor or fortune teller; to find out what they are like. For me, photographs have a reality that people don’t have. It’s through photographs that I get to know people.” Richard Avedon.

The snapshot is part of a portfolio of eleven images that Avedon took in Paris between 1947 and 1957 for the legendary Harper’s Bazaar, a magazine with which he maintained an intense and productive collaboration until he became one of the publication’s main photographers. This work, belonging to an early stage of his career in which he devoted himself almost exclusively to fashion photography, represents a brilliant example of the reinterpretation and reconceptualization he executed to elevate this discipline to the category of fine art during the twentieth century.

The entire portfolio, which later formed part of the retrospective exhibition held in 1978 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, brought a breath of fresh air to the magazine, thanks in part to the enduring imprint left by the Parisian avant-garde on the art world. Influenced by the classically French aesthetics, Avedon immortalized in them the most fashionable models of the 40’s and 50’s, the same ones that would end up becoming the true muses of his work.

The personal and non-transferable stamp that Avedon brought to the world of photography transpires in this portrait of Leight in which, in an apparently simple way, he manages to capture and immortalize the essence of the protagonist, whose portrait, far from adopting the statuesque air that had prevailed until then, condenses the free, spontaneous and somewhat playful and rebellious character that characterized the spirit of the time. By giving them an environment to interact with and make their own, Avedon brought to life his subjects who, without losing any of their glamour, took on a much more human and approachable appearance that captivated the public.

The way in which Avedon changed photography forever has an impact that reaches far beyond the boundaries of the practice itself, as we can see from the shutter that the New York Times published after his death on October 1, 2004, recognizing him as the photographer who helped define the image of beauty, elegance and culture for the past half century.

Richard Avedon, conocido internacionalmente por su trabajo en revistas de moda como Harper’s bazaar y Vogue, aterriza en Setdart de la mano de uno de los mayores iconos de la historia de la moda: Dorian Leigh.

Pocos fotógrafos ha habido durante el siglo XX tan determinantes como el estadunidense Richard Avedon, quien no solo revolucionó el mundo de la moda creando una estética nueva, sino que también se convirtió en uno de los retratistas más prestigiosos de la historia de la fotografía. Tanto en su faceta como fotógrafo de moda como en la de retratista, Avedon logró romper con ciertos mitos o estandartes preestablecidos, liberando a sus protagonistas de la rigidez y distancia que hasta el momento se había proyectado sobre todo desde el mundo de la moda.

En  este sentido, la fotografía en licitación resulta completamente esclarecedora respecto al trabajo de este aclamado fotógrafo. En ella, Avedon une sus dotes como retratista con su visión  respecto al mundo de la moda, capturando  con su objetivo a la que fuera uno de los  primeros iconos del modelaje dentro de la industria: Dorian Leigh. De hecho, la relación laboral  entre ambos sería una de las más fructíferas de la industria, formando uno de los tándems más icónicos e influyentes  de la historia reciente.

«A menudo siento que la gente viene a mí para ser fotografiada como irían a un médico o a una adivina; para averiguar cómo son. Para mí, las fotografías tienen una realidad que la gente no tiene. Es a través de las fotografías como conozco a las personas». Richard Avedon.

La instantánea forma parte del porfolio compuesto por once imágenes que Avedon tomó en Paris entre 1947 y 1957  para la mítica harper’s bazaar, revista con la que mantuvo una intensa y productiva colaboración  hasta llegar a convertirse en uno de los principales fotógrafos de la publicación. Este trabajo perteneciente a una etapa inicial de su carrera en la que se dedicó casi exclusivamente a la fotografía de moda, representa un ejemplo brillante de la reinterpretación y reconceptualización que ejecutó para elevar esta disciplina a la categoría de las bellas artes durante el siglo XX.

El porfolio al completo, que posteriormente formó parte de la exposición retrospectiva celebrada en 1978 en el museo de arte metropolitano de Nueva York, trajo consigo un soplo de aire fresco a la revista gracias en parte a la huella imperecedera que dejaron las vanguardias parisinas en el mundo artístico. Influido  por la estética clásicamente francesa, Avedon inmortalizó en ellas a las modelos mas en boga de la década de los 40 y 50, las mismas que acabarían por convertirse en verdaderas musas de su trabajo.

El sello personal e intransferible que Avedon aportó al mundo de la fotografía transluce en este retrato de Leight en el que, de modo aparentemente sencillo logra capturar e inmortalizar la esencia de la protagonista, cuyo retrato, lejos de adoptar el aire estatuario que hasta el momento había imperado, condensa el  carácter libre, espontaneo y en cierto modo juguetón y rebelde que caracterizó el espíritu de la época. Dándoles un entorno con el que interaccionar y hacerlo suyo, Avedon llenó de vida a sus retratadas quienes, sin perder ni un ápice de su  glamour, cobraron una apariencia mucho más humana  y cercana que cautivó  al público.

La forma en la que Avedon cambió para siempre la fotografía alcanza un impacto   que llega mucha más allá de las propias fronteras de la práctica, tal y como podemos susbtraer del obturario que tras su muerte el 1 de octubre de 2004 publicó el New York Times, reconociéndolo como el fotógrafo que ayudó a definir durante el último medio siglo, la imagen de belleza, elegancia y cultura»

The ode to pictorial values proclaimed by post-pictorial abstraction finds in the monochrome paintings of Joseph Marioni a magnificent heir.

Among the painters that the American artist Joseph Marioni admits to admire are Matisse, Bonnard, Van Gogh, O’Keeffe or Marc Rothko… Although at first glance it may seem that there is no point of union between the disparity of their styles, the reality is that all of them vertebrated their work under a particular treatment of light and color. This is also the case of our protagonist, whose career, linked to the Radical painting group in New York, reveals a deep reflection on the interaction of light and color.

The term Radical painting has its origin in the context of the exhibition held in 1984 at the Williams College Museum in Williamstown, which addressed the practice of a self-referential art whose main concerns derive from those concepts that, such as color, surface or structure are immanent to the pictorial act. The monochrome paintings that dominated the production of the Radical Painting artists are rooted in the tradition of post-pictorial abstraction of the 50s and 60s, approaching the precepts of Minimal Art, but also the constructivist and supremacist tendencies of the historical avant-garde. In this way, a painting was born that replaced abstract expressionism in the sixties, a painting that, far from hiding some mystical or religious message, exists for its own sake.

These influences were strongly rooted in the artistic formation of Marioni, whose work is, in stylistic terms, a direct heir of this abstract tradition that, since it burst onto the artistic scene, has exerted an unquestionable attraction on later generations of artists who are still under its orbit today.

In fact, from the seventies onwards, Marioni will focus his research on the exploration of the limits of painting, which he will carry out through his characteristic monochrome paintings. In them, as in the piece we present here, there is a special tension between color, light and support that is achieved thanks to a technical process that is much more complex than it may seem at first glance .

Considering color as “the most direct instrument of painting”, Marioni uses a variety of instruments, such as rollers, spatulas and even his fingers, to apply multiple layers of satin paint. By superimposing one after the other, the artist manages to give the pictorial surface a translucent finish that, depending on the incidence of light and the position of the viewer, reveals the underlying layers and chromatic nuances.

In this sense, the leisurely contemplation of his work becomes an essential part of it, allowing us to obtain through it a deeper understanding of color and of a changing nature that is completely subject to the fluctuations of light and our perception.

His canvases, reverberating with “liquid light” embody, therefore, much deeper complexities directly related to the pictorial concept itself, whose purest and most authentic essence must arise from its intrinsic values.. His work is therefore a plea for minimalist and conceptual sensibility but, above all, a true celebration of light and color.