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“Study for a Portrait of John Edwards,” the lithograph being auctioned at Setdart, was based on an oil painting signed in 1986, and is part of a pictorial corpus produced in the 1980s in which Edwards appears either in front of a door or seated in a chair.

In the work under bidding, the figure of his friend, placed in front of a dark threshold, decomposes into shreds of flesh that spiral back and whose shadow silhouetted on the floor acts as a mirror. It is a shadow that seems to open to a second threshold.

Despite the distortion and fragmentation that, faithful to his visceral and expressionist language, Bacon subjects the character, his face remains peaceful, although animalized. Unlike so many other portraits and self-portraits in which the faces are pure incarnate screams, here the countenance conveys a spiritual serenity. In this face that exudes kindness, the painter’s strong bond of friendship and gratitude towards his pupil is encoded.

Apart from subversive reinterpretations of historical figures and ancient paintings, Bacon prioritized his inner circle when choosing models. His work and his life are inseparable and his paintings reveal to a certain extent his emotional state. His stormy life and his genuine rebelliousness were poured on his canvases from his first paintings to his last ones.

Bacon boldly took on the inveterate puritanism of British society. The tragic aftertaste permeates his work. In it, beauty and violence, Eros and Thanatos, passion and torment, flesh and spirit, are laminated without remission. This polarity is expressed in a sublime way in this portrait of his last, and perhaps only (as he himself said), friend.

It is worth noting that, for his collection of graphic works, Bacon selected 35 paintings (including “Study for a Portrait of John Edwards”), and supervised the printing process from start to finish.

This lithograph is referenced in the Catalogue published by Editions Bervillé (2008) of the Alexandre Tacou collection.

Walasse Ting began as an abstract art artist, but most of his works since the mid-1970s have been referred to as figurative-precious art. With a marked style based on the strength of color, his work is known not only for its fresh vitality, but also for his drawings of beautiful and sensual women.

The avant-garde art of the 20th century, in its most joyful and hedonistic side, can be mapped as an exciting path that began with Matisse and reached CoBrA. An artist who was part of this league and whose work is currently being revalued is Walasse Ting (Shanghai, 1929 – New York, 2010).

This Chinese artist was part of leading artistic movements at different times: abstract expressionism and Pop Art when he lived in New York, the CoBrA group when he settled in Amsterdam… Also, while living in Paris, he soaked up the legacy of the Nabis, Matisse and Fauvism.

It is interesting how Ting influenced and was influenced by these groups, but without merging with them at any point. On the contrary, his work cannot be boxed into any current and yet it evolves in such a way that it becomes porous to its environment. This feeds on mutual affinities. For example, the friendship with Pierre Alechinsky, in his Dutch period, meant an expressive shift in the production of both: one and the other stood in the gap between East and West, enriching themselves with both cultures. In addition, Alechinsky began to use pigments and acrylic techniques inspired by his friend.

Just as the CoBrA group defended the liberation of color and impulses, directing their view towards a primordial past and also towards childhood, focusing on those who do not inhibit their creative impulse (children, outsiders, prehistoric art…), Ting also exalted color and freed forms from the conceptual containment of his contemporaries.

The CoBrA and Art Brut prioritized primitivist referents because they were born as a reaction to the material and spiritual damage that, in their opinion, progress had brought. Let’s think that the group was forged in the post-war period (50’s), in a city, Amsterdam, devastated by the bombings.

Walasse Ting, on the other hand, arrived in Amsterdam after a (New York, Parisian…) binnacle during which he had been imbued, among other things, with Matisse’s joie de vivre. The Chinese artist embraced CoBrA’s philosophy of pure chromatic and material experimentation, but without renouncing the delicacy of oriental drawing.

The result of these synergies can be seen these days at Setdart Auctions, where two watercolors from the series “Two Friends”, made by Ting in the eighties, are being auctioned.

With her sensual female figures, resolved with fluid brushstrokes, Walasse Ting has won the admiration of gallery owners, museums and collectors from all over the world.

ARTWORKS SOLD AT SETDART BY THIS ARTIST

“Woman with flowers”
83 x 126 cm.
Sold at 12.000€.

“Valerie” Watercolor/paper.
15 x 20 cm.
Awarded at 3.200€.

“Cats”
Watercolor/paper
70 x 111cm.
Awarded at 6.500€.

In the artistic field, and more specifically in sculpture, the noucentista ideology found a magnificent means of dissemination through artists such as Josep Clarà, Manolo Hugué, Aristide Maillol, Joan Rebull and Enric Casanovas, transferred their ideological and aesthetic precepts to bronze, marble or stone. In this sense, the work of Enric Casanovas is one of the fundamental pillars in the renovation of Catalan sculptural practice in the last century, giving shape to a new conception that aspired to define what is properly Mediterranean.

In this aspect, “Flora” stands as a splendid example of the Noucentist postulates, taking as a reference the ideal of Classical Greece, whose serene beauty refers us to a mythical reality. Likewise, Flora is transfigured, as goddess of spring, into an allegory of the fertile land, which, invoking the splendor of ancient civilizations, becomes, in turn, a hymn to the rebirth of her country.

Under this vision, the Barcelona-born artist gave life to a solid and rotund sculptural type in its volumes that, in its synthetic and austere expressiveness, enclosed a remarkable symbolic load, especially latent in female figures, which, like the one we present today, symbolize the paradigm of the style that Casanovas developed. The classical spirit latent in each of his works gave birth to his own concept of Mediterranean sculpture, in which the forms of the human body conquered a timeless, eternal and classic space that made Casanovas one of the most outstanding figures of the national sculptural practice of the last century.

Picasso claimed that learning to paint like the Renaissance artists took him only a few years, but painting like children took him a lifetime. The background of this mythical phrase of the painter from Malaga could well be applied to the singular vision that Edgar Plans imprints in his plastic universe, revealing himself in the face of the annihilation of the spirit of childhood, the artist from Gijón has decided, as Picasso said, to do the most difficult thing: to paint with the same freedom of a child.

If you want to discover some of the events that have marked the life and work of Edgar Plans, be sure to read the following curiosities:

1. Thanks to his father, filmmaker and writer Juan José Plans, Edgar grew up surrounded by those endearing stories and wacky characters that undoubtedly influenced his work, imbuing it with a magic and fantasy that he has fed on since its inception.
2. Plans has been developing a very personal style halfway between graffiti, pop, children’s illustration and comics, imprinting on them that rebellious spirit that draws from the aesthetics of painters as diverse as Basquiat, Dubuffet or Twombly.
3. Plans was named the second most in-demand emerging artist in the world in 2019. Since then he has managed to consolidate himself as one of the most prestigious figures and international projection, whose work is one of the most desired by collectors around the world

4. In spite of their kind and innocent appearance, their works are claim background where he lives what really worries him: ecology, violence, and rebellion against injustice and all those other issues that he believes concern those of us who inhabit the planet and want life to continue to be the place we imagined when we were children.

5. Edgar Plans’ deep knowledge of the world of jazz is reflected in his work through compositions endowed with a particular rhythmic sense.

Despite the years, and the baggage that these have given him, his work still shows that surprised and enthusiastic teenager who, after selling his first painting, saw how his dream of dedicating himself and being able to make a living from painting was closer and closer to becoming a reality, thus confirming that sometimes dreams also come true.

The vaccino field or cow pasture, this was the name given in 1600 to the most important place of the greatest empire of antiquity, the Forum of Rome. The glorious past was far behind, its memory was maintained thanks to literature, the surviving ruins barely gave an account of what they once were. The space where sculptures, temples and basilicas used to dazzle had become the work area of Rome’s shepherds. Only the arches of Titus, Septimius Severus and Constantine remained standing. The curia was a church, as was the temple of Antony and Faustina, the Colosseum, pride of the Flavians, had been reduced to rented apartments. The panorama, bleak as it may seem, was the perfect source of inspiration for the artists. The fallen capitals and columns would be taken as a reference to create imaginary and fantastic worlds based on the classical past. The paintings that reflected these scenarios would end up being called “caprices of ruins”.

Religious themes were frequent in Picasso’s production in those years, under the tutelage of Antoni Caba (see “Roman Interior Scene” at the Picasso Museum in Barcelona). But it was in the smaller formats, oil paintings on cardboard like the one we are dealing with here, where we find the religious theme treated with greater spontaneity of stroke (similar to “Baptism”, 1895, Picasso Museum). In style and technique he moves away from the influence of his academicist masters.

The scene shows a Tridentine mass (the ritual is performed with the back to the parishioners). Altar servers and friars kneel or bow their heads with reverence, directing their bodies towards the figure of the parish priest, who occupies the compositional center in front of the altar. The tabernacle glows with candles lit from the candlesticks. These confer a play of backlighting that shades the blacks and lights up the whites and golds, bathing the interior with intimate qualities. This work can be compared to “The First Communion” (1896), in which the figures also withdraw into their interior before the sacredness of the event. The Picasso’s genius, the rebellious breath, emerges in every brushstroke of this composition with a traditional theme.

The work we present here brings together the most representative features of the genre of ruins and architectures and the author’s own. The illusion and dynamism reaches a new height, creating the sensation that the ruins themselves are collapsing. Fallen columns are scattered around the characters, almost as if dodging disaster.

The genre of ruins and caprices would continue until the eighteenth century linking with the neoclassical tastes of the time. Other examples of this type can be found in works by Piranesi on the subject of engravings and in painting by Hubert Robert and Paolo Panini.

During the Baroque period in Spain the works of Juan de La Corte and other architectural painters encouraged the development of architecture itself, many of the court painters would receive commissions for ephemeral architecture such as triumphal arches, mock facades, as well as the design of monumental altarpieces and the portals of churches and palaces.

“Mandolinero” is an oil painting fully illustrative of the production that he carried out during the first years of his second stay in Rome and in which the multiple influences that he absorbed from his constant travels emerge to merge in an apotheosic exercise of luminous and colorful virtuosity. During this stage, his works frequently starred figures dressed in Italian folk costumes or in medieval costumes that denote Fortuny’s deep knowledge of the pictorial tradition of Renaissance and Baroque art.

His style, marked by an excellent technical mastery, reaches here the perfect balance between the precision of the drawing and the sumptuous recreation of light where the textile and tactile qualities of the flesh tones, together with the high degree of detail, manage to give the male figure an almost sculptural corporeality. In his oil painting technique, precise, colorful and brilliant, he reveals an eagerness to experiment and a constant search for new perspectives on issues such as light capture, which led him to become a pioneer in the construction of shaded effects with tones other than black.

Thanks to this production of an anecdotal nature where his famous cascaron paintings are already foreshadowed, Fortuny reaped an 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, giving rise to the term known as “fortunyismo”, to define the style developed by several generations of artists imbued with the painter’s irrepressible creative and innovative spirit.

Extraordinary draughtsman, gifted watercolorist and master of engraving in the wake of his admired Goya, Fortuny raised an unparalleled virtuosity in the nineteenth century that led him to redefine and embody a new concept of the figure of the artist in Spain, being, as many experts argue, the most relevant that has existed between Goya and Picasso.

Despite his unexpected and premature death, we can consider that Fortuny reached the status of an authentic myth during his lifetime, whose true dimension and artistic projection was cut short too soon, leaving us with the everlasting question of how far his talent would have reached.

Walter Benjamin said that the figure of the born collector, along with that of the curious child and the urban flâneur share the same inquiring spirit. The German author was referring to those souls who know how to see the halo that surrounds certain works (paintings, furniture, antique books, rare objects…).

The film director Luis García Berlanga embodied the prototype of the genuine collector, the one who only obeys his desires and his lust for beauty.

With the provocative and irreverent tone that characterized him, he declared himself an incorrigible fetishist. But it is worth going beyond the fetishism linked to eroticism to understand the type of “fetishes” that Berlanga pursued. The fetishist and the collector belong to the same lineage, especially if we understand fetishism in the ancient sense: the art of rediscovering in the beautiful object an almost magical value, a hidden aura.

An author with such a daring and diverse filmography (in which humor, social criticism and political satire predominate) reflects in his collecting that same polyhedral and porous character towards his environment. Berlanga was a collector of art and antiques in all their forms and expressions.

This November, SETDART presents the Luis García Berlanga Collection, which reveals its interest in Valencian painting, with great names of this school such as Emilio Sala. Another notable female portrait included in the collection belongs to the Madrid master Luis de Madrazo. Resolved with delicious satins, it shows a girl caressing a small angora cat.

Among the most contemporary pieces in the collection are the torso of “Torero” by Miguel Ortiz Berrocal and graphic works by Equipo Crónica (“Felipe IV”).

Berlanga also loved period furniture. Among the pieces in this collection, the director’s personal desk, which follows Georgian models by designer William Kent, occupies a prominent place. It also has a set of two sofas from the prestigious London firm Theodore Alexander.

Drawings, paintings, engravings and high-end furniture, as well as a set of personal photographs of the filmmaker, make up this collection that will be auctioned at Setdart on November 24. An auction that gives us a special opportunity to get closer to a little-known facet of a personality whose name gave rise to a new entry in the dictionary. The “Berlanguian” was born and died with Berlanga, but his legacy is immortal.

Although it also belongs to the Barcelona period, the painting “Classical Figures” already moves away from the Noucentist postulates. This work is a valuable link in the very personal path that the artist was clearing for himself and that would lead him to a revulsive reinvention of the pictorial practice.

In this landscape landscape with figures, painted in tempera, although the noucentista imprint remains through the reinterpretation of classicism and the interest in placing the characters in a rural environment, the way of resolving the bodies and applying the colors already warn us of a search radically different from the one carried out by the Catalan group. In the way of economizing the forms and synthesizing the line, as well as in the adaptation of the palette to a range of ochre and sienna tones, a certain Cezannian beat can be appreciated.

In this landscape, of studied composition, with an olive tree compartmentalizing the scene, the three bodies are enclosed in their own gestures and thoughts while harmoniously molding themselves to the scene. Houses have been described with the same eagerness to schematize the world, to reduce life to its essence.

Barcelona, which at the time was home to some of those who were to revolutionize art forever, such as Picasso himself, with whom Torres García must have coincided more than once in “Els Quatre Gats”, at a time when the Uruguayan painter was working with Gaudí on the stained glass windows of the Sagrada Familia, was the cradle of the man who was to become the driving force behind “universalist constructivism”. Specifically, “Classical Figures”, foreshadows his great contribution to the history of modern art.

By then he was already studying Fine Arts in Barcelona, but the Ruiz-Picasso family still spent some summers in Malaga and continued to visit friends in La Coruña, where they lived between 1891 and 1895.

“El Cerrado Victoria” has a certificate of authenticity issued by Josep Palau i Fabra. “La Misa”, with an extensive scientific analysis and artistic-documentary study, carried out at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia. According to these studies, both paintings can be dated to 1896. The Malaga landscape, made during a summer stay, shows a washing place in the foreground and a mountain on the right. It is a farmhouse nestled in the heart of the mountains of Malaga, belonging to the estate of the same name that Picasso frequented as it was next to the property of his godparents. Palau i Fabra compares this oil painting with several landscapes housed in the Picasso Museum in Barcelona, and published in the catalog “Picasso. Landscapes 1890-1912” (Barcelona City Council).

Despite these examples, landscape was a relatively uncultivated subject for Picasso. Compositionally, it presents a singular framing, which gives more prominence to the stone wall than to nature. But what is most remarkable is the technical skill and the boldness of the stroke, loose and free, which also beats with vehemence in “La Misa”.

Religious themes were frequent in Picasso’s production in those years, under the tutelage of Antoni Caba (see “Roman Interior Scene” at the Picasso Museum in Barcelona). But it was in the smaller formats, oil paintings on cardboard like the one we are dealing with here, where we find the religious theme treated with greater spontaneity of stroke (similar to “Baptism”, 1895, Picasso Museum). In style and technique he moves away from the influence of his academicist masters.

The scene shows a Tridentine mass (the ritual is performed with the back to the parishioners). Altar servers and friars kneel or bow their heads with reverence, directing their bodies towards the figure of the parish priest, who occupies the compositional center in front of the altar. The tabernacle glows with candles lit from the candlesticks. These confer a play of backlighting that shades the blacks and lights up the whites and golds, bathing the interior with intimate qualities. This work can be compared to “The First Communion” (1896), in which the figures also withdraw into their interior before the sacredness of the event. The Picasso’s genius, the rebellious breath, emerges in every brushstroke of this composition with a traditional theme.

The two works that Setdart is offering for sale on these dates bear witness to a singular moment in the heart of Picasso’s early period, because under an appearance still attached to tradition, the temperament of an unrepeatable figure is already struggling to express itself.

Both paintings were initially given by the family to close friends in Malaga and La Coruña, respectively. After that, each of them went through a unique journey, from heir to heir, until they were fortunate enough to come out of their safes and offer again the opportunity to be acquired. A unique opportunity for the most demanding collectors.

The bearers of rams or calves, known in Greece as criophores or moscophores, would probably be among the earliest examples of this iconography, we would have to go back more than two thousand five hundred years ago. These images used to be associated with the protector deity of medicine and commerce, Hermes. We can even find festivities in which young people carried on their shoulders some cattle as a reminiscence of their patron saint. The representations with these motifs would come to us through sculptures, some of them being masterpieces of the Archaic period.

Rome kept alive the Greek influences in its own culture and from these, the early Christians their sources for the new art. Christianity is based on the principles of Judaism and already in the Old Testament we find references to God as the shepherd who takes care of his flock (the people of Israel). The example is therefore defining since the shepherd would reflect the way in which we are guided by a superior figure. The comparison would be perfectly understandable for a people like the Hebrew since a good part of their history has a nomadic character along with their livestock. In the same way, the profession, as ancient and perennial as humanity itself, embraces many of the values with which God wanted to be identified and therefore the example to be followed by the faithful. Throughout the Gospels there are a good number of references to the good shepherd, whether in parables or in the more everyday discourses of Jesus.

On the artistic level, the iconography has not changed for millennia, the Greek kuros carrying a ram on their shoulders would remain the same as in early Christian art, as is the case of the manifestations in the Roman catacombs or the exceptional sculpture of the third century in the Vatican Museums. The good Christian shepherd holds a lamb in a clear allusion to other biblical passages related to salvation.

The Spanish Baroque was able to continue with this idea and adapt it to national tastes and counter-reformist dictates. A perfect example is the piece that will be auctioned on November 9th. The scene has an idyllic character with a landscape that envelops and frames everything, however, the figure of Christ in the center, as well as his solemn attitude raising his gaze to heaven indicates the mystical character of this theme. Not only is it an image loaded with beauty and tenderness, but it supports some of the most important tenets of Christianity. The main figures of Spanish painting in the seventeenth century gave outstanding examples of this composition in their works, including Juan van der Hamen or Nicolas García Salmerón in which we clearly see parallels with our work.

A curious detail of the evolution of this theme is the adaptation of this iconography to the Virgin Mary, The Divine Shepherdess. An invocation born at the beginning of the XVIII century in our country. Undoubtedly, the best artist to define these representations is Alonso Miguel de Tovar, whose work was recently auctioned by Setdart.

SETDART: Your recent arrival in Spain was spontaneous and full of uncertainty. Tell us how you, a Moscow filmmaker, have made a radical turn in your career, and how are you adapting to these new circumstances?

COSTA GOREL: My activity as a filmmaker that I developed in Moscow, I never excluded the canvas and painting from my life. This is how I started my painting career before moving to Spain.

The last two years I have been looking for a representation of the characters and states I interacted with in my studio, and in which the spirit of Orlando reigns. [Setdart annotation: Refers to the character in Virginia Woolf’s novel “Orlando: A Biography” and the movie “Orlando” (Sally Potter, 1992)].

Orlando is my trusted mentor. Thanks to him I do not give up ideas about cinematography and, perhaps, at some point I will return to this facet.

S: Maybe you, as a director, would like to do your own interpretation of Orlando?

CG: Sure, that would be great. I would like to direct a sequel to “Orlando” in the 21st century. On the other hand, he is precisely the character and the central theme of my works. Orlando traveled through the ages, changing his physical appearance, his sex, but always kept a home within himself or herself, despite all historical events, representing, in a way, the continuation of Albrecht Dürer’s Melancholy.

S: You have lived in different cultural contexts, and have entered different international art scenes. From your experience, what do you think about the situation with young art in Spain?

CG: Yes, I lived in different countries, and I was educated in different traditions. I spent my childhood in Germany. From there comes my attraction to the ascetic characters of Dürer, Hohlbein [Wolfgang Hohlbein (1953) German writer], Schiele. I am fascinated by the night and the moon, I think this influence has to do with the German proverb: “Die Nacht ist die Mutter der Gedanken” – the night is the mother of all thoughts -. At first glance it is a simple idea, but it is at the basis of the German tradition, including its revival, which for me is the jeweled crypt.

In addition, my family is multinational. I have Jewish, Arab, Persian, German, Polish, Russian and Ukrainian roots. So I absorbed the meanings and connotations of all these cultures. Curiously, today I continue with this tradition. I settled in a country where I had never been, and which I knew only through movies or conversations.

Now all these roots from the past are enriched with the excitement of the newness I experience every day. Among other things, I am studying Spanish contemporary art.

The situation with contemporary art in Spain has many positive perspectives. Because historically Spanish culture is eclectic per se, and this characteristic creates a particularly fruitful ground for the acceptance and production of a wide spectrum of artistic expressions.

Right now, I believe that the Spanish context of contemporary art is ready to occupy a leading position on the world art scene.

S: Where do you think is the center of contemporary art in Spain?

CG: I think that, in part, the art scene in Spain is decentralized. This is due both to the use of technology and to the Spanish historical context. Each region has its own dynamics and its own artistic center. But, if I have to choose one, I would say for me it’s Barcelona. Barcelona has a spark, an artistic spirit that was generated throughout different periods. It is the Notre Dame of art, and the German idea of the night, which we talked about before, is very well linked to the city of Barcelona.

S: As a millennial generation artist and the rightful citizen of the world, tell us what benefits do you find in exhibiting and selling your work at Setdart?

CG: I have only positive experience selling my works online. While I am in one country, my paintings are sold and exhibited all over the world at the same time. And if there is still someone who has doubts when buying online, both buyers and sellers can have their quality guarantees with Setdart and trust your work.

S: Thank you very much Costa for your confidence in our auction house and our team. We are excited to work with emerging artists and the dynamic that is created between collectors and new generation artworks. Tell us, from your perspective as an artist, 3 reasons why to invest in young art.

CG: The first reason is the economic and psychological support of an emerging artist. The person who brings the light of beauty into this world has to feel confident and believe in herself. In addition, the financial part motivates the creator, because the sale of a painting translates into: “it means that my art is needed by someone”.

The second reason is long-term investments in both the economic and emotional sense. Art changes your life and your perception of it, rejuvenates you, liberates you and helps you overcome alienation.

Finally, investing in young art in some way is an artistic act. It means the victory of good over evil, proclamation of beauty and service to it.

S: You have explained the art market in a very poetic way, we sign under every point. Finally, advise us 3 current artists to follow.

CG: It’s difficult to narrow it down to just three artists. But I would name these three that I personally follow Ali Warren, Miriam Cahn and Roberta Lobeira.

SETDART: Thank you very much Costa, for your time and for choosing us among all the platforms for the sale of your works.

COSTA GOREL: Thanks to you!

“Colour ligth excercise” is in this sense, a paradigmatic example of a creative proposal that Bernardi Roig sustains from a vast and deep cultural knowledge whose philosophical, literary and cinematographic richness are the seed under which the Majorcan artist makes the genesis of his creative discourse sprout. In it, a wide range of references from the history of art, but also literary figures such as Bernhard, Musil, Beckett or Bataille, who courageously showed us the fragility and vulnerability of human beings. and whose heartbreaking voices emerge among the contradictions, impulses and frustrations endured by the protagonists of Bernardí’s sculptures.

His lonely, desperate and bewildered characters are a powerful metaphor for the existential wound and the internal struggle of contemporary man, reflecting the permanent state of tension between a world that is drifting and the very ephemeral nature of our being. In this aspect, the symbolic connotations of light will play a determining role in the plastic and conceptual development of his work, which, as in this case, is materialized in the fluorescent neon lights weighing more than 100 kilos that the man holds on his back. This image leads us to the classical tradition and the myth of Sisyphus, whose story is here reversed in a modern key, transforming the stones that condemned him to drag until the end of his days, into fluorescent tubes that blind and make him invisible, until he is cornered into the most absolute isolation. The blinding light will act, therefore, as a metaphor for the inability of human beings to communicate within a society that, precisely because of over-information and over-stimulation, has deprived them of the guarantees on which they had built the certainties that cemented their stability and raison d’être. “Exercises of Light” is, in turn, the symbol of an amnesiac society that, in the face of its progressive loss of historical and individual memory, will also end up lacking identity. The monochrome white reinforces this idea, giving a phantasmagoric air to his characters that, more than presence, denote a certain sensation of absence increased by the blinding light of the neon lights that blur and dilute the physical limits of the sculpture.

The acute staging that Bernardí plans down to the last detail only increases exponentially the sensation of absurdity and emptiness, referring us to the baroque sense of life understood as a theater where we are all actors in the drama of our existence. His audaciously disturbing creative proposal becomes the materialization of the loneliness, lack of communication, uneasiness and uncertainty of modern man.

Theirs is an art that transcends as the sign of the burden and conditioning of everything external that, sometimes, even unconsciously we choose, as well as of that which chooses us and from which very often we cannot free ourselves. Because Bernardí, like his admired Beckett and Musil, has been able to admit and describe with extreme lucidity the fragile and volatile nature of the human spirit.

Influenced by Wagnerian theories of the total work of art, Gaudí conceived his work under the idea of integrating all the arts into an indivisible higher unity, where architecture, sculpture, design and applied arts will be an extension of each other. Under this precept, each and every one of the elements will be taken care of to the extreme in order to achieve a beauty that could only be found through the perfect coherence and conjunction of unity in the whole.

In this sense, the importance that Gaudí will give to the different architectural and decorative elements is evident in the design of the niche we are dealing with, whose remarkable workmanship is evident in every detail that ornaments the gilded carving. It combines various aspects of Gaudí’s aesthetic and iconographic ideology, intimately related to his spiritual fervor and love for the natural world. The lower part, starring a cherub with open wings, starts with a structure decorated with intertwined scroll motifs. Around the small niche that follows it, a continuum of curved and undulating forms develops without interruption, culminating in the figure of a winged nymph, wrapped in exuberant floral bouquets, emerging on a venereal shell.

The profuse interest in the ornamental latent in this piece will be the common denominator of the modernist arts, whose spaces and surfaces will be saturated with all kinds of stimuli characterized by a great visual sensualism. His aesthetics dominated by the dynamism of the undulating and sinuous forms of nature will break with the structural rigidity of Gothic, from which Gaudí, despite sharing the idea of verticality as a connection between the earthly and celestial worlds, moved away to defend the curve as the line of God, as opposed to the straight line of the human being.

The evident symbolic charge is manifested in this piece under a typically Gaudí iconography in which we can already detect the axes that were the backbone of his thought and particular vision of the world. On the one hand, his deep commitment to the Catholic faith transcends through elements such as the venera shell, whose presence reminds us that our life must be a constant pilgrimage in the footsteps of Jesus. The Christian dogma is reinforced by the figure of the cherub who, as God’s messenger, brings us closer to the faith of the creator, reminding humanity of his divine glory.

The religious content is complemented by a repertoire of forms and elements taken from Nature, which, as the primordial source of his art, will become, as he himself stated, his best teacher. Understood as the summit of the divine work, Gaudí found in it the principles that governed his work, reaching a mystical expressiveness that could only be accessed through the application of the organic laws of nature. In this way, the various plant and floral elements, in conjunction with the organic forms that unfold, They manage to connect and identify artistic practice as part of natural creation and, therefore, a reflection of the divine. The references to the natural world culminate with the nymph that crowns the structure, whose condition as a magical being that is born and guards the forests, represents in itself an allegory of nature.

Gaudí’s talent and his impact gave birth to an era of splendor for the arts: technique, aesthetics and religion were masterfully united, always evoking Mother Nature as the symbol par excellence of divine creation. We are fortunate that it was in Barcelona where the infinite imagination of this genius crystallized.

Finally, we should mention two panels, the first “The Rest of the Flight into Egypt”, as proof of the marked influence that Flemish painting had on the artists of the peninsula through imported works. Following the thread of the paintings made by artists from Flanders to be sent to Spain, we have the case of an anonymous panel inspired by the model of Ambrosius Benson that was so successful throughout Europe.

The Asian art auction that Setdart is holding on October 10 hides small treasures of great artistic value. Among the pieces tendered is a small cup dating from the Ming Dynasty, which ruled China between 1368 and 1644, which stands out for the delicacy of the exquisite play of fretwork and the white of its polished surface. It is an export piece brought to Europe from Shanghai by the acclaimed Asian art dealer John Sparks, who ran a well-respected store specializing in Far Eastern art in the city of Manchester.

The fact that the British Museum has in its permanent collection two specimens of similar characteristics to the piece we are auctioning is a clear indicator of the importance that pieces of this kind may have had in Chinese society.

In turn, this fact reminds us of the fundamental role played by the imperial kilns, especially in the city of Jingdezhen, considered the capital of Chinese porcelain par excellence.

In this sense, Otto Zitko’s work is a direct heir to both the American abstract tradition and the Viennese activists of his homeland.

His pictorial process, far from the spontaneity and immediacy that a priori may seem, hides a complex and detailed study of light, space, texture and surface with which he develops a large-scale calligraphic exercise. Traversing aluminum panels and even large format walls, Zitko’s compositions will find their sustenance in a seemingly endless line, which, expanding over the surface almost at the rhythm of the blood pulse, acquires the physical appearance of a dense mass made up of lines, twists and curves. The strokes, which like spontaneous automatisms flow in a rhythmic and wild composition, become the expression of a primary impulse linked, on the one hand, to art-brut and, on the other hand, to surrealist automatic writing that escapes any rational thought.

Nevertheless, beneath the apparent expressive character of his work lies a complex and studied structure of self-organization whose reflexive charge is symbolized in what the artist calls der lange Weg der Linie (the long path of the line) and in which it encloses a series of dualities (interior-exterior, subject-object, and particular-common) that challenge the viewer at different levels of consciousness. On the one hand, by looking closely at the work we discover the fragmented faces that can be guessed between the layers underlying the energetic gestures, emerging in the painting as the expression of a frenetic and overstimulated alienating way of life and, on the other hand, by drawing the movements at different speeds, lengths, pressures and intensities very often helped by a pole, the artist recreates in his work an illusory game between the two-dimensional and three-dimensional space that requires a multiplicity of points of view from the viewer.

While the image of the Buddha as Siddhartha, the meditative monk with an affable gesture and humble appearance, is well engraved in our retina, the same is not true of the bodhisattvas. This name is given to a whole family of Buddhas who voluntarily renounce nirvana to return to earth and help humanity find enlightenment. The iconographic similarities between the two deities sometimes make it difficult to distinguish between them. Nevertheless, bodhisattvas possess a number of intrinsic traits, such as ostentatiousness and richness of appearance that link them to the earthly world and separate them from the iconographic canon with which we associate the Buddha.

Bodhisattvas are often grouped in many ways, adopting different appearances and associating with other divinities, which accentuates their already complex iconography. The most famous triad is composed of Avalokiteśvara, Manjusri and Vajrapani, the most revered bodhisattvas, representatives of Buddha’s compassion, wisdom and power.

Probably one of the most important is the figure of Avalokiteśvara “the one who looks down”, known as the one of infinite compassion. Its mission is to accompany the last of all beings to nirvana. Legend has it that in his desire to hear the cries of all the beings of the world, his master endowed him with ten heads to be able to hear in all directions and to be able to help them, he also endowed him with 1,000 arms. It is very common to see this divinity in its feminine form, as for example in China, where the trait of compassion is closely linked to women. It is popularized under the name Guanyin, adopting the appearance of a beautiful young woman bearing different attributes.

Manjusri, “the one with the sweet appearance” is the bodhisattva of wisdom, usually with a kind gesture, represented with a book and a sword that fights the ignorance and lies of the world where the faithful dwells. Completing this triad is Vajrapani “the one with the thunderbolt in his hand” in many cases seen as an image of power . He can be represented in serene or terrifying mode, but always with the vajra in his right hand. His representation as a warrior emphasizes a combative and fierce image, which under popular beliefs represents the struggle against negativity.

These three examples are but a small sample of the iconographic richness that reaches the West in the form of spectacular works of art, demonstrating without a doubt the complex and admirable coexistence of cultures and beliefs that take these deities as a common denominator. Some representations of these deities will be auctioned at the oriental art auction to be held on October 10 at Setdart. The collection will include a varied repertoire of pieces from Chinese, Tibetan and Japanese culture, among others, and will offer a privileged view of the evolution of oriental art over the centuries.

Both pieces perfectly exemplify the teachings that the gusoku-shi (master armor craftsmen) poured into this type of protection and help to understand the role of the samurai in the evolution of imperial Japan, a society defined by instability and continuous power struggles between the different existing clans.

In Setdart we want to delve into the fascinating era of the samurai and, to do so, we bring you 7 curiosities that will allow you to better understand how the armor was and what role these warriors played in Japanese society:

1. The samurai or bushi had a strict code of ethics known as bushido. Translated as “the way of the warrior”. It was a code that demanded discipline, loyalty and honor until death.
   

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2. The armors have been catalogued by experts as unique and exclusive pieces. They have become an object of desire for collectors of Asian art, who do not hesitate to invest large amounts of money in order to acquire one of these pieces.
   

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3. The manufacture of armor became so complicated that by the 19th century it was considered an independent art known as “odoshi-gei”.

4. Armor evolved to better adapt to the needs of battle. Thus, they were initially made of iron and were later combined with other materials such as leather or silk, providing greater lightness.

5. The yoroi armor or “great armor”, like the ones we auctioned, was a type of protection that covered the whole body, from head to toe. It even had an iron mask that covered all or part of the face and was intended to simulate a demon in order to intimidate opponents.

6. Some armor weighed more than 30 kg, which implied great physical and mental strength on the part of the warrior.

7. In peaceful periods such as Edo, the armor lost its protective character and became an identifying symbol of each clan. Thus, codes of how to wear it and how to wear it were created, and it became a showcase for the arts of many artisans.

In this sense, art has become a graphic testimony of the dances of past cultures and eras, reflecting some of the challenges and concerns that artists have faced in overcoming the barriers between the two disciplines.

Thus, the expressive and fleeting nature of movement became a motif of representation for artists such as Degas, Rodin, Renoir and Matisse, who found in this art the greatest expression of their desire to capture the plasticity contained in the human body.

However, the multiple possibilities offered by this theme are not limited to purely plastic aspects, but also reflect the desire to immortalize the ritual that surrounds the practice of ballet, portraying the atmosphere of schools and theaters, as well as the professionalism, sacrifice, elegance and sensitivity that surrounds the art of dance.

Within the national nineteenth-century painting, many great artists were moved, in part, by the great acceptance that reached among the bourgeoisie of the time, dedicated part of their production to this theme. As one of the most brilliant chroniclers of 19th century Catalonia, Manel Cusí transferred the refinement of bourgeois society to his work through representations of a gallant character dominated by the absolute prominence of women. Among them, the figure of the dancer will become vitally important both for the technical possibilities it offers and for the aesthetic connotations that emerge from it.

The typology of the dancer that Cusí will give birth to, far from having Degas as a reference, keeps a close link with that of the French painter Pierre Carrier Belleuse, coinciding with the latter in the same aesthetic purposes based on the exaltation of feminine beauty. Unlike Degas, for Cusí the concern for capturing the movement of the dancers and the ephemeral gesture was never one of his main objectives, preferring to represent them in static positions that allowed him to work with intensity on the figure. As can be seen in this case, Cusí gave special importance to the handling of light, being one of the pioneers in working with electric light, contrary to the artists who worked with “plen air”. Likewise, the work centered on the moment in which the dancer, after her performance, receives an exuberant bouquet in her dressing room, allows the artist to recreate the play of light, as well as the veiling of the tulle and the soft flesh tones of the dancer’s face.

As the title of the book dedicated to the artist underlines, Manuel Cusí’s devotion to beauty became the leitmotiv of his entire career, capturing like few others the ideal of feminine beauty that, at that time, dominated artistic practice.

In fact, some of his most emblematic series draw directly from some of the most significant artists who anticipated and elevated the expressionist aesthetics and philosophy to the highest level. In this sense, Saura’s plastic universe finds in the human figure one of the essential axes of a vast trajectory in which we will see an endless parade of mutilated and distressed aberrant characters that, in line with his admired Goya, Munch or Ensor, show us the monstrous side that resides in every being.

An example of this is this resounding oil painting that, under the title of Don, allows us to admire the very personal and recognizable world that Saura was able to build. Undoubtedly and as we see in this case, the backbone of his work was always the human figure, and very specifically his faces and heads to which, starting from the figurative substrate, he subjected to a radical transformation associated with the gestural painting of action paiting and informalism. Through the strident features, which by means of frenetic strokes break the limits of the face, Saura reveals a heartbreaking portrait of a society that, stripped of its identity, is consumed in a world in perpetual contradiction and decadence.

Since 1956, when the first head appeared in his paintings, it became one of his signs of identity, completely conditioning the whole development of his own universe full of eyes, faces, signs and violent strokes that become a true catalog of the obsessions, passions and fears that Saura faced with brutal honesty. Their deconstructed or variegated heads, fused in a somber atmosphere reduced to black and white tones, are rooted in Goya’s Black Paintings and Munch’s frightened characters. who, respectively ahead of their time and analyzing their own, showed the reality of a century that would go down in history as the century of horror. In a continuous process of construction and destruction that defines the image, Saura took up the baton of both artists, representing the alienation of the human being in faces that, diluted and mutilated or drowned in a solitary cry, become both victim and executioner of the disasters that occurred throughout the twentieth century.

In this sense Goya, considered by many the creator of modernity, left an indelible mark on artists who, like Saura, released in his paintings the monsters that reside within us and within themselves. The Aragonese painter’s informalist gesture underlies the expressive force with which Goya portrayed the reality of the world and the human being with its lights and shadows, in an overwhelming story that was ahead of its time to denounce the barbarism in which humanity was immersed. From this point of view, Saura’s portraits are presented as updates of the artist from Fuentetodos, revealing that fierce vein that began in the Baroque period and that finds in Goya one of its greatest exponents. In this aspect, Saura establishes an analogy between this trait of Goya’s painting and the gesturality of abstract expressionism, which, by establishing itself as a symbol of freedom, allows the artist to face himself before the painting -as Goya did- without ties or impostures.

Following the tradition, Saura turned his gaze towards the Nordic expressionism led by artists such as Munch or Ensor, who acted as a common thread between the work of Goya and that of Saura himself. The Norwegian artist stands as a fundamental pillar in Saura’s expressive culmination through anguished faces that, as in Munch’s work, represent the insurmountable abyss to which humanity is heading.

In short, the monstrous characters of Goya, Munch and Saura shout the same lesson: if they take away our identity, they take away everything, even our humanity. This is the great learning that Goya, in his lucid and torn vision of humanity, brought to modern art. Because the human condition is implicit in the condition of a monster, two sides of the same coin that in the 20th century became an incontestable truth that Goya anticipated and in which Saura projected the stark reality of a world in decline.

Undoubtedly, the magnitude of his work in the development and understanding of Spanish post-war art makes him one of the most outstanding artists of the second half of the 20th century and an essential value for any good collection of contemporary art.