Written by Andrea Domenech

Timeless elegance

At our upcoming Luxury Day auctions on June 18, 19 and 27 you can find the perfect jewelry to start building your jewelry box or to replace or upgrade one of your star pieces.

The effortless, timeless and elegant designs are the right ones for your everyday life, a smart investment and a reflection of your personal style. These essential pieces serve a similar purpose to the basics in your capsule closet. They are versatile, easy to combine with any outfit, and sophisticated enough to elevate even the simplest look. From designer rings, pendants or diamond riviéres, these timeless treasures will be with you for a lifetime. They have transcended time and trends, achieving an iconic status that always gives them an unmistakable shine.

Written by Andrea Domenech

Important private collection. Latest trends: new artistic paradigms

Latest trends: new artistic paradigms

Important private collection

Lote 35279901. Arne Quinze

In recent decades and following the rhythm set by the avant-garde, artistic currents have emerged and fed back on each other with fascinating speed, blurring the boundaries between the various trends that have shaped the current artistic landscape. The multiplicity of perspectives, cultural influences and individual visions that make up contemporary artistic practice, translucid through the infinity of styles and techniques that, as conceptual art has already shown us, have revolutionized its own notion. Artists such as Bernar Venet, Damien Hirst, Jan Fabre, Arne Quinze, David Lachapelle, open the door to a universe as intimate as it is collective, which manages to question the viewer in as many ways as their interpretations. Far from representing conventional plastic values, art is moving through a moment of rupture towards new paradigms that expand its limits beyond its traditional boundaries.

In fact, the irruption of conceptual art gave artistic practice a freedom, unprecedented until then, diluting the distinctions between life and art and questioning where one ends and the other begins. Likewise, the boundaries between disciplines are becoming difficult to elucidate as a result of the constant search for new means of expression that fit and reflect the idiosyncrasies of our time.

In this aspect, the bidding collection clearly reflects the multidisciplinary nature of the artistic practice that has been developing in recent decades, creating a scenario that encourages dialogue and divergent thinking. Enigmatic works, committed, challenging, satirical, with philosophical and spiritual overtones… beyond the eternal debate between what is and what is not art, each one of them is intrinsically linked to issues that, like advertising, religion, science, popular culture or politics, have marked contemporary society. The wide range of media that, from painting and sculpture to installations, conceptual art and photography, find a solid and revealing representation, become not only a vivid testimony of the evolution of artistic practice, but also of our own evolution as a society.

Bernat Venet & Pierre Alechinsky

The collection and its artists

In the sculptural field, Bernar Venet’s monumental steel works, characterized by deep mathematical and scientific research, are a lucid example of the bridge that conceptual art builds to science and nature, urging viewers to reflect on the intersection between them.

Lote 35279918 .
Lote 35279975.

The fascinating disparity of creative proposals leads us to Jan Fabre who, as one of the most influential multidisciplinary artists of his generation, unfolds in his work a universe as disturbing as it is seductive, where insects lining objects or provocative religious allegories constantly allude both to the dimension of the subject and to ideas linked to metamorphosis, spiritual transformation and the ephemeral nature of life.

The provocation and transgression implicit in part of the current artistic production is materialized in artists such as Wim Delvoy, who has undoubtedly become one of the most controversial and admired figures of the last decades in the contemporary circuit. An example of this is the work “Birdhouse nº8”, in which there is a biting criticism of the denaturalization that man has imposed on the animal kingdom. In fact, issues related to the animal kingdom will be of interest to artists such as Koen Vanmechelen, who have focused their research on the concepts of cross-species hybridization to provoke reflection on questions related to anthropology, bioethics and the fateful temptation of human beings to play God.

Lote 35346512.
Lote 35346513

On the other hand, and in response to the industrialization and digitalization that has defined modern times, traditional textile art techniques have experienced a resurgence as a way to preserve and revitalize ancestral craft traditions. This is the case of Portuguese artist Joana Vasconcelos, whose production has been aimed at reviving craft techniques such as crochet, which are typical of her country of origin.

Alongside them, artists such as Damien Hirst, Arne Quinze, Lori Hersberger, Jean Michel Folon or Gilbert and George reflect the constant innovation and transformation that the art world has experienced in this era and the way in which it is capable of questioning society by influencing and interpreting the context in which it has developed.

Written by Andrea Domenech

Important private collection. Latest trends: New artistic paradigms

In recent decades and following the rhythm set by the avant-garde, artistic currents have emerged and fed back on each other with fascinating speed, blurring the boundaries between the various trends that have shaped the current artistic landscape. The multiplicity of perspectives, cultural influences and individual visions that make up contemporary artistic practice, translucid through the infinity of styles and techniques that, as conceptual art has already shown us, have revolutionized its own notion. Artists such as Bernar Venet, Damien Hirst, Jan Fabre, Arne Quinze, David Lachapelle, open the door to a universe as intimate as it is collective, which manages to question the viewer in as many ways as their interpretations. Far from representing conventional plastic values, art is moving through a moment of rupture towards new paradigms that expand its limits beyond its traditional boundaries.

Written by Andrea Domenech

The lyrical landscape of Fernando Zóbel

The lyrical landscape of Fernando Zóbel

One of the most in vogue artists on the current art scene

Lote 35194563

The brilliant post-war generation transformed the artistic practice of the time into a space where plurality and creative richness were a cry for freedom. In this context, the work of Fernando Zóbel, whose figure acted as a catalyst for artistic liberation in Spain, is essential. The excellence of this post-war period has been supported by an international recognition that in recent times has increased thanks to a growing presence, both at museum and commercial level. A symptom of this is the exponential increase in the price of artists like Zóbel within the art market.

Detalle lote
Detalle del lote 35194563

The recognition of the artist of Philippine origin has gone beyond our borders, positioning him as one of the artists on the rise in the international market and especially in the Asian market. Thanks to the moment of expansion that the Asian economy is experiencing, the continent has positioned itself as the leading power within the artistic market, until it broke with US hegemony. So far this year, Zóbel has achieved magnificent results both in Europe and in the Philippines, demonstrating and consolidating the idyll he lives with the world of collecting. Undoubtedly, Zóbel’s figures are the translation of the quality and vision with which the genius brought together a whole generation of artists who, even today, continue to be a reference of freedom and creative transgression.

Fotografía del catálogo de la exposición del ,Museo del Prado al artista

Everything in Zóbel’s career runs in a continuous evolution in which changes flow in a natural and unstoppable way, just like the flow of a river. And precisely inspired by the Júcar River, Zóbel dedicated himself, starting in the 1970s, to experimenting with the reality of the natural landscape, which he reinterpreted from an abstract conception. In her he found the purest expression of the impressions and sensations that his contemplation awakened in him.

This lyrical vision of reality is translated into canvases such as ‘Hocinos’ from 1979, which Setdart will be putting out to tender. In it, the sinuous but precise lines are diluted among the vaporous and evanescent chromatism of the background, thus configuring a space whose structure transports us to an evocative and poetic landscape.

In fact, the work exemplifies the impact that the discovery of abstract expressionism, and in particular that of Mark Rothko, had on his pictorial evolution, pushing him definitively towards the abstract. However, the creative process from which his compositions are based is opposed to the expressionist conception. Far from arising from a random and visceral gesture, they are the result of an eminently mental planning. In his works each element is executed from a meticulous planning of the surface of the canvas thanks to the practically invisible grid with which he covers and structures them. Likewise, Zóbel moves away from expressionist dramatism to base his painting on the nakedness of line and movement, suggested through his strokes that cross the space and intermingle to envelop us in an atmosphere in which the calm air of silence is breathed. This mysticism that emanates in each stroke and each stain has its roots in the deep knowledge of oriental culture and especially of Japanese calligraphy, with which Zóbel, without the need for any hint of representation, is able to evoke the most peaceful and evanescent character of nature. The oriental imprint is also reflected in the contrast of opposite values or elements, bringing us closer to the philosophy of yin and yang and the tireless search for balance between opposing elements, so deeply rooted in his trajectory. Undoubtedly, this new knowledge, rooted in two distant and opposing cultures, is the germ of the birth of his characteristic and inimitable style, the same one that will make him the great representative of Spanish lyrical abstraction.

Lote ubicado en la sede de Setdart Valencia
Written by Andrea Domenech

The lyrical landscape of Fernando Zóbel

As one of the most in vogue artists of the current art scene, Fernando Zóbel stars in our next auction

The brilliant post-war generation transformed the artistic practice of the time into a space where plurality and creative richness were a cry for freedom. In this context, the work of Fernando Zóbel, whose figure acted as a catalyst for artistic liberation in Spain, is essential.

Written by Andrea Domenech

Important private collection: The Legacy of the great artists of the 20th and 21st Century

Collecting art is one of the most exciting, complex and enigmatic activities that human beings have developed since time immemorial. But what motivations move a certain individual to dedicate part of his or her vital and economic resources to the purchase of art in a passionate, constant and conscious manner?

In this respect, the extraordinary group of more than 100 works that will mark a before and after in the national art market is a paradigmatic example of a contemporary art collection, forged on the basis of a meticulous research work developed over two decades with an expert eye and a passion and artistic sensitivity that translucent in each work. In this sense, the creator of this anthological collection of works shows us, once again, that any good collection should be understood as an entity in continuous development that evolves as our understanding, knowledge and interests evolve.

Written by Andrea Domenech

Important private collection: The transformative power of the Second Vanguards.

Auction June 12

The transformative power of the Second Vanguards.

Important private collection

Lote 35279901. Arne Quinze

The collection on sale introduces us to the fascinating Second Avant-Garde through its great protagonists: Andy Warhol, Keith Haring, Jean Dubuffet, Pierre Alechinsky, Christo, Yves Klein and Nicky de Saint Phalle.

Around the decade of the 1940s, a vibrant period in the history of art began whose imprint on the world of creativity has had a decisive influence on the future development of artistic practice. The Second Avant-Garde brought with it a second wave of innovation, rupture and transgression that, from the First Avant-Garde, leads us on a stimulating journey through an absolutely transformative 20th century.

After World War II, a period marked by misery and unrest began, as it could not be otherwise. The horrors of the war wreaked havoc on a political and social level but also defined the new challenges that artistic practice had to face. The failed utopian project of the pre-war avant-gardes and the emptiness caused by the loss of referents translated into a new form of representation dominated by a feeling of tearfulness in which aesthetic enjoyment as it had been understood until then, loses its traditional conception. The political and cultural crisis that shook Europe caused the world’s artistic capital, which until then had been Paris, to move to New York. However, as can be seen in this collection, the polarity between the two creative centers energized and encouraged the artistic practice of this fertile and creatively intense period in which different styles and movements followed one another at a frenetic pace.

In this sense, the ensemble we present here reflects and encourages the dialogue that was established between the artistic proposals of both capitals. Through artists such as Dubuffet and Sam Francis we connect French Informalism with American Abstract Expressionism, whose origin is based on the same foundation: the existential crisis arising from the moral blow of the war. The need to find new forms and codes of representation to express the alienation of human beings and their loss of identity led them to show a special interest in surrealism in their conception of painting as a psychic act. The unconscious and the technique of automatism that now manifests itself on the canvas through signs and calligraphies of wild appearance, completely define this new aesthetic conception based on textures, materials and gestures, that beauty that Dubuffet identified as “an other beauty” in which the work and its surface become a symbol of the image of the world.

Lot 35279938. Jean Dubuffet
Lot 35279933. Sam Francis
Lot 35279909. Sam Francis

At the same time, the COBRA group, represented in the collection by artists such as Karel Appel and Pierre Alechinsky, saw in the primitive art of children and the mentally ill, as well as in surrealist automatism, the most authentic example of free and original art. approaching in this aspect to Dubuffet’s artistic conception. However, unlike the latter, his works are often more visceral due to the influence that German expressionism exerted on them.

Continuing with abstract artistic expressions and in the midst of the triumph of American expressionism, Op Art burst onto the scene. with an opposite premise to that of abstract expressionism: while in the latter the relevant aspect was the relationship between artist and work during the act of creation, figures such as Vasarely put the focus on the spectator, who with his or her action of looking completed and gave meaning to the work.

As a reaction to these movements stripped of external references, Pop Art and New Realism emerged on both sides of the Atlantic. While Pop, led by Andy Warhol, turned triviality into a subject worthy of aesthetic treatment and monumentalized it through the technique of enlargement, reflecting the icons of mass culture in an intelligent and critical way, the new realism of Yves Klein or Niki de Saint Phalle was born to reclaim the return to the social and the human being as the essential subject of art.

Artists such as Christo, initially ascribed to the new realism, evolved towards other creative paradigms, such as Land Art, which show us once again the fertile ground under which the art of the second half of the century developed. Together with his wife, Christo transcended the limits of traditional disciplines by fully embracing the fusion of art with the natural environment. Using nature as a canvas, the couple creatively joined forces to transform our environment into extraordinary scenarios by creating temporary installations that interact harmoniously with the surrounding nature.

The effervescence of this period brought together various movements such as Street Art and Pop Art, which exerted a reciprocal influence. Just as Warhol is considered the king of Pop Art, Haring was undoubtedly the precursor and visible head of Street Art. In fact, both artists have become icons of New York culture in the 1980s as “leaders” of a cultural revolution that came to define an entire era. Their intertwined lives and mutual influence were undoubtedly the catalyst for a new wave in the evolution of popular culture that perfectly defined the spirit of society at the time.

As a whole, this collection of art from the second avant-garde is a testament to the power of art to challenge, inspire and transform. Each work is a window to a world of infinite possibilities, where imagination is the only limit. It is a reminder that art not only reflects reality, but also redefines it.

Written by Andrea Domenech

Allegories and baroque opulence

Allegories and baroque opulence

Two women protagonists of a universe created for your delight. Pleasures arranged for the enjoyment of two senses; sight and taste.

The composition of each of our works is clear, the female characters are arranged in the center as an axis from which the stage and the rest of the elements start. Each of these is wisely chosen to convey a message, the vanity and delight that the senses bring. The rooms where the scene takes place are cabinets of curiosities.

Lote 35310192.
Lote 35310193.

On the one hand the lot 35310192, the “kunstkammer” of a rich collector who has treasured “the healing of the blind man by Rubens” or a bronze sculpture of the Rape of Hippodamia as well as tables full of jewelry, shells, watches or coins that roll until they fall on the floor. This exuberance turns us into one more character of the painting since we are feeling a similar effect of enjoyment with its contemplation. The allegory of the view has two subtle details that transcend the material treasures, one serious nature that manifests itself behind the walls of the room and the globes where the name of America is intuited in a clear allusion to the whole world that is yet to be seen and discovered.

Detalle lote 35310192
Detalle lote 35310192

Taste is a banquet with only one guest (35310193). The lady occupies a place of honor so clear that everything around her is displayed for her to choose from. About forty delicacies in the room; game hanging from the ceiling, fruits overflowing from the table, trays like the one carried by the satyr barely have room on a tablecloth unable to contain so much food. Two scenes take place in the background, an inert one with the painting of the Banquet of the Rich Epulon and one full of life and realism, the lunch in a Flemish house with guests at the table, cooks and servants in an atmosphere of profound everyday life. Different worlds coexist in the same painting, the main scene being a waste of exquisiteness.

Detalle del lote 35310193
Detalle lote 35310193

Why all this opulence? What is the message hidden in the paintings? The baroque language employed suggests both a delight in the contemplation of beautiful things and a moralizing message: being swept away by the pleasures of the senses can be all-consuming. The best way to understand this idea is through the monkeys that intersperse the scenes. They discreetly play a human role. Their attitudes ridicule man’s own behavior, drunkenness, gluttony, vanity and other sins are highlighted as a warning to the viewer. The art here can play with us and propose two paths after seeing the works: follow the author’s advice and flee from the excesses, or on the contrary let ourselves be carried away by the pleasures of the senses after being tempted by them.

Detalle lote 35310193
Written by Andrea Domenech

The Elegance and Virtuosity of Marble in Sculpture

Setdart is dedicating a monographic auction to the virtuosity of stone with twenty-seven lots, mostly marble, which will allow sculpture lovers to enjoy the unblemished finesse of those who mastered the chiseling of such delicate material.

The 19th century was the great century of the expositions, a hymn to industrial progress and globalization. Although London in 1851 with its first Universal Exposition in the Crystal Palace in Hyde Park has been recognized as the best known of these events, it was France in 1798 who inaugurated this tradition with the French Industrial Exposition.

Written by Andrea Domenech

The Elegance and virtuosity of marble in sculpture

The Elegance and Virtuosity of Marble in Sculpture

Setdart dedicates a monographic auction to marble virtuosity

Lote

The 19th century was the great century of the expositions, a hymn to industrial progress and globalization. Although London in 1851 with its first Universal Exposition in the Crystal Palace in Hyde Park has been recognized as the best known of these events, it was France in 1798 who inaugurated this tradition with the French Industrial Exposition.

Exhibitions of Fine Arts or Arts and Industry were the ones that brought together new sculptural works or works on canvas, spurring the creativity of artists under the mantle of competitiveness and economic benefits. Naturally, the exhibition of these works generated debates among the attendees, depending on the subject matter, such as the nudity of the female body. One of the most cited aspects of the nudes could be the effect they had on the viewer in relation to morality.

Related to this debate was the theory of the chastity of marble, that is, a condition that works of art would possess and that would exempt them from being perceived from sexual desire. In the 18th century, Wincklemann and Mengs already proposed sculpture as ideal representations of the human body with a spirit of its own that should not give rise to lewd interpretations. The pristineness of the Carrara marble was in keeping with this idea of purity. In addition, a distinction should be made between the artistic nude and the anatomical nude, the former being beautiful, tasteful, and the latter realistic, vulgar.

Lote 35268645.

Once this point is clarified, it is possible to correctly understand the sculpture of marble in the context of the 19th century and the pieces that have been auctioned.

Lot 35360165 is one of the oldest of the auctioned lots – together with the 16th century bust corresponding to lot 35340542 -, an interesting marble of Dionysus accompanied by a can, from the 18th century, partially lost, following Greco-Roman models, with an elegant contrapposto and dynamic leg crossing that creates a sinuous line at the hips. It is an excellent example of the survival of these models that enjoyed a second youth with the discovery of Pompeii and Herculaneum around 1740.

Lote 35360165.
Lote 35340542.

By Giuseppe Lazzerini, lot 35233500, is the most interesting piece of the auction, a representation of Pales, protector of the land and domestic livestock. Lazzerini is an artist supported by the market, with recent auctions of up to €35,000, so the estimate of €30,000 to €40,000 for the sculpture tendered at Setdart is not surprising.

Lote 35233500.

The partially nude goddess, with her bust uncovered, is a good example of what has been previously stated in relation to the theory of the marble chastityThe sex is subtly covered by the drapery, as is the case with the Venus of the lot 35340545, although in this case it is the foliage, chiseled with great skill, which prevents us from seeing the intimate parts of the goddess. It is a work of a markedly neoclassical character, inspired not only by Greco-Roman sculpture, but also by the work “Captive Love” by the Belgian Charles Auguste Fraikin.

But the 19th century was not only about male and female nudes, as philosophers, orators or politicians such as Demosthenes – 35248749 -, role models for nineteenth-century society, found their niche in the production of certain artists. To cite some personalities who saw in Demosthenes a source of inspiration, we have Henry Clay or Georges Clemenceau, the latter even writing a book about him.

Lote 35248749.

Finally, at the end of the 19th century and the first third of the 20th century, academicism suffered a hard setback when it lost the favor of the new generation of artists who found inspiration far from tradition, based on the principles of classicism. Although there are still some pieces that drink from these precepts, such as the lot 35340398, by the Italian Umberto Biagini, the Art Deco period finds in rationalism, monumentality and geometry the pillars on which to build its expressiveness. The lot 35268645 is a good example of this, since what a century ago was the reinterpretation of the Greco-Roman nude under the magnifying glass of academicism, now becomes an enigmatic hieratism, almost Egyptian in style, which contains the organicist movements of modernism just twenty years ago.

Lote 35340398.

We are, therefore, faced with an auction that focuses on the monumentality of the sculpture, the marble chastity and the debates that this has generated throughout the nineteenth century, with a nude that has managed to detach itself from the coercive academic canons to fly free under the firmament of the avant-garde of the twentieth century.

Written by Andrea Domenech

Important private collection: The Legacy of the great artists of the 20th and 21st Century

The Legacy of the Great Artists of the 20th and 21st Century

Important private collection

Collecting art is one of the most exciting, complex and enigmatic activities that human beings have developed since time immemorial. But what motivations move a certain individual to dedicate part of his or her vital and economic resources to the purchase of art in a passionate, constant and conscious manner?

In this respect, the extraordinary group of more than 100 works that will mark a before and after in the national art market is a paradigmatic example of a contemporary art collection, forged on the basis of a meticulous research work developed over two decades with an expert eye and a passion and artistic sensitivity that translucent in each work. In this sense, the creator of this anthological collection of works shows us, once again, that any good collection should be understood as an entity in continuous development that evolves as our understanding, knowledge and interests evolve.

With a scientific background, but with an innate intuition and creative spirit, our collector was initiated into the exciting path of the contemporary art world as a result of his growth as a professional in the world of advertising. His travels around the world gave him the opportunity to discover what he calls “art in motion”, that which, in the midst of the hustle and bustle and frenetic pace of cities like New York, is capable of transforming everyday life. In fact, it was precisely in New York City when the sight through his airplane window of the thousands of undulating saffron-colored scarves that Christo had installed in his “Gates” in Central Park sparked a need to experiment with contemporary art, which led to his irrepressible passion for collecting.

Lote 35279955.

Talking with him, we became aware of the deep significance he gives to the fact of collecting and, therefore, of the transcendence and impact that art has had on his life. The epiphany he felt after his encounter with Christo’s work made him understand the transformative capacity of art, whose power transcends the merely aesthetic to touch the most intimate layers of the human psyche.

In this respect, each of the meticulously selected works embodies a narrative, a story waiting to be discovered and interpreted anew with every glance, constantly evolving as we do. In fact, the relationship established between art and science through many of the great artists that are part of the collection, is another example of the indivisible link that for him exists between life and art, acting as two sides of the same coin that feed back and enrich each other.

The collection, developed in a time frame ranging from the second avant-garde to the most current artistic expressions, is, as a whole, a fascinating account of the legacy that artists of the caliber of Andy Warhol, Tom Wesselmann, Keith Haring, Christo, Jean Dubuffet, Karel Appel, Pierre Alechinsky, Peter Haley, Damien Hirst, Bernar Venet, or Jan Fabre have given to the most recent history. The wide range of media, from painting and sculpture to installations, conceptual art and photography, find a solid and revealing representation and become not only a vivid testimony of the evolution of artistic practice, but also evidence of our own evolution as a society.

Lote 35279940.

After the end of the Second World War, a new stage shook the artistic panorama: the second avant-garde began and with it a fertile and creatively intense period in which different styles and movements followed one another at a frenetic pace. The political and cultural crisis that ravaged Europe caused the world’s artistic capital to move from Paris to New York. In this sense, the collection we present here reflects and encourages the dialogue established between the artistic proposals of both capitals. From the hand of artists as decisive as Andy Warhol, David Hockney, Jean Dubuffet, Keith Haring, Sam Francis, Pierre Alechinsky, Victor Vasarely, Christo or Ives Klein we begin an exciting journey that introduces us to informalism, following with pop art, kinetic art or new realism until we reach the irruption of conceptual art.

In recent decades and advancing at the pace set by the avant-garde, artistic currents emerged and fed back on each other with fascinating speed, blurring the boundaries between the various trends that have shaped the current artistic landscape. The multiplicity of perspectives, cultural influences and individual visions that make up contemporary artistic practice, translucid through the infinite number of styles and techniques that, as conceptual art has already shown us, have revolutionized the very notion of art.

Lote 35279943. Andy Warhol
Written by Andrea Domenech

Important private collection: The Legacy of the great artists of the 20th and 21st Century

Collecting art is one of the most exciting, complex and enigmatic activities that human beings have developed since time immemorial. But what motivations move a certain individual to dedicate part of his or her vital and economic resources to the purchase of art in a passionate, constant and conscious manner?

In this respect, the extraordinary group of more than 100 works that will mark a before and after in the national art market is a paradigmatic example of a contemporary art collection, forged on the basis of a meticulous research work developed over two decades with an expert eye and a passion and artistic sensitivity that translucent in each work. In this sense, the creator of this anthological collection of works shows us, once again, that any good collection should be understood as an entity in continuous development that evolves as our understanding, knowledge and interests evolve.