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20 top picks from the 20th century at Art Basel Online Viewing Rooms 2020


 

20TH CENTURY ARTWORKS

28 - 31 October 2020

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Our top 20 selection

A great opportunity to buy some of the most influential artists of the past century.

 

The Art Market can be daunting to navigate.

Use our expertise to enjoy buying art, safely and at no hidden-costs.


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LYNDA BENGLIS

SERPENS, 1984

86.4 X 38.1 X 38.1 (CM)

BRONZE, WIRE, MESH, ZINC, NICKEL & COPPER COATING

$250,000 - $500,000 - INQUIRE

CHEIM & REID GALLERY

 

LE CORBUSIER

NATURE MORTE PURISTE, 1923

27.7 X 38.5 (CM)

WORK ON PAPER

$ 55,000 - INQUIRE

GALERIE ZLOTOWSKI


About the work: Purism is an art movement formed in 1917 by Amédée Ozenfant and Charles-Edouard Jeanneret (the future le Corbusier) as a successor to cubism, which they claimed had been rendered obsolete due to the shock of the great war. Their objective was to record modern life by evoking the standardised manufacture of domestic objects and the mechanisation of society – a legacy of the 1914-18 war. Furthermore, unlike cubism, purism does not distort objects but tries to capture their essence. Not only bottles, glasses or vases are represented, it is the mere concept of the objects that is the subject of purist works. 

To establish a firm foundation for their new movement, they produced a manifesto: “after cubism” published in 1918, and in 1920 created the magazine “l’esprit nouveau” which promoted their art internationally while building up a solid reputation for them as theorists. Courtesy Galerie Zlotowski


 

KWON YOUNG-WOO

UNTITLED, 1985

224.0 X 170.0 (CM)

GOUACHE, CHINESE INK ON KOREAN PAPER

$270,000 - INQUIRE

KUKJE GALLERY


 

MARKUS OEHLEN

UNTITLED, 1983

200.0 X 300.0 (CM) 

DISPERSION, WAX ON CANVAS

€ 90,000INQUIRE

BÄRBEL GRÄSSLIN GALERIE

 

KISHIO SUGA

PROGRESSION OF SPATIAL ALIGNMENT, 1979

72.0 X 228.0 X 73.0 (CM) 

WOOD, BRANCHES

$50,000 - $100,000 INQUIRE

MENDES WOOD DM GALLERY

About the work: Kishio suga is one of japan’s most celebrated artists, whose diverse and influential practice spans site-specific installation, assemblage, and performance. His career began in 1968 when he started making temporary installations out of natural and industrial materials such as wood, metal, wire, and concrete. By introducing an incongruous yet defined structure of raw material into the gallery space, he sought to reveal the reality of mono (things/materials) and the jōkyō (situation) that holds them together. Suga was identified as a critical theorist within a loose group of like-minded artists that later came to be known as mono-ha (school of things). Though short-lived, this movement was a significant turning point in postwar japanese art history, echoing the concurrent development of land art, arte povera, and supports/surfaces in the united states and europe, yet rooted in a specifically japanese intellectual and cultural context. Courtesy Mendes Wood DM Gallery

 

NANCY GRAVES

UNTITLED (HEAT DENSITY MEASUREMENT OF A CYCLONE), 1974

57.1 X 76.2 (CM) 

WATERCOLOR, GOLD LEAF AND GRAPHITE ON PAPER

$25,000 - $50,000 INQUIRE

MITCHELL-INNES & NASH GALLERY


About the work:

During the 1970s, Nancy Graves made a substantial body of paintings, drawings, prints and a film that delved into the systems that underlie the production and legibility of maps. While her earliest works were based on illustrations selected from ethnographic studies of polynesian and inuit navigational maps, graves’s formal engagement with mapping took a new direction when she chose to depict detailed images of the topographies of mars, the moon, mercury and earth’s ocean floors based on data transmitted by orbiting satellites, then a pioneering technology. Courtesy Mitchell-Innes & Nash Gallery


ROBERT MAPPLETHORPE

LISA LYON, 1982

38.7 X 38.7 (CM) 

GELATIN SILVER PRINT

EDITION OF 10 + 2 AP, ED. /10

$31,000 INQUIRE

MAI 36 GALERIE

 

KATHARINA GROSSE

UNTITLED, 1992

200 X 250 (CM) 

OIL ON CANVAS

$250,000 - $500,000 - INQUIRE

NÄCHT ST. STEPHAN GALERIE


About the work: In her pioneering works from the late 1990s, Grosse sought to overcome the boundaries of the canvas, striving for spatial expansion. These large-scale works juxtapose colors of various densities in vertical, transparent brushstrokes. The paint seems to neglect the two dimensions of the canvas, virtually pushing beyond its boundaries. The pictorial space no longer appears as a limiting entity, but as an environment. Untitled is an outstanding example of Grosse’s interest in painting as a mode of expression beyond representation––as a sensation that addresses both the viewer’s visual and corporeal perception of space and color. We follow the painter’s movement in front of the canvas as we are drawn into the work and its dynamic, yet conceptualized brushstrokes.

Installation View © Katharina Grosse and VG-Bild-Kunst, Bonn, 2020 / Photo: Volker Naumann

 

CHRIS BURDEN

DELUXE PHOTO BOOK, 1971-73, 1974

9.5 X 28.6 X 29.2 (CM) 

9 COLOR PHOTOS, 44 B/W-PHOTOS

50+10AP

€130,000 - INQUIRE

KRINZINGER GALERIE


About the work: “Chris Burden has created a unique and powerful body of work that has redefined the way we understand both performance and sculpture. His early works remain some of the most extreme and influential performances of the era, inspiring younger artists through his radical approach not only to the body but also to issues within a larger sociopolitical context. In the 1980s, he began a series of ambitious sculptures of increasing size and complexity using materials common to childhood playtime activities (such as erector sets, toy soldiers, model train sets, toy vehicles, and construction models) to create miniaturized yet still monumental reconstructions of structures and environments.


The deluxe photo book 1971 -1973, is a hand-painted binder containing photo-documentation and explanatory texts of the first three years of burden’s performances. The performances were in essence empirical investigations in to the “what ifs” of the world at large. Their purpose was to be accessible, immediate and public and it was critical to burden that his “pursuit of the facts” be easily comprehensible. The deluxe photo book 1971 - 1973 is the major art work of his early performances. Courtesy Krinzinger Galerie

 

CINDY SHERMAN

UNTITLED, 1979

45.7 X 58.4 (CM)

CHROMOGENIC PRINT

50 + 15 AP

USD 25,000 - USD 50,000 - INQUIRE

BRUCE SILVERSTEIN GALLERY

 

ROBERT BREER

UNTITLED, 1952

106.0 X 87.0 X 3.8 (CM)

OIL ON CANVAS, FRAMED

EUR 85,000 - INQUIRE

GALERIE GB AGENCY


About the work: Sequence from 77  presents an arrangement of photograms created by robert breer for his film "77". The artist selected 30 from the hundreds of photograms used in this experimental film and arranged them into a work in which his own image, partly caricatured interacts with fading shades, forms and colors.  The work can be read from various starting points, in synch with the artist's reluctance to conform with notions of a linear narrativity. 

 


PETER FISCHLI & DAVID WEISS

MASTURBINE AND THE FART, 1984 - 1985

40.0 X 30.0 (CM)

TWO VINTAGE GELATIN SILVER PRINTS

EDITION OF 3

USD 100,000 - INQUIRE

MATTHEW MARKS GALLERY

 

DANIEL BUREN

PEINTURE ET COLLAGE SUR PAPIER, 1964

64.6 X 50.0 (CM)

SITUATED WORK - ACRYLIC, GRAPHITE, BURLAP AND RED PAPER STUCK ON CARDBOARD

USD 100,001 - USD 250,000 - INQUIRE

GALLERIA CONTINUA

About the work:

This painting dates back to 1964, when the artist was already selected for the prize "le franc de la jeune peinture", that earned him the participation to his first personal exhibition in november in paris. Buren combines collage with painting, technique mindful of modern european artists that he admired, such as picasso, hains, villeglé and that can anticipate his subsequent work with black and white vertical stripes, glued, to redesign space. Made in paris, signed up on the back with ballpoint pen: daniel buren / rue de navarin / paris 9, dated up backwards with ballpoint pen: april 64. Daniel buren, catalogue raisonné, number of the work: t ii - 125. Courtesy Galleria Continua

 

ROBERT MORRIS

GREEN FELT PIECE, 1983 - 1984

215.0 X 238.0 (CM)

FELT

USD 250,001 - USD 500,000 - INQUIRE

GALERIE NORDENHAKE

About the work:

In his 1984 solo exhibition at Galerie Nordenhake Robert Morris (1931-2018) worked with felt sourced in Sweden for the sculptures. His now iconic Untitled (Green Felt Piece)(1983-84) from this exhibition obliquely alludes to the human body through its response to gravity and epidermal quality. Robert Morris began to make felt sculptures in the late 1960s as a departure from the rigid materials and strict geometry of Minimalism. Courtesy Galerie Nordenhake

 

YAYOI KUSAMA

GROUND, 1965

28.6 X 22.2 (CM)

GOUACHE, INK AND PASTEL ON PAPER

USD 250,001 - USD 500,000 - INQUIRE

BARBARA MATHES GALLERY


About the work: In yayoi kusama’s ground (1965), polka dots in yellow, blue, green, red, and white are interwoven in an allover pattern reminiscent of kusama’s large-scale infinity nets. Varying in size and shape, the dot pattern evokes the vibrant energy and imperfect seriality of nature. A dramatic green zig-zag—another form that recurs through kusama’s career—frames three sides of the work. Courtesy Barbara Mathes Gallery

 

AL LOVING

BURLESQUE, 1985

86.4 X 99.1 (CM)

MONOPRINT, ACRYLIC AND COLLAGE ON PAPER

USD 50,001 - USD 100,000 - INQUIRE

GARTH GREENAN GALLERY

About the work: Loving’s early hard-edged abstractions established him as the first African American in history to secure a solo-exhibition at the Whitney Museum in 1968, the same year he moved to New York. But he regarded the early success as something of a “self-fashioned prison,” according to the art historian Katy Siegel. In the following decades, the artist underwent radical transformation, departing from the Apollonian notions of centralized composition, figure/ground separation, and pictorial frame. His new works were hulking masses of cut and torn materials that stretched irregularly, spiraling outward, surrounding the space, and engulfing the viewer. “[It] strikes me as radical a rupture as one can make in one’s history,” wrote the critic John Yau. Courtesy Garth Greenan Gallery


 

SOL LEWITT

WALL DRAWING #317, 1979

300.0 X 500.0 (CM)

PENCIL, WALL PAINT

USD 250,001 - USD 500,000 - INQUIRE

KONRAD FISCHER GALERIE

 

RICHARD DIEBENKORN UNTITLED, 1958-62 34.9 CM X 42.5 CM INK ON GRAPHIC PAPER $85,000 INQUIRE

VAN DOREN WAXTER GALLERY


About the work: These innovative works were made between 1955 - 1967 and the presentation is comprised of never before exhibited works. During this phase of Diebenkorn’s long career, he turned against the prevailing tide of abstract expressionism and returned to the possibilities of representational figure drawing and painting. Working directly from a live model, Diebenkorn masterfully explores the intricate interplay within intimate interiors between formal rigor, studied observation, and diverse mark-making. Courtesy Van Doren Waxter Gallery

 

HARVEY QUAYTMAN  SCORCH, 1987/88 94.5 CM X 95.5 CM ACRYLIC AND GROUND GLASS ON CANVAS $55,000 INQUIRE

GALERIE NORDENHAKE

About the work:

Between 1980 and 1995 Quaytman committed himself experimenting with the cruciform pattern as a form rather than a symbol. In this refined painting titled Scorch (1987/88) Quaytman developed his own paint and worked with a newly discovered pigment, a brilliant yellow primarily produced as industrial car paint. He flooded the canvas with it and applied another unusual material, ground glass mixed with white pigment, in the shape of a wide cross on top of it. With this idiosyncratic approach, the artist creates spatial shifts within the painting and incorporates space which makes the painting feel ‘real’. In Quaytman’s works, titles become the verbal counterpart to the visual thus, in Scorch, image and the sound go hand in hand. Scorch means to burn a surface resulting in a change in color or texture. Courtesy Galerie Nordenhake

 


LARRY JONHSON UNTITLED (HEH, HEH), 1987 151.1 CM X 151.1 CM COLOR PHOTOGRAPH EDITION AP1/2+2AP $80,000 — INQUIRE

DAVID KORDANSKY GALLERY


About the work: From the late-1980s through the 1990s, Johnson made many of his most iconic and far-reaching photographs. Johnson's signature technique involves photographing his drawings and collages, then further manipulating each reproduction so that it represents an idiosyncratic amalgam of popular history, text-based narrative, graphic design, and class awareness. In doing so, his pictures not only map the physical and mental geographies of Los Angeles but establish a broader critique of the ways in which culture defines itself. Johnson often looks to the production of cartoon illustration, for instance, as a way of channeling the repressed libidinal energies of Hollywood. He hijacks pre-existing cultural forms and bends—or queers—them according to his own ends, appropriating signs and symbols through a kind of camp-inflected haunting, all the while locating vulnerability and humor in some of the darkest recesses of the social landscape. Courtesy David Kordansky Gallery


 
The Art Market can be daunting to navigate.
Use our expertise to enjoy buying art, safely and at no hidden costs.


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