A painting by René Magritte may fetch $64 million at an auction marking a century of surrealism

LONDON – A primary paintings by surrealist painter René Magritte that hasn’t been proven in public for a quarter century may fetch 50 million kilos ($64 million) at auction subsequent month.

Christie’s auction space introduced Saturday that it’s going to be offering “L’ami intime” (The Intimate Friend) at a March 7 sale in London marking a century of the surrealist movement in artwork.

The painting contains a number of of the Belgian artist’s signature motifs, together with a bowler-hatted guy and fluffy white clouds on a blue sky. In this painting, finished in 1958, the person is proven from in the back of, going through out over a hilly panorama. A baguette and a wine glass hover within the foreground.

Olivier Camu, Christie’s deputy chairman for Impressionist and trendy artwork, mentioned the “highly poetic, highly dreamy” painting is without doubt one of the handful of maximum essential Magritte works in non-public fingers. Last exhibited publicly in Brussels in 1998, it’s being auctioned for the primary time since 1980, and has a pre-sale estimate of between 30 million and 50 million kilos ($38 million and $64 million).

This 12 months marks the centenary of Andre Breton’s “Surrealist Manifesto,” which outlined a modern inventive motion characterised by unsettling juxtapositions and paradoxical statements — as in Magritte’s most famed paintings, a painting of a pipe titled “This is not a pipe.”

“Now it’s become usual to think of the subconscious, psychology, psychoanalysis — but they were the one who opened the doors,” Camu mentioned.

Camu mentioned Magritte, who died in 1967, has develop into probably the most “in-demand” of all of the surrealists. Unlike the paintings of contemporaries reminiscent of Salvador Dali, there are few explicit cultural or non secular references to be present in his paintings.

“Magritte never explained anything,” Camu mentioned — even the titles of his art work had been steered by pals.

“There’s no sign of religion in Magritte ever, or particular history, or anything,” he mentioned. “They are totally conceptual, clean, powerful, disturbing, wonderful, silent pictures. They are accessible to everybody.”

That declare is subsidized up by hovering costs for Magritte’s paintings lately, hitting a file 59.4 million kilos ($79.8 million at the time) for “L’empire des lumières” (The Empire of Light) at a Sotheby’s auction in 2022.

The paintings up on the market in March comes from the gathering of the overdue Gilbert Kaplan — founder of the e-newsletter Institutional Investor — and his spouse, Lena Kaplan.

The painting shall be on show prior to the sale at Christie’s in Los Angeles Feb 3, 5 and six, in New York Feb 9-14, in Hong Kong Feb 21-23 and in London March 1-7.