A collection that captures the revolutionary spirit of modernism

Over the opening years of the twentieth-century, a generation of young artists from all corners of Europe changed forever how we make and look at art. Challenging centuries of convention, they embraced the rapidly developing world around them and forged new methods of recording their times.

Beginning with a class in art history taken at Columbia University in the 1930s, it became Arnold Saltzman's lifelong quest to build a collection that represented this revolution. In this ‘adventure’, as he termed it, Ambassador Saltzman was joined by his wife Joan, traveling to artists’ studios, auction houses and dealers across Europe, deeply enjoying both the study and the chase of paintings and sculpture — the crafting of the collection. Their collection grew to represent the greater part of the 20th century in one of the most dynamic and deliberate examinations of modernism ever privately assembled. Saltzman’s professional achievements as a businessman and diplomat complemented the pair’s philanthropic commitments. As an American envoy to Czechoslovakia, Austria and the Soviet Union, among other territories, Ambassador Saltzman — himself of Russian and Czech descent via émigré parents in New York City — was instrumental in nurturing political ties across post-war Eastern Europe. He shaped economic transitions after the disassembly of the Soviet Union and was honoured with a Presidential Commendation for the leading role he played in the transformative 1970 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.

The Saltzmans’ approach to collecting mirrored the prerogatives of their public service — Joan was a dedicated activist, advocate and community organizer in support of social justice — and demonstrated an unwavering belief in art’s capacity to spur innovation and dialogue and to bridge peoples and nations. As the 20th century saw the rise of the radical new art of the European avant-garde, the Saltzman collection stands as an exemplary expression of cultural diplomacy with special emphasis on the pan-European nature of modernism.

More than 70 works collected by the couple over the course of 70 years will be offered in Birth of the Modern: The Arnold and Joan Saltzman Collection during Christie’s November marquee week in New York, beginning with a selection in the 20th Century Evening Sale on 17 November and continuing into the Impressionist & Modern Day Sale on 18 November.

Paris: a laboratory for the avant-garde

It was Paris, above all, where modernism in the visual arts was born. Already established through the advances of the Impressionist movement in the previous century as a city of innovation, the years before the First World War saw the French capital welcome artists from across Europe. In the left bank district of Montparnasse alone, it was estimated that nearly half the resident artists had been born outside France. And it was here, in this international and youthful atmosphere, that Henri Matisse and his circle of so-called ‘Fauve,’ or ‘Wild Beast,’ colleagues led the charge to liberate color, while simultaneously Pablo Picasso and Fernand Léger forged new ways to represent space and time in their Cubist researches, and Robert Delaunay and František Kupka sought an all-encompassing lyrical evocation of form.

Cubism takes a new shape

The first public group exhibition of Cubism, held in room 41 at the Salon des Indépendants in 1911, was a sensation. Léger was exhibited alongside Robert Delaunay, Albert Gleizes and Jean Metzinger. It marked the consolidation of what became known as the Salon Cubists, a cohort in artistic dialogue with Picasso and Braque’s innovations, but with broader aims. The show was the public’s first comprehensive exposure to this unique technical revolution in art.

Though the term Cubism had been in use since 1908 when the art critic Louis Vauxcelles seized upon Matisse’s characterisation of Braque’s painting as ‘little cubes’, the Puteaux Group expanded on the movement Picasso and Braque founded. Named for the districts of Paris where the artists’ studios clustered, the group included Léger, Delaunay and Metzinger, amongst others, and they put forth a Cubism frequently characterised by a daringly colourful range as well as a more engaged concept of society that sutured their efforts to the urban fabric and architecture of Paris.

In 1914, in the lead up to World War I, Léger painted his radical take on the still life: Composition (Nature morte). As an architectural draftsman whose vision was altered by the major Cezanne retrospective at the Salon d’Automne in 1907, Léger assimilated the multifaceted planes of his predecessor into the next evolution of modern painting, deploying a fixed set of abstract forms and bold colours. This landmark work — the top lot of the Saltzman collection and ‘a high water mark of Léger’s early output’, according to Christie’s Conor Jordan, Deputy Chairman of the Impressionist and Modern Department — was originally acquired by the Saltzmans in 1980 from the collection of the British scholar Douglas Cooper. A connoisseur of Cubism, Cooper not only wrote a 1949 monograph on Léger but originally bought this very painting in the 1930s, prominently displaying it in his home along with other important works by the artist.

The non-representational modernism of Kupka was a favorite of Ambassador Saltzman, who wrote that it ‘laid foundations for the major American contribution to art’ many years later. An exceptional oil painting, Une Pensée (1923) resembles a cathedral’s grand curving interior, as rendered in gold, cerulean and royal purple. The artist’s focus on verticality had a symbolic meaning of reaching for ‘luminous heights’, as a quote from the catalogue of his 1975 Guggenheim retrospective illuminates: ‘Profound and silent, a vertical plane helps the whole concept of space to emerge.’ His exquisite work on paper, Sans titre, depicts shuddering whorls of prismatic colours layering onto each other in a mesmerizing depth of visual space.

A portrait of Jean Metzinger by Robert Delaunay from 1906, offered in the Impressionist & Modern Art Day Sale, is a crucial early document of the friendship between these two artists. Brilliantly colored tesserae of paint reflect the early influence of Neo-impressionism, demonstrating the origins of his fascination with color theory that would come to define his mature career.

While Delaunay painted Metzinger on several occasions, Metzinger’s own portrait of Delaunay, another highlight of the Day Sale, is the only known example of that reciprocal portrait. As noted by Margaux Morel, Specialist in Impressionist and Modern Art at Christie’s, their presence in this collection speaks to the community and relationships between the artists, as well as their development of new visual forms. Mapping such connections and innovations were guiding values for the Saltzmans. The couple united the two portraits, and Arnold Saltzman was known to regale guests with stories of how their friendship helped usher Neo-Impressionism into Cubism.

Revolutions of form, thought and science

Modernism, broadly, and Cubism, specifically, would advance into the world parallel with the rapid advancements of science and technology shaping Europe and its politics. As the Russian Constructivist sculptor and painter Naum Gabo would observe from the vantage point of the 1930s, ‘The revolution which this school produced in the minds of artists is only comparable to that which happened at approximately the same time in the world of physics.’ He compared Cubism’s fundamental altering of visual perception to impact of the theory of relativity on our understanding of space and time.

The full spectrum of the avant-garde

The Saltzmans’ wide-ranging collection reflects the full spectrum of avant-garde movements and styles that arose during the 20th century, from Pointillism to Fauvism, Cubism to Futurism, Abstraction to Expressionism, culminating in the post-war breakthroughs of Joan Miró, Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth, and Pablo Picasso.

A pivotal figure in modernism’s trajectory, Henri Matisse rejected Cubism in the wake of World War I and devoted his work to a more personal vocabulary. His painting Femme au chapeau fleuri (1923), a marvellous portrait of his favoured model, the musician and dancer Henriette Darricarrère, hails from his fruitful years in Nice in the 1920s. Appearing seated in a three-quarter view with a flower-adorned hat, she is set against floral and checkered patterns, framing Darricarrère as a picture of blossoming youth and gentility. The Matisse is another highlight of the 20th Century Evening Sale on 17 November.

An exceptional 1957 composition by Italian futurist Gino Severini marks another highlight of the collection. Danseuse: Relevée is a later example of a fusion of modernist styles including Pointillism, Orphic Cubism and Futurism. Contemporaneously, a Joan Miró painting from 1955 titled La chanteuse mélancolique is an affecting synthesis of abstract art and an idiosyncratic sensibility unique to the Spanish artist. A portrait by the Belarusian painter Chaïm Soutine, renowned for his visceral, expressionist paint work, is represented in this collection by the quieter, mysterious visage of an unnamed Venetian woman, La Vénitienne, circa 1927-1928. These outstanding works will be offered in the Impressionist & Modern Art Day Sale, while two vivid and characteristic later works by Picasso will appear in the 20th Century Evening Sale.

It is notable that many of the artists featured in the Saltzmans’ collection—including Léger, Gleizes and the German Expressionist and founder of Die Brücke Karl Schmidt-Rottluff—all served in their countries’ respective militaries during World War I. The latter artist is represented in the Impressionist & Modern Art Day Sale with a circa 1918 painting, Hartzlandschaft. Works from this period of the artist’s oeuvre infrequently appear at auction, and this rare and vibrant one is particularly unusual given that Schmidt-Rottluff went to the front in 1915 and after the war devoted much of his subsequent career to printmaking.

The devoted patron

Arnold Saltzman’s connection to the works he acquired was a deeply personal one, intimately bound with his and Joan’s devotion to justice and public service. As their daughter Mimi Saltzman recalls, ‘Arnold’s connection to each of the works was intense, and we felt it. When he stood with me in front of a painting or sculpture, even at a young age, it was a tutorial in aesthetics, intellect, and joy in discovery. Arnold’s collecting expressed his curiosity, discipline, ambition.’

In 2001, Arnold and Joan Saltzman proudly gifted much of their extraordinary collection of German Expressionist paintings and sculptures to the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC. Through this donation of seminal works by Lyonel Feininger, Max Beckmann, Franz Marc, August Macke, Max Pechstein, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Otto Müller, Emil Nolde and the leading figures from the period, exhibited in a dedicated gallery at the museum, the Saltzmans enhanced the National Gallery’s holdings of early 20th-century art, expanding and strengthening the collection in the process.

‘When Arnold was chasing an artist or work he needed for his collection, very little would stop him,’ his son Eric Saltzman remembers. ‘With Henry Moore’s fantastic bronze, he was chasing both. He flew to London and drove out to Moore's home and studio in Hertfordshire, hoping to persuade Moore to sell him the work. Moore demurred, explaining that all his finished work went directly to his Foundation, and he didn't control their disposition. Arnold made several more visits, each time bringing the particular Israeli melons he’d learned Moore liked. Somehow, the Foundation found a way to free up the sculpture to sell to Arnold. I still have Henry Moore’s personal thank you note for the melons.’ As a star of the Evening Sale, this monumental sculpture will also grace the outdoor plaza in front of Christie’s Rockefeller Center galleries this November, allowing all the opportunity to appreciate a work that once enjoyed pride of place at their family’s home on Long Island.