1 September 2006
Contact:
Rhiannon Broomfield
44.207.389.2117
rbroomfield@christies.com
THE YOAV HARLAP COLLECTION TO BE SOLD AT CHRISTIE’S
The Yoav Harlap Collection
Christie’s King Street
15 October 2006
London – Christie’s announces the sale of The Yoav Harlap Collection of European and American Post-War and Contemporary art will be offered for sale in London on 15 October 2006. The Harlap Collection comprises thirty-five major works spanning five decades, from the late 1940s to the early 1990s, and includes key, signature pieces by Yves Klein, Jean Tinguely, Arman, Andy Warhol, Claes Oldenburg, Mimmo Rotella, Tom Wesselmann, Mel Ramos, Piero Manzoni, Lucio Fontana, Jean Michel Basquiat, Christo and Keith Haring. The works are entirely fresh to the auction market, many of the pieces have fascinating early provenance and are the best possible examples in their scale or genre. Overall the collection is expected to realise in excess of £6 million.
“This is one of the finest Post-War and Contemporary art collections to be sold in Europe. Yoav Harlap has assembled this selection with style, vision and passion over a period of twenty years,” says Jussi Pylkkänen, President of Christie’s Europe. “The collection is appealing, accessible and all the works of art are interesting and thoughtfully selected. We are delighted that Mr. Harlap has chosen to sell this wonderful group of Post-War and Contemporary paintings and sculpture during the week of Frieze which draws so many of the world’s leading collectors to London. It will be the focal point of what promises to be an extremely exciting time both for the London art trade and the auction houses.”
Pierre Restany, the famous art critic and founder of the1960s movement Nouveau Realism, wrote that, although he did not know Yoav Harlap personally, through his “prestigious”, remarkable collection of European and American avant-garde, the selection represented an ‘accomplished glance about the truth of the world’ and was ‘extremely positive in my own eyes’. He applauded the collector in that many artists “are represented by art pieces of unquestionable quality.”
The collection, the vision of Tel Aviv based businessman, Yoav Harlap, was assembled over the last twenty years. The collector is now moving to acquire works by a younger generation of artists. One of the leading the highlights is Andy Warhol’s 1964 four colour Flowers painting (estimate: £2,500,000-3,500,000). A rare example of this series, each flower has a different, vibrant colour. Two seminal works by Yves Klein, IKB 119 of 1959 (estimate: £350,000-500,000) and Feu, a fire painting of 1961 (estimate: £150,000- 250,000) are further key highlights. Klein hoped to mystically awaken his audience with his cult of the monochrome, using a single colour, as he puts it, to ‘stabilise’ the diffused energy of the universe. It was his hope to transfer an understanding of its innate ‘immaterial nature’ into the mind of the viewer. This Yves Klein monochrome, IKB119 dominates the front cover of Paul Wember’s acclaimed reference publication for this artist, making it particularly desirable and well-known. A further iconic highlight is Tom Wessellmann’s Great American Nude No. 88 of 1967 (estimate: £400,000-600,000).
Nouveau Realism and the Harlap Collection
Arguably at the heart of The Yoav Harlap Collection lies the aesthetic of Nouveau Realism in both Europe and its counterpart movement in America, ‘New Realism’, that became known as ‘Pop’ art. The collection compares and contrasts the art of this era in an engaging and revealing way.
The Nouveau Realism movement that was founded by aforementioned and renowned art critic Pierre Rastany along with Yves Klein, Jean Tinguely, Arman, Francois Dufrêne, Raymond Hains, Martial Raysse, Daniel Spoerri and Jacques de la Villeglé in Yves Klein’s apartment in Paris on October 27th, 1960. The artists saw the prevailing current of abstract art as a deliberate evasion of reality. They reacted against this and sought, like their name-sakes in Italian cinema, to reintegrate art with the objects and mass-produced material of modern-day life. In America, this turn away from abstraction and engaging with images and objects of modern reality was also occurring in the work of Robert Rauschenburg and Jasper Johns as well as being taken up by the younger generation of artists. For a time these artists were also dubbed ‘New Realists’ or ‘Neo-dadaists’, before later, and more permanently, coming to be known as the ‘Pop’ artists.
The fresh approach shared by this radical generation of artists in both Europe and America in the early 1960s is reflected in The Yoav Harlap Collection time and again. Key founders of the European movement are represented by highly significant works including three works that were in the collection of French artist, Jean Pierre Raynaud: Raymond Hains’ Untitled, 1960 (estimate: £20,000-30,000); Francois Dufrêne’s Untitled, 1960 (estimate: £10,000-15,000) and Jacques de la Villeglé’s Affiche Lacérée, 1959 (estimate: £20,000-30,000).
As well as spanning an incredible range from the series of seminal works by nearly all of the Nouveau Realists to subtle icons of ‘Pop’ art, the collection also mixes quintessential Italian works by Nouveau Realist, Mimmo Rotella, for example his Lo Splendore di Columbia, 1960 (estimate: £70,000-100,000), with the spatial and materialist explorations of Lucio Fontana who is represented by Concetto spaziale, Attese (estimate: £250,000- 350,000) from 1964 and Piero Manzoni whose achrome of 1958-59 is also offered (estimate: £250,000-350,000).
The Collection also extends to more contemporary takes on the reality of urban living made by 1980s street artists Jean Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring. The superb selfportrait by Basquiat from 1984 (estimate: £500,000-700,000) was formerly in a private collection and was painted when the artist was visiting the collectors house in Switzerland. Keith Haring’s Untitled, is a striking example and was executed in 1987 (estimate: £150,000-200,000).
The Yoav Harlap Collection has been hung throughout the clean, open, modernist architecture of Mr. Harlap’s home with many works going on loan to museums. Many of the key works conducted a fascinating artistic dialogue within the interior as one school or aesthetic were arranged next to quite another creating contrasts as well as, often humorous, connections. For example the intense psychedelic hues of Andy Warhol’s Flowers found its echo in Robert Indiana’s multicoloured, untitled painting of the word ‘four’ painted a year later (estimate: £40,000-60,000).
A giant sculptural pink tube of toothpaste by Claes Oldenburg (estimate: £150,000- 200,000) a model created in 1982 for a later edition of 3 cast in 1983 , founds its own echo in the pink lips and smoking cigarette of Tom Wesselmann’s, Study for Small Smoker No. 4 (estimate: £70,000-90,000) from 1969. The sun, sea and sex of Wesselmann’s large Great American Nude No. 88, painted in 1967, has a cheeky counterpart in Mel Ramos’ more voyeuristic Peek-a-book, Raven No 3 painted in 1964 (estimate: £150,000-200,000).
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