A painting of objects and a drawing made before 1944 by the Belgian surreal artist René Magritte (1898-1967) were sold at an auction in fall respectively 255,000 euros and 100,000 euros on Saturday.
Not published until today in the art market, these works had remained in the family of the poet, the Belgian lawyer and surreal filmmaker Ernst Moerman (1897-1944) who had become the owner before his death.
“Therefore, finding two unknown works in the reasoned catalog and certified by the Magritte Committee is exceptional,” said Solène Lainée, a auctioneer in Caen, “and the origin is ideal since they were acquired by a Magritte friend referenced as collector of the artist.”
The Magritte Committee is composed of three people from the Magritte Foundation and four international experts who have all the archives that allow them to put the certificates of authenticity, preserve and promote the work of René Magritte, as I was lain.
The object table, estimated between 150,000 and 200,000 euros, was bought by phone at the fall of Sales Hotel for an amount of 255,000 euros (316,000 euros with costs). It is an oil on canvas and stone of 25×21 cm, a wooden palette in which Magritte painted a blue sky dotted with clouds and perforated by a real stone.
A twin work entitled “The primitive fact” and dating from 1936 was already listed and preserved in a private collection in New York.
“It’s the good Magritte period”
The drawing with colored pencils (27×24 cm), without title but called “naked front” for sale, represents a naked woman standing with long multicolored curls and has obtained only one offer, at the floor price of her estimate (between 100,000 and 150,000 euros), a total of 124,000 euros with costs.
“This is the good Magritte period, these 1930 and 40, the most sought after, is the surrealist period, the one that marked the most,” said Brown Irenaeus, of the Perazzone-Brun experience firm responsible for authenticating and estimating the works.
“This is really his style, what we are looking for in him: this is not the beginning when there may be a test and an error, it is not the end when there may be a kind of redirection, but really the creative impulse,” he added, “it is rare to have works of this importance.”
“When they brought them, I didn’t have a shadow of doubt,” recalled his colleague Roberto Perazzone, “the skill that gives this incredible movement, we find this way of treating the clouds that this extraordinary volume gives it, they are Magritte’s works, it is part of dreams.”
Source: BFM TV
