our choose of the April gross sales

Bahman Mohasses, Untitled (Fifi) (1964)

Fashionable and Up to date Center East, Sotheby’s, London, 25 April

Estimate: £150,000-£200,000

Bahman Mohasses, dubbed the “Persian Picasso”, painted this work throughout a prolific interval of his profession. It centres on a faceless, fictitious feminine character, Fifi, who options in numerous his works throughout the a long time, together with one other in the identical Sotheby’s sale (additionally estimated at £150,000-£200,000). This character additionally impressed the title of a documentary on Mohasses, Fifi Howls from Happiness, launched in 2013, three years after he died. The movie paperwork Mohasses in his ultimate years, dwelling alone in a lodge room in Rome, and even captures the second he dies from lung most cancers. This current lot is one in all 13 on this sale which can be owned by the Iranian collectors Shireen and Reza Khazeni, alongside works by Mansour Ghandriz and Sohrab Sepehri.

Gustav Klimt, Portrait of Fräulein Lieser (1917)

The Gustav Klimt Sale, Im Kinsky, Vienna, 24 April

Estimate: €30m-€50m

Hidden in personal possession and believed misplaced for many years, this late portrait by Gustav Klimt is to be auctioned after the present proprietor reached a settlement with the heirs of the household that commissioned the portray. Whereas the image is documented in Klimt catalogue raisonées, it was solely recognized to artwork historians as a black-and-white {photograph}. Little or no is recorded in regards to the provenance of the portrait earlier than 1960. The
identify of its commissioner was documented solely as “Lieser”—a household of necessary Jewish industrialists within the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It was lengthy believed that the portray was commissioned by Adolf Lieser and portrayed his daughter.

Nonetheless, there are some indications it may have been commissioned by Henriette Lieser-Landau, the ex-wife of Justus Lieser—Adolf’s brother—in keeping with Ernst Ploil, one of many managing administrators of Im Kinsky public sale home in Vienna. Henriette, who was additionally a good friend of the composer and writer Alma Mahler, had two daughters who may have been the topic of the portray. She was deported in 1942 and murdered in 1943 by the Nazis, Ploil instructed a press convention in Vienna. “What’s for certain is that the portray was nonetheless in Klimt’s studio on the time of his demise” in 1918, Ploil mentioned, and it isn’t fairly completed.

After Klimt died, this portray is presumed to have been delivered by the executors of his will to whomever commissioned it. In line with Ploil, in negotiations with the Lieser heirs, the public sale home “assumed a worst-case state of affairs”—that the portray was unlawfully expropriated through the Nazi period—however there was no proof of this. The heirs will obtain a share of the proceeds from the public sale, he mentioned.

Hughie Lee-Smith, Ball Participant (1970)

African American Artwork, Swann Auctions, New York, 4 April

Estimate: $150,000-$200,000

“A handball participant throws himself with ferocious objective right into a recreation he’s enjoying alone, towards a low, cracked wall suggesting a world that’s by no means as strong as it could appear,” reads a 1988 New York Instances write-up of this mid-career oil portray by the Twentieth-century US painter Hughie Lee-Smith. The work was exhibited that 12 months at Kenkeleba Gallery in New York, alongside works by Eldzier Cortor and Archibald John Motley Jr. It was beforehand in Lee-Smith’s private assortment earlier than it was purchased by the present house owners. The artist’s file value at public sale was achieved in 2022 by Swann in New York for one more portray of a stark city scene. Aftermath (1960) made $365,000 (with charges) towards an estimate of $120,000 to $180,000. Judging from this current lot’s personal information value, it appears the home is hoping for one more main rating.

Thomas Hart Benton, White Horse (1955)

Fashionable American Artwork, Christie’s, New York, 18 April

Estimate: $1.5m-$2m

This equine scene set in Utah is a primary instance of the works made by Thomas Hart Benton depicting the American Nice Plains and Rocky Mountains. Since 1965 it has been within the assortment of Lois and Philip Macht, a Boston-based couple who additionally acquired African masks, pre-Columbian figures and works by Fairfield Porter, Gabriele Münter and Yves Tanguy. Works from their assortment can even be supplied at Christie’s gross sales in late 2024 and early 2025. The current lot leads Christie’s Fashionable American Artwork sale. This would be the fourth 12 months that the public sale home has subdivided its American Artwork gross sales into nineteenth Century (promoting in January) and Fashionable (promoting in April). “This format displays the market, which was dominated by collectors who purchased throughout centuries, and is now more and more divided between extra conventional collectors and Modernist collectors,” a Christie’s spokesperson says.