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Lot Essay
The Collection of Mireille and James Lévy is a celebration of graceful and poetic forms. The Lévys refined their preference and palate for art through a combination of extensive travels, exposure to art and architecture and distinguished instinct drawn from their Egyptian roots.
Like many successful collections, the paintings and sculptures acquired by Mireille and James Lévy defy strict categorisation. Connoisseurs in the true sense of the word, the couple sought out objects with which they formed a very personal connection, displaying them with finesse and pride in their exquisite homes in Lausanne, Manhattan and Longboat Key. Undeterred by academic classifications, their premise was of “collecting pioneers of style and time. It goes without saying that we must find the works aesthetically pleasing,” the couple told Architectural Digest in March 1987, “but what most interests us is that these artists are witnesses to their time.”
The juxtaposition between the formal and expressive, and between colour and form, is what breathes life into the Lévys’ collection. Their art collection spans the work of many of the twentieth century’s best-known artists, from the Dada inspired forms of Jean (Hans) Arp to the Modernist renderings of the human body by Barbara Hepworth and Henry Moore. While much of the collection consists of three-dimensional works, the Lévys embraced all forms of artistic expression, from the fluid two-dimensional forms of the Colour Field painters. Centrifugal, a classic Burst painting by Adolph Gottlieb, sits alongside Number 20, Morris Louis’s towering painting of colorful striations, with both works speaking to the formal investigations into the fundamental nature of painting that engaged many artists during the period.
Over three decades during the 1960s, ‘70s, and ‘80s, Warhol became the ‘Chronicler-in-Chief’ of the American cultural zeitgeist, taking inspiration from the everyday and turned it into high art. The couple embraced the major Pop Art artists such as Andy Warhol and Tom Wesselmann, who had abandoned the prevailing forms of abstraction to develop a groundbreaking form of figurative painting. Warhol’s disco-hued portraits of Marilyn Monroe are particularly fine examples of his unique blend of cultural high-living. In addition to the Pop hedonism of Warhol and Tom Wesselmann, the collection contains several notable examples of the more conceptual concerns that were occupying many artists of the period.
Masterpieces of their collection will be offered in auctions across a number of international sale sites this year, from Paris, New York and London, where a number of strong 20th Century sculptures by key Modern British artists lead our Modern British Evening Sale, on 1 March.
While building their remarkable collection, the couple also had a desire to share their love of art with a wider audience. They donated works from their art collection both to major international museum collections and lesser known European institutions; from The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, to the Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts, Lausanne, the Lévys’ generosity was transformational to these institutions’ collections. Now, their largesse continues, as the proceeds from the sale of these works will continue their legacy of extraordinary philanthropy. Many institutions in the United States, Switzerland and Israel, including hospitals, medical research centers, museums and resettlement agencies for Jewish refugees have received donations during the Lévys’ lifetime, and will continue to do so now, through the Foundation Mireille and James Lévy, the primary beneficiary of their joint estate.
Of Egyptian-Jewish heritage, living between Switzerland and the USA and with James overseeing a worldwide network of brokerages, Mireille and James Lévy were citizens of the world whose taste in art reflected their cosmopolitan lifestyle. Most well-known in collecting fields for their donations of Dubuffet works to the Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts in Lausanne, and of American artworks to The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, they were also enthusiastic collectors of 20th Century British sculpture. A number of these works will be offered in the present sale, and in the Modern British Art Evening sale on 1 March.
In an April 1993 feature in the French contemporary art magazine L’Œil, James explained the principles guiding the couple’s collecting: works must celebrate pioneers and leaders in their field; they must reflect important moments in the history of art leading up to the present day; and they must provoke an emotional response. The present selection perfectly illustrates this philosophy. For example, the Henry Moore works offered in the present sale were all conceived in 1956-7, a pivotal moment for the artist as he focused his creative energies on a large-scale commission for the UNESCO building in Paris. The maquettes highlight Moore’s own creative journey and his quest to frame timeless, universal themes in a contemporary manner. Conceived in 1980, Lynn Chadwick’s Sitting Couple in Robes I was an up-to-the-minute purchase acquired only two years after its casting in 1987. It reflects almost three decades spent by the artist refining the motif of paired, semi-abstract figures, which first began to appear in his work in the mid-1950s.
Befitting the couple’s long years of marriage and philanthropic efforts, there is a humane, warm quality apparent in many of the sculptures from the Lévys’ collection. Works such as Chadwick’s Sitting Couple or Moore’s charming Mother and Child: Crossed Feet seem to delight in love and togetherness. Generally modest in scale, these are all tactile, highly liveable objects perfectly suited to the couple’s relatively small apartments in both Manhattan and Lausanne. In fact, the Manhattan apartment was built around the collection, with architect Michael de Santis working from photographs and dimensions of artworks to design and fulfil the space. Mireille and James’ creation of homes based fundamentally around their art collection amply illustrates the couple’s emotional connection to the works, their enjoyment of them, and their respect for them as ground-breaking cultural artefacts.
Created around the same time, Seated Figure on Square Steps appears to be tied to the development of Moore’s monumental bronze, Draped Seated Woman, 1957-58, casts of which are now in important public collections including the Tate, London, and the Royal Museums of Fine Arts, Belgium. In both works the figure is posed in a strikingly similar manner: relaxed yet strong, propped up on its left arm, and with both legs leaning gently to one side. A maquette of the monumental work is posed in an identical manner, and retains the steps abandoned in the full-scale sculpture.
Although he eventually opted for a Reclining Figure carved in marble instead, Moore was developing all of these concepts, amongst numerous others, in response to a commission to produce a sculpture for the UNESCO headquarters in Paris. Whereas the present work lays the body bare and features characteristic hollowed out areas around the breasts, shoulders and torso, the monumental version is more clearly classical in feel, using drapery to express form and volume (a motif developed in the shelter drawings of 1940 and 1941 and subsequently reinforced by a visit to Greece in 1951). Even so, classical allusions remain; the asymmetrical pose recalls the pediment carvings of goddesses from the Parthenon, and the use of a stepped pedestal could also be an allusion to the architecture of a Greek temple (a motif that is also used in the UNESCO logo). Indeed, Moore’s sketchbook from the time elucidates the search for timeless forms and records that he wanted to ‘contrast primitive with Greek (late)’ (Henry Moore, quoted in S. Compton, Henry Moore, Catalogue of the Royal Academy Exhibiton, London, 1988, p. 243). The profusion of different variations of the present sculpture’s themes highlight Moore’s iterative, experimental approach as he worked to realise this vision.
Like many successful collections, the paintings and sculptures acquired by Mireille and James Lévy defy strict categorisation. Connoisseurs in the true sense of the word, the couple sought out objects with which they formed a very personal connection, displaying them with finesse and pride in their exquisite homes in Lausanne, Manhattan and Longboat Key. Undeterred by academic classifications, their premise was of “collecting pioneers of style and time. It goes without saying that we must find the works aesthetically pleasing,” the couple told Architectural Digest in March 1987, “but what most interests us is that these artists are witnesses to their time.”
The juxtaposition between the formal and expressive, and between colour and form, is what breathes life into the Lévys’ collection. Their art collection spans the work of many of the twentieth century’s best-known artists, from the Dada inspired forms of Jean (Hans) Arp to the Modernist renderings of the human body by Barbara Hepworth and Henry Moore. While much of the collection consists of three-dimensional works, the Lévys embraced all forms of artistic expression, from the fluid two-dimensional forms of the Colour Field painters. Centrifugal, a classic Burst painting by Adolph Gottlieb, sits alongside Number 20, Morris Louis’s towering painting of colorful striations, with both works speaking to the formal investigations into the fundamental nature of painting that engaged many artists during the period.
Over three decades during the 1960s, ‘70s, and ‘80s, Warhol became the ‘Chronicler-in-Chief’ of the American cultural zeitgeist, taking inspiration from the everyday and turned it into high art. The couple embraced the major Pop Art artists such as Andy Warhol and Tom Wesselmann, who had abandoned the prevailing forms of abstraction to develop a groundbreaking form of figurative painting. Warhol’s disco-hued portraits of Marilyn Monroe are particularly fine examples of his unique blend of cultural high-living. In addition to the Pop hedonism of Warhol and Tom Wesselmann, the collection contains several notable examples of the more conceptual concerns that were occupying many artists of the period.
Masterpieces of their collection will be offered in auctions across a number of international sale sites this year, from Paris, New York and London, where a number of strong 20th Century sculptures by key Modern British artists lead our Modern British Evening Sale, on 1 March.
While building their remarkable collection, the couple also had a desire to share their love of art with a wider audience. They donated works from their art collection both to major international museum collections and lesser known European institutions; from The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, to the Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts, Lausanne, the Lévys’ generosity was transformational to these institutions’ collections. Now, their largesse continues, as the proceeds from the sale of these works will continue their legacy of extraordinary philanthropy. Many institutions in the United States, Switzerland and Israel, including hospitals, medical research centers, museums and resettlement agencies for Jewish refugees have received donations during the Lévys’ lifetime, and will continue to do so now, through the Foundation Mireille and James Lévy, the primary beneficiary of their joint estate.
Of Egyptian-Jewish heritage, living between Switzerland and the USA and with James overseeing a worldwide network of brokerages, Mireille and James Lévy were citizens of the world whose taste in art reflected their cosmopolitan lifestyle. Most well-known in collecting fields for their donations of Dubuffet works to the Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts in Lausanne, and of American artworks to The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, they were also enthusiastic collectors of 20th Century British sculpture. A number of these works will be offered in the present sale, and in the Modern British Art Evening sale on 1 March.
In an April 1993 feature in the French contemporary art magazine L’Œil, James explained the principles guiding the couple’s collecting: works must celebrate pioneers and leaders in their field; they must reflect important moments in the history of art leading up to the present day; and they must provoke an emotional response. The present selection perfectly illustrates this philosophy. For example, the Henry Moore works offered in the present sale were all conceived in 1956-7, a pivotal moment for the artist as he focused his creative energies on a large-scale commission for the UNESCO building in Paris. The maquettes highlight Moore’s own creative journey and his quest to frame timeless, universal themes in a contemporary manner. Conceived in 1980, Lynn Chadwick’s Sitting Couple in Robes I was an up-to-the-minute purchase acquired only two years after its casting in 1987. It reflects almost three decades spent by the artist refining the motif of paired, semi-abstract figures, which first began to appear in his work in the mid-1950s.
Befitting the couple’s long years of marriage and philanthropic efforts, there is a humane, warm quality apparent in many of the sculptures from the Lévys’ collection. Works such as Chadwick’s Sitting Couple or Moore’s charming Mother and Child: Crossed Feet seem to delight in love and togetherness. Generally modest in scale, these are all tactile, highly liveable objects perfectly suited to the couple’s relatively small apartments in both Manhattan and Lausanne. In fact, the Manhattan apartment was built around the collection, with architect Michael de Santis working from photographs and dimensions of artworks to design and fulfil the space. Mireille and James’ creation of homes based fundamentally around their art collection amply illustrates the couple’s emotional connection to the works, their enjoyment of them, and their respect for them as ground-breaking cultural artefacts.
Created around the same time, Seated Figure on Square Steps appears to be tied to the development of Moore’s monumental bronze, Draped Seated Woman, 1957-58, casts of which are now in important public collections including the Tate, London, and the Royal Museums of Fine Arts, Belgium. In both works the figure is posed in a strikingly similar manner: relaxed yet strong, propped up on its left arm, and with both legs leaning gently to one side. A maquette of the monumental work is posed in an identical manner, and retains the steps abandoned in the full-scale sculpture.
Although he eventually opted for a Reclining Figure carved in marble instead, Moore was developing all of these concepts, amongst numerous others, in response to a commission to produce a sculpture for the UNESCO headquarters in Paris. Whereas the present work lays the body bare and features characteristic hollowed out areas around the breasts, shoulders and torso, the monumental version is more clearly classical in feel, using drapery to express form and volume (a motif developed in the shelter drawings of 1940 and 1941 and subsequently reinforced by a visit to Greece in 1951). Even so, classical allusions remain; the asymmetrical pose recalls the pediment carvings of goddesses from the Parthenon, and the use of a stepped pedestal could also be an allusion to the architecture of a Greek temple (a motif that is also used in the UNESCO logo). Indeed, Moore’s sketchbook from the time elucidates the search for timeless forms and records that he wanted to ‘contrast primitive with Greek (late)’ (Henry Moore, quoted in S. Compton, Henry Moore, Catalogue of the Royal Academy Exhibiton, London, 1988, p. 243). The profusion of different variations of the present sculpture’s themes highlight Moore’s iterative, experimental approach as he worked to realise this vision.