Julio Larraz, Autumn at Cumae, 2005. Modern & Contemporary Art: Online Auction, New York.
As the shifting light and sensory rhythms around us herald the arrival of summer, the season brings a welcome invitation to slow down — and marks the return of our highly anticipated Modern & Contemporary Art: Online Auction: New York. Beyond a rich and varied selection that offers something for collectors of all sensibilities, our newly live catalogue also features seasonal highlights — such as the works below — that beautifully evoke summer’s luminous spirit.
Claudio Bravo
Claudio Bravo, Paisaje, 1996. Modern & Contemporary Art: Online Auction, New York.
Chilean painter Claudio Bravo’s Paisaje unmistakably evokes the atmosphere of summer. Known for his hyperrealist style, Bravo worked across still life, figurative painting, and trompe l’oeil. Yet his works often possess an almost classical quality, blending references to art history with meticulous detail that can border on the photographic. In this composition, Bravo uses a softer touch, effusing a glow that seems to render heat visible. Surely a chorus of cicadas fills the air.
Jane Piper
Jane Piper, Still Life with Bouquet, 1988. Modern & Contemporary Art: Online Auction, New York.
Lifelong Philadelphia artist Jane Piper worked almost entirely in abstract still lifes. A daughter of an affluent family, she trained at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and exhibited throughout her life. Recently, her works have seen a critical reevaluation and a resurgence at auction. In Still Life with Bouquet, her engagement with French Modernism is apparent, but that lineage does not overwhelm her distinctive exploration of space, color, and composition. As in a Matisse, surfaces and patterns intermingle, but Piper's treatment is looser and more dimensional. Cézanne's economy of gesture is here too, bringing a crystalline liveliness to the work, perhaps reflective of the time Piper spent studying in the Barnes Collection.
Haley Josephs
Haley Josephs, Life/Body Cycle, 2022. Modern & Contemporary Art: Online Auction, New York.
Haley Joseph’s Life/Body Cycle showcases the artist’s interest in the vital force of transformation. As in many of her works, figure and landscape alike seem to swirl at the edges, stretching into and out of one another. The woman’s face becomes a puff of cloud, while the bird appears to drop musical notes like feathers. The figure herself seems to have grown out of the ground, with what could be leaf fronds sprouting from her ankles. Joseph’s intensity of palette and fluid sense of emotion bring both playfulness and gravity to this suggestive, even otherworldly, painting.
Audun Alvestad
Audun Alvestad, The Water Looks Strange Today, 2021. Modern & Contemporary Art: Online Auction, New York.
Norwegian painter Audun Alvestad centers his practice around what he calls “average Joes” engaged in everyday activities. Here, the artist employs a multitude of painterly effects to make the canvas as “strange” as the water referenced in the title. The two figures, dressed identically, seem as though they could be two instances of the same person — is the reclining figure looking at a vision of himself standing on the balcony? Throughout the room, paintings of beach scenes chime with the many frames (windows, doors, canvases) at hand, a charming, if almost obsessive wink at the nature of representation.
Julio Larraz
Julio Larraz, Autumn at Cumae, 2005. Modern & Contemporary Art: Online Auction, New York.
Cuban-born painter Julio Larraz now lives and works in Miami. In this striking painting, a simple landscape exudes a powerful presence. The monumental quality of the island becomes stranger the longer one looks; the steepness of its rocky sides brings a kind of vertigo to the image. Larraz’s interest in Surrealism is evident in his play with scale. The white building could be large or small — one could only guess relative to the size of the island, whose scale is made likewise unstable by the surrounding expanse of blue water.
Zhuang Hong Yi
Zhuang Hong Yi, B19 - HY - 006, 2019. Modern & Contemporary Art: Online Auction, New York.
Zhuang Hong Yi’s practice relentlessly explores the form, color, and compositional possibilities of flowers, which he has referred to as a universal language. Using folded and painted rice paper, Hong Yi creates lush “flowerbed” landscapes, often using gradients of color that bring a dreamlike, even fantastical quality to his work. In this piece, Hong Yi maximizes the variability of paint, juxtaposing thickly layered acrylic in the lower part of the painting. which emphasizes the flatness of the work’s upper half. There is something extraterrestrial about the world conjured here, as if flowers could generate new forms of being.
More to explore
Roe Ethridge, Double Jess Gold, 2015. Modern & Contemporary Art: Online Auction, New York.
Channel the swift energy of Roe Ethridge’s Double Jess Gold and head to our catalogue page to discover the full scope of the sale. From the warm glow of Robert Natkin’s abstract dreamscape to the playful, delectable pop of Peter Anton’s Milk Chocolate Bar, there is ample inspiration waiting to be discovered.
Robert Natkin, Untitled, 1971. Modern & Contemporary Art: Online Auction, New York.
Peter Anton, Milk Chocolate Bar, 2004. Modern & Contemporary Art: Online Auction, New York.
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