George Condo - Contemporary Art Day Sale London Sunday, June 29, 2008 | Phillips

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  • Provenance

    Simon Lee Gallery, London

  • Catalogue Essay

    "George Condo's paintings describe a ribald world of crazed, comic engagement, theatrical illogic and a furious indifference to conventional niceties. Lush, delicate swaths of paint delineate bodies penetrated by other bodies, pierced by objects ranging from harpoons and daggers to carrots, or plagued by mental disquiet; insanity is the order of the day, served with a side helping of sly cruelty." (J. Higgie, Time's Fool, Frieze Magazine, May 2007, Issue 207) Flirting with surrealist ideologies, this present lot presents both a playful and obscure image. The painterly style reflects Condo's ability to mesh different ideas together to form something not quite attainable by its viewer. He knowingly creates imaginary figures like a priest with carrots protruding out of his head to reflect his own interest in ‘the realistic representation of that which is artificial.' (George Condo taken from Frieze Magazine, May 2007, Issue 207)

  • Artist Biography

    George Condo

    American • 1957

    Picasso once said, "Good artists borrow, great artists steal." Indeed, American artist George Condo frequently cites Picasso as an explicit source in his contemporary cubist compositions and joyous use of paint. Condo is known for neo-Modernist compositions staked in wit and the grotesque, which draw the eye into a highly imaginary world. 

    Condo came up in the New York art world at a time when art favored brazen innuendo and shock. Student to Warhol, best friend to Basquiat and collaborator with William S. Burroughs, Condo tracked a different path. He was drawn to the endless inquiries posed by the aesthetics and formal considerations of Caravaggio, Rembrandt and the Old Masters.

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564

Priest in the Snow

2004
Oil on canvas.
122.5 x 91.5 cm. (48 1/4 x 36 in).
Signed and dated 'Condo 04' on the reverse.

Estimate
£120,000 - 180,000 

Contemporary Art Day Sale

30 June 2008, 10am & 2pm
London