Luis Barragán is widely recognized as one of the 20th century’s most influential architects. His serene, richly colored buildings, gardens, and interiors have become synonymous with Latin American modernism despite having a relatively small body of realized projects, many of which were private commissions for wealthy clients. In many of Barragán’s residential commissions, he would select furniture and lighting—some he designed himself, other works produced by local artisans and artists. The present table lamps, made by the artist Hugo Velásquez, (lots 115 and 121) are from Casa Prieto López designed by Barragán and completed in 1951. Barragán was a supporter of Velásquez and commissioned lamps and other ceramic works from the artist to use throughout various projects.
The present table lamp in the interior of Luis Barragan’s Prieto Lopez House, Mexico City. Photo: Studio Mexico, 2012. Artwork: © 2024 Barragan Foundation, Switzerland / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Hugo Velásquez was himself one of the preeminent contemporary Mexican ceramists and he pioneered the use of stoneware in the country. Having moved to the United States in the late 1950s, Velásquez apprenticed for Karen Karnes at Gate Hill Cooperative in Stony Point, New York and, for a time, found himself among the company of American artists such as Franz Kline, De Kooning, Rothko, Pollock, and Motherwell. In the early 1960s, he returned to Mexico and held his first exhibition of vases and pots. Velásquez set up a studio and maintained a lifelong artistic practice alongside commissions for tableware, vases, pots, and lamps. It was likely this combination of the aesthetic rigor of a true artist and the practicality of his products which Barragán recognized in Velásquez. It is undoubtably the same rigorous standard Barragán held for himself.
Provenance
Eduardo Prieto López, Mexico City, acquired from the artist, 1960s
Thence by descent
Private collection, Mexico City
Sotheby's, New York, "Important Design," December 12, 2019, lot 295
Acquired from the above by the present ownerLiterature
María Luisa Puga, La Cerámica de Hugo X. Velásquez: Cuando rinde el horno, Mexico City, 1983, p. 44 for similar ceramic bases
Yutaka Saito, ed., Luis Barragan, Tokyo, 1992, p. 176 for a similar example in the Prieto Lopez interior
Jose Maria Buendía Júlbez, Juan Palomar, and Guillermo Eguiarte, The Life and Work of Luis Barragán, Mexico, 1997, p. 132 for a similar example in the Prieto Lopez interior
Juan Miró, Barragán Revisted: A Second Life for the Prieto Lopez House, Mexico, 2013, illustrated p. 124
Property of a Private American Collector
115
Table lamp, from Casa Prieto Lopez, Mexico City, designed by Luis Barragán
1960s
Glazed earthenware, parchment and leather shade.
Base: 20 3/4 in. (52.7 cm) high
Estimate
$12,000 - 18,000
Sold for $15,240
Benjamin Green
Associate Specialist, Head of Sale, New York
bgreen@phillips.com
+1 212 940 1267
Design
New York Auction 11 December 2024
126
This lot is no longer available.
203
This lot is no longer available.
