5 Artists on Our Radar This March https://ift.tt/oexzCNf

“Artists on Our Radar” is a monthly series focused on five artists who have our attention. Utilizing our art expertise and Artsy data, we’ve determined which artists made an impact this past month through new gallery representation, exhibitions, auctions, art fairs, or fresh works on Artsy.

Agrade Camíz

B. 1988, Rio de Janeiro. Lives and works in Rio de Janeiro.

Paisagem com pássaros amarelos [Landscape with Yellow Birds], 2025
Agrade Camíz
A Gentil Carioca

Futuro, 2025
Agrade Camíz
A Gentil Carioca

Inspired by the visual elements of Brazil’s suburbs and favelas, Rio de Janiero–based artist Agrade Camíz’s lively works investigate physical and social boundaries. The artist’s practice is rooted in the streets: Early in her career, she painted public murals, using the large-scale format to draw attention to issues in her community such as social mobility and oppression. In more recent works, Camíz employs expansive canvases, dappled with bright swathes of color and often overlaid with patterns alluding to fences, wheels, and vines. Many of Camíz’s works employ grids, suggesting a city plan viewed from above—another nod to the architecture of separation. But glimpses of the human form also appear in her semi-abstract works, suggesting the lives that move through and around these boundaries.

Camíz is currently included in a group exhibition, “Formas Das Aguas,” at Museu de Arte Moderna in Rio. Her featured work is based on her observations taking the 474 bus in Rio—a route that travels from a favela in the north to wealthy neighborhoods near the sea, traversing social and class divisions.

Pousada, 2025
Agrade Camíz
A Gentil Carioca

Casa incompleta, 2025
Agrade Camíz
A Gentil Carioca

Da sua varanda, 2025
Agrade Camíz
A Gentil Carioca

Coração, 2024
Agrade Camíz
A Gentil Carioca

Camíz’s work is also on view in a solo presentation with Brazil-based gallery A Gentil Carioca at ARCO Madrid. She has shown in exhibitions at Mariane Ibrahim in Mexico City, Instituto PIPA in Rio de Janeiro, Gasworks in London, and elsewhere.

—Isabelle Sakelaris

Aaron Glasson

B. 1983, Auckland, New Zealand. Lives and works in Mexico City.

The Barn Burned down, now I can see the moon, 2024
Aaron Glasson
MAIA Contemporary

Working across installation, painting, murals, sculpture, and film, multidisciplinary artist Aaron Glasson operates a broad practice united by its investigation of nature and ecology. These are themes that the New Zealander approaches from different angles across various projects, from repurposing desert cabins to experiments with natural pigment. They have also led the artist from figuration into a more abstract, organic visual language in which he employs geometric forms.

These forms were prominent in recent works presented by Mexico City gallery MAIA Contemporary at Zona Maco last month. In a series of totemic sculptures and transcendental paintings, Glasson homed in on the motif of interconnectedness between humanity and nature. In Sun (2024), for instance, circular arrangements and radiating beams emphasize the star’s power, which extends outward to fuel life on Earth. The artist’s choice of pigment—oil and beeswax—references an undergirding relationship to the natural world.

Sun, 2024
Aaron Glasson
MAIA Contemporary

Sun Spire (two), 2025
Aaron Glasson
MAIA Contemporary

Somethings being Built in You (Two), 2024
Aaron Glasson
Skye Gallery Aspen

Cavern, 2024
Aaron Glasson
MAIA Contemporary

Glasson earned his bachelor’s degree in art and design at the Auckland University of Technology in 2005. He has exhibited extensively, including in recent solo presentations at Louis Buhl & Co. in Detroit and MAIA Contemporary, along with recent group presentations with Harman Projects in Los Angeles and SUN.CONTEMPORARY in Bali.

—Arun Kakar

Pat Lipsky

B. 1941, New York. Lives and works in New York.

Pasadena, 2024
Pat Lipsky
James Fuentes

In the summer of 1969, Pat Lipsky spent her days working with water-soaked canvases, applying paint in frenetic splatters and smears. A stone’s throw from the home of fellow abstractionists Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner on Long Island, New York, the painter experimented with her first wave paintings. These works were characterized by chromatic, gestural brushstrokes that undulated across her canvases—a technique that Lipsky, now 83, is revisiting in a new series. These works are on view in Los Angeles through March 22nd in “That Which We Are” at James Fuentes, which announced its representation of the artist in January.

Fuentes also showed three of Lipsky’s wave paintings at Frieze Los Angeles last month, in one of Artsy’s favorite booths at the fair. The booth reflected the full-circle moment in the artist’s career: Chrysanthemum (1971), a bending gradient of reds, greens, oranges, and blues, was displayed alongside a newer wave painting, Message (2023), with similarly undulating bands of yellows, reds, and blues.

Pagoda, 2024
Pat Lipsky
James Fuentes

Dream, 2024
Pat Lipsky
James Fuentes

July 29, 2024
Pat Lipsky
James Fuentes

Color War, 2024
Pat Lipsky
James Fuentes

Lipsky earned a BFA from Cornell University in 1963 and an MFA from Hunter College in 1968, and had her first solo exhibition at André Emmerich Gallery in 1970. A 2023 solo show staged by Eric Firestone Gallery shed new light on her largely underrecognized career. James Fuentes is planning another solo exhibition for the artist in New York later this year.

—Maxwell Rabb

Beatrice Meoni

B. 1960, Florence, Italy. Lives and works in Italy.

Minestrine del conforto, 2025
Beatrice Meoni
Cardelli & Fontana

Prima di cena, 2024
Beatrice Meoni
Cardelli & Fontana

Bowls of soup and cluttered tabletops create the familiar moments that fill Beatrice Meoni’s oil paintings, evoking warmth and comfort. In the decades since she began painting, the Italian artist’s practice has shifted focus from fragmented figures to detailed interiors, reflecting her exploration of the medium’s possibilities. Her work was recently featured in a group presentation at Arte Fiera Bologna with Cardelli & Fontana, which represents her.

Meoni’s previous experience as a scenery painter and designer for theatrical productions is evident in her compositions, which prioritize setting over narrative and are often devoid of human figures. In Prima di cena (2024), for example, loose brushwork is used to create a distinctly poetic composition. With a radiant palette and impressionistic strokes, Meoni captures a cozy kitchen interior, featuring a dinner table mid-preparation and sunlight filling the space.

I due panchetti, 2025
Beatrice Meoni
Cardelli & Fontana

Fumo, 2025
Beatrice Meoni
Cardelli & Fontana

Dal boschetto al cortile (from the grove to the courtyard), 2024
Beatrice Meoni
Cardelli & Fontana

Sotto il vulcano, 2024
Beatrice Meoni
Cardelli & Fontana

Born in Florence, Meoni studied foreign literature prior to pursuing art. She has exhibited both in Italy and internationally, and her work is included in a current group show, “Intorno alla stella,” at Nashira Gallery in Milan.

—Adeola Gay

Ebony Russell

B. 1980, Melbourne. Lives and works in Sydney.

Loutrophoros: Ritual Urn Couple in Pink and Red, 2024
Ebony Russell
Cynthia Corbett Gallery

Indecorum: Openwork Tilting Lekythos , 2024
Ebony Russell
Cynthia Corbett Gallery

Ebony Russell’s ceramics are, in a word, scrumptious. The Australian artist uses a piping method borrowed from the world of cake decorating to create elaborate, highly textural sculptures that riff on art historical forms—and look good enough to eat. These include her grotto sculptures, a series of small porcelain shrines featuring Virgin Mary figurines, and her vases and Grecian urns in powder blues and baby pinks. A selection of the latter were recently shown in Cynthia Corbett Gallery’s presentation at Collect, a leading contemporary craft fair in London.

Among the most decadent and technically impressive of these works is Loutrophoros: Ritual Urn Couple in Pink and Red (2024), which comprises two urns resting atop a pair of pillars that appear to be made from stacks of meringues. Scarlet bows and frills adorn the column bases and the vessels’ ornate handles. With these feminine-coded decorative forms, and her use of traditionally gendered craft and culinary techniques, Russell offers an exuberant celebration of women’s creative labor.

Indecorum: In Confidence Vase & Pedestal Set , 2022
Ebony Russell
Cynthia Corbett Gallery

Siren Shell Urn, 2023
Ebony Russell
Cynthia Corbett Gallery

Lady of the Grotto: Shrine Form with Gold Mary, 2022
Ebony Russell
Modern Times

Suspiciously Beautiful: OXO Openwork, 2023
Ebony Russell
Cynthia Corbett Gallery

Russell earned her BA in ceramics at Melbourne’s Monash University, and her MFA from the National Art School in Sydney. In addition to appearing at Collect, her work was recently shown at Melbourne Art Fair by Martin Browne Contemporary, which represents her.

—Olivia Horn

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Banksy artwork inspired by Jack Vettriano sells for $5.4 million at Sotheby’s. https://ift.tt/CO8BsjR

Banksy’s Crude Oil (Vettriano) (2005), a rare, handpainted work sold for £4.3 million ($5.4 million) at Sotheby’s modern and contemporary evening auction in London on March 4th (all prices include fees). The artwork, which came from blink-182 bassist Mark Hoppus’s private collection, takes inspiration from The Singing Butler (1992) by the late Scottish artist Jack Vettriano, who passed away at 73 earlier this week.

Sotheby’s Modern and Contemporary Evening auction totaled £62.5 million ($78.62 million), with more than half of the works making their auction debut. One standout debut was Alberto Burri’s Sacco e Nero 3 (1955), smashing its high estimate of £3.5 million ($4.4 million) when it sold for £4.9 million ($6.2 million).

Crude Oil (Vettriano) is Banksy’s environmentally-conscious reworking of Vettriano’s most famous work. Vettriano’s original painting features a couple in formal dress dancing across a beach accompanied by a butler and a maid. In Banksy’s reimagined painting, the maid is replaced with two figures in yellow hazmat suits carrying what appears to be a barrel of toxic waste.

The top lot of the evening was Yoshitomo Nara’s Cosmic Eyes (in the Milky Lake) (2005), which sold for £9 million ($11.4 million). The work, one of the first to feature the artist’s signature rainbow-colored eyes, sparked a 10-minute bidding war.

Meanwhile, South African artist Lisa Brice achieved a new artist record, with After Embah (2018) fetching £5.4 million ($6.8 million) after a 10-minute bidding war between six potential buyers. The painting’s pre-sale estimate was £1 million–£1.5 million ($1.2 million–$1.9 million). This work nearly doubles the artist’s record set when No Bare Back, after Embah (2017) sold for $3.1 million at Sotheby’s in 2021.

Six bidders battled over German Surrealist Max Ernst’s bronze sculpture Moonmad (1975–76), which tripled its estimate when it sold for £2.1 million ($2.7 million). The work, which depicts a jester-like figure, was last seen at auction at Sotheby’s in 1979. Several other sculptures surpassed their estimates throughout the night, including two bronzes from Auguste Rodin: Éternel printemps (1894) and Cariatide à la pierre (ca. 1889–93), which sold for £1.3 million ($1.6 million) and £698,500 ($878,608), respectively.

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These 5 Women-Led Galleries Are Championing Overlooked Women Artists https://ift.tt/wzqGj32

The art world has long operated under a patriarchal gaze, often sidelining the contributions of women whose accolades, if recognized, often arrive decades late. The feminist art collective Guerrilla Girls once pointed this out in their 1988 manifesto The Advantages of Being a Woman Artist, stating that a woman’s career—if acknowledged—might only take off in their eighties. Indeed, many artists have waited until their nineties, or were not appreciated properly until after their passing.

However, the narrative is beginning to shift. While women artists are still underrepresented in the art world at large, there is a growing consciousness of the need to rectify this imbalance. Among those driving this transformation are the women-owned galleries that champion and cultivate the legacies of these overlooked artists.

Artsy spoke with five galleries, from San Francisco to Casablanca, about their roles in uplifting women’s contributions to art.

Christine Berry and Martha Campbell

Berry Campbell Gallery

New York

Yellow Painting No 1, 1976
Yvonne Thomas
Berry Campbell Gallery

New York–based dealers Christine Berry and Martha Campbell first met as associate directors at the Upper East Side gallery Spanierman Modern, where they bonded over a shared passion for Abstract Expressionism. Inspired to platform more of these post-war artists, they founded Berry Campbell Gallery in Chelsea in 2013. Early on, they stumbled upon a collection of works by the nearly forgotten French artist Yvonne Thomas after encountering her work in a group show. It led them to storage units filled with artworks, some bearing labels from the esteemed artist and dealer Betty Parsons. Shocked to find that Thomas, once acclaimed in the 1950s, had fallen out of recognition, the gallerists felt compelled to revive her legacy—a mission that came to define their program.

“What we set out to do when we opened this gallery was to show good art. Christine and I both had an affinity for Abstract Expressionism and Color Field art, and what was being presented to us was C- and D-list men, and, in my opinion, the C- and D-list men would have been a huge gamble,” said Campbell.

Pumpkin Station, 1987
Lynne Drexler
Berry Campbell Gallery

The gallery has since become renowned for championing women Abstract Expressionists. Its roster includes the estates of increasingly well-known women artists such as Bernice Bing and Judith Godwin—yet it wasn’t always an easy path for the gallerists. “In terms of critical acclaim, we had trouble in the beginning getting these artists’ names out, but we really stuck to course,” said Berry. “Just because we didn’t sell a lot or get attention, we didn’t stop. We would just plan the next show, do more research, more scholarship.”

The persistence and scholarship paid off. Once-overlooked women artists on the gallery’s roster are now either secondary-market stars, such as Alice Baber, whose auction record was set at $698,500 at Sotheby’s New York in 2023, or are receiving widespread recognition, such as Lynne Drexler, whom the gallery now co-represents with White Cube.

“I do now understand that it really was a systematic exclusion of women artists [and] artists of color, but that is now changing through galleries, artists, collectors, and museums being more open and realizing their collections need to be expanded,” said Berry. “We’ve watched the world change before our eyes. In the last 11 years since we’ve been in business, we’ve seen how people had no interest in what we were doing, and now we seem to be right on target, and we’re glad people are coming with us on this journey.”

Tina Kim

Tina Kim Gallery

New York

Dawn, ca. 1980s
Lee ShinJa
Tina Kim Gallery

Tina Kim opened her eponymous Chelsea gallery in 2001, driven by a mission to spotlight lesser-known Korean artists in the United States. She initially caught the attention of collectors by platforming the influential Dansaekhwa movement in New York. Still, a key part of her program is a platform for Korean women artists, including Minouk Lim, Wook-Kyung Choi, and Suki Seokyeong Kang. Committed to building the legacies of these women, the gallery has also turned its focus to two overlooked women artists: Lee ShinJa and Pacita Abad.

Kim recalled that before finding Lee, whose wool thread tapestry depicts luminous landscapes, she and several curators found it difficult to identify mid-century Korean women artists. “There’ve been numerous requests from museum curators and institutions: ‘Tina, could you please help us identify a female artist [from South Korea]’…and we both struggled,” said Kim. “They’ve been doing their research, and I’ve been doing my research, and it took a really long time. We now recognize you have to think outside of the box. Not all female artists practiced painting and sculpture, so you have to look at different disciplines—Lee ShinJa, for example, did fiber art.”

To paint with a twist, 1991
Pacita Abad
Tina Kim Gallery

Lee remained essentially unknown outside of Korea until last August, when Tina Kim Gallery mounted the artist’s first solo show in New York. It followed the artist’s first retrospective at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Gwacheon, South Korea. Kim is now tasked with building the reputation of the now 94-year-old artist. “While Lee ShinJa taught at a women’s university with a strong industrial design program and was respected for many years, she was primarily viewed as an educator and craft artist rather than a fine artist,” said Kim.

In addition to Lee, the gallery has similarly championed Abad, whose massive “trapunto” tapestries critique the Filipino government and modern society. The gallerist started representing the artist’s estate in 2022 and has been instrumental in building the artist’s legacy, hosting two solo exhibitions in New York and presenting work at art fairs around the globe. “I believe the art world is now ready to fully recognize Pacita Abad’s significant contributions,” said Kim. “Her work, deeply influenced by her politically engaged Filipino family, consistently addressed social justice, identity, and migration—themes that resonate powerfully with current global discourse.”

“I want to emphasize that my primary focus has always been on fostering research and scholarship and on helping these artists gain recognition with institutions,” said Kim. “So I collaborate closely with curators, publish scholarly publications, and organize events like roundtables and panels where we’re all learning together.”

Wendi Norris

Gallery Wendi Norris

San Francisco

“I never have set out to represent female artists or to represent Surrealist artists,” San Francisco–based dealer Wendi Norris told Artsy. “I’ve just set out to represent great artists and work with some of the most consequential artists of my time.”

The ex-tech businesswoman turned gallerist has pursued this philosophy by curating works from such artists, including Dorothea Tanning and Leonora Carrington, without confining them to labels. “We all need to stop categorizing these women artists,” Norris emphasized. “The truth is, I just want to take the great artists and compare them with other great artists of their time.”

Norris is committed to enhancing the recognition of these artists through rigorous support, including sponsoring PhD scholars, publishing books, and collaborating closely with prominent figures and events in the art world. “The real trick, the magic happens in understanding a true analysis of where that artist is or where they could be or the potentiality,” she said. “And that really takes some honest assessment of the artist’s oeuvre, their place in history, what they’ve accomplished.”

This commitment has contributed to a growing mainstream recognition of artists such as Tanning and Carrington, leading to notable achievements such as setting auction records, securing museum exhibitions, and expanding scholarship. One major example is the gallery’s 2019 presentation “The Story of the Last Egg,” spotlighting Carrington’s career. Since then, the artist has inspired the curator Cecilia Alemani’s theme for the 59th Venice Biennale and set significant auction records, fetching $28.5 million for Les Distractions de Dagobert (1945) at Sotheby’s in 2024.

Norris envisions success for these artists as walking through a museum and feeling assured that she is witnessing a complete history of art that includes the contributions of Indigenous people, women, and people of color. “I want that history,” she said.

Yasmine Berrada Sounni

Loft Art Gallery

Casablanca and Marrakech

Untitled, 2022
Malika Agueznay
Loft Art Gallery

Yasmine Berrada Sounni of Loft Art Gallery has played a crucial role in promoting the legacy of the mid-century modernist Casablanca Art School. In the last year, the Moroccan gallery has garnered attention from the international art world, especially with its representation of key figures like Moroccan painter Mohamed Melehi. While the gallery also represents other notable male members from the movement, this year, Sounni is focusing on Malika Agueznay, purportedly the first Moroccan woman modernist painter.

“We’ve been very involved in the Casablanca School movement, and we’ve been really close to Melehi, with Belkahia, with Hamidi, and since the gallery evolved, it was important and natural for us [to focus on Malika],” said Sounni. “She has a key role, a very important role, in Moroccan art history.”

Untitled, 2023
Malika Agueznay
Loft Art Gallery

It’s not uncommon for a woman artist among a crowd of men to be overlooked by history. Sounni noted how Agueznay’s work imbued the aesthetics of the movement with a sensuality and femininity unexplored by her male counterparts. The gallerist noted just how integral she was during the height of the movement: “She was a mom of two girls. She was traveling, doing biennales. She was surrounded by men and everything, and she was standing there, and fighting for her beliefs, fighting for all these things in the Morocco of the ’60s.”

Now, the gallerist is embarking on the process of building up the scholarship and putting the pieces together. The now nonagenarian artist was at the heart of the school, a mentee to Melehi and Belkahia, and often the host to all the artists. According to Sounni, Agueznay’s paintings are intended to be the subject of a solo presentation with the gallery in December 2025, although exact dates are yet to be determined.

“Her work has been overlooked, and there have been exhibitions all over the world about [the Casablanca School],” said Sounni. “Malika is a witness of this movement. She’s an important and precious witness of this movement, and she’s been underlooked.”

Jasmin Glaab

Galerie Glaab

Bern, Switzerland

Zwei Formen (Two Shapes), 1970-1990
Lill Tschudi
Galerie Glaab

Jasmin Glaab inaugurated her eponymous gallery in Bern, Switzerland, in 2022 to challenge the male-dominated art world, where women artists are underrepresented in collections and their works are often significantly undervalued. “Women’s art is literally undervalued,” Glaab told Artsy, referring to a 2022 Guardian article that shows works by male artists command prices that are on average 10 times higher than those by women artists.

Glaab highlights that this systemic undervaluation has historical roots, particularly in Europe. “In Switzerland, married women still needed their husband’s permission to pursue a profession or open their own bank account until 1976—that’s not even 50 years ago,” Glaab said.

Galerie Glaab’s primary mission is to uplift the careers of both established and emerging women artists, particularly in Switzerland. The gallery shows an array of Swiss women artists, including Miriam Cahn, Manon, Naomi Middelmann, and Méret Oppenheim.

Der Klotz (The Block), 1970-1990
Lill Tschudi
Galerie Glaab

Untitled (Handdruck 7/25), 1970-1990
Lill Tschudi
Galerie Glaab

One notable name the gallery works with is the late Swiss artist Lill Tschudi, who produced more than 300 linocut prints in her career, some of which are in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Despite her inclusion in major collections, Tschudi’s work remains largely underappreciated, with few major exhibitions dedicated to her. Glaab is organizing a solo show for Tschudi in September 2025 and is actively working to build a network of institutions and scholars familiar with her work.

“As a gallerist, I also work closely with institutions and am committed to increasing the proportion of works by female artists in public collections,” said Glaab. “I started to collaborate and talk to institutions that have worked with Tschudi before. I started collaborating with them, and then you have several art historians that have written about Tschudi, so you start to connect with those people that have presented her before or worked on her oeuvre and written about her oeuvre.”

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In Alfie Caine’s Paintings, Dreamy Interiors Meet Surreal Landscapes https://ift.tt/4jeiWar

Some boys collect Hot Wheels, some collect comic books. Alfie Caine collected miniature chairs. When the rising painter was growing up in London, he funneled a precocious love of furniture into acquiring dollhouse-sized models of iconic designs, like the Prouvé Standard Chair and the Eames LCW Lounge. He arranged them into imagined rooms on shelves in his bedroom—foreshadowing the pristine, just-so interiors that would later become the focus of his paintings. When, as an artistically gifted teenager, he began receiving commissions to draw people’s homes, he sometimes incorporated the tiny designs from his collection.

Now 28, Caine has turned his childhood obsession and adolescent side hustle into a full-blown career. Over the last five years, his dreamy domiciles have captured the attention of collectors on Instagram, where he made critical early sales, and of tastemaking galleries like Cob and MASSIMODECARLO. The appeal of his work is immediate: His canvases are large and enveloping, striped with crisp lines and washed in vivid colors. They depict spaces full of precious objects, with windows opening onto wide, fantastical vistas—like Architectural Digest spreads passed through a psychedelic filter. The scenery is inspired by the coastal marshland surrounding Caine’s home in East Sussex, England, but it resonates on both sides of the Atlantic. Following a memorable outing at New York’s Independent art fair last fall, Caine has returned to the city for his solo gallery debut in the U.S.: “The Chalk Carver’s House,” on view at Margot Samel through March 15th.

Nine Legs, 2025
Alfie Caine
Margot Samel

Chalk Horse, 2025
Alfie Caine
Margot Samel

Two days before the opening, Caine was sipping chamomile tea (naturally, the Brit would have preferred black, but there was none to be found) in Samel’s compact Tribeca space, reflecting on the show’s origins. Two years ago, while driving with his mom along the southern coast of England, he spotted a beacon on the hillside: a glowing geoglyph, the giant form of a horse cut into the ground to expose the white limestone beneath its surface. Intrigued, Caine looked into the history of the carving, which was purportedly created by the sons of a local farmer in the 1830s. He then started to consider the life of one of the monument’s makers—the carver referenced in the exhibition’s title—in a trio of interconnected paintings that anchor the show. “I was imagining a space that a person who would create that kind of thing would live in,” he said pensively.

The space, as Caine envisioned it, includes a suite of three rooms rendered in radiant pinks, oranges, and golds. In Chalk Horse (all works 2025), a wide, uncluttered desk in the living room looks out over the hillside where the carver left his mark. That scene flows into Nine Legs, featuring a rose- and poppy-colored staircase and walls adorned with horse art. Next to that is the kitchen of Golden Hills, where a cut flower stem in a vase elegantly frames the view onto a dusky horizon. A river is prominent in the landscape; it cuts across all three works, acting as a horizontal axis that ties them together.

Golden Hills, 2025
Alfie Caine
Margot Samel

Shower Mist, 2025
Alfie Caine
Margot Samel

Despite Caine’s connection to the house’s imagined inhabitant, he left these rooms devoid of human figures—a consistent quality in his recent work. “I’m drawn to the unknowns,” he explained. “My favorite paintings tend to be ones where there’s that unknown, and it lends a sort of tension that makes you drawn to it and wanting to know more.”

Tension brews on the peripheries of these scenes. Action seems imminent, stirring a sense of anticipation. In Nine Legs, for example, we see the four legs of a dog, just barely in frame at the top of the stairs. Will he bound down to greet us? Another painting in the show, Shower Mist, depicts a bathroom with walls striped in macaron hues. The shower is running, with light from the window turning its spray into a mystical-looking fog. The door is ajar, suggesting that the bather has just stepped out and will return imminently. Are we intruding?

But those disruptions are purely hypothetical; the viewer remains, for now, alone. Attendant to their solitude is another kind of tension, between the allure of these spaces and the loneliness of experiencing them without company. It’s like Caine’s rooms are all dressed up with nowhere to go; they emanate both glamour and melancholy.

But for Caine, contentment coexists with isolation, which is a big part of his life in East Sussex. He first moved there in 2020 for an artist residency in the town of Rye. “I do love being there, because there’s no distraction, and I can kind of shut myself away,” he noted. The town’s population is under 5,000—a radical change of setting from his native London, or even from Cambridge, where he completed an architecture degree in 2018. When Caine’s initial residency in Rye ended, he returned to London but—despite being advised not to distance himself from the capital’s buzzy art scene—soon began hunting for a house and studio space in Rye. He was so captivated by the landscape that he knew he had to return, he said.

The feeling was familiar: Back in 2015, a formative trip to Iceland had inspired him to start painting in a different style and at a larger scale than he had previously. “All I wanted to do was paint it,” he said of the Icelandic terrain. “Then when I went to Rye, I got that same feeling. I was like, ‘Oh my god, I can live somewhere where I have that inspiration at my doorstep.’”

In his work, windows and doors suggest portals, not just between the indoors and outdoors, but between the indoors and entirely other planets. The sky is rarely blue—it’s canary yellow, or cotton-candy pink, or sage. Spindly trees squiggle across the sky like doodles brought to life. Water stands so still it looks like glass.

One painting in “The Chalk Carver’s House” stands out from the rest. In The Journey, the landscape is framed not by the window of a house, but of a train car. “I wanted to paint the train because I find it one of the most calming places, even though it can be quite chaotic,” Caine said. “I feel like it leads the work, in the sense that I wanted it to be about the commute to the destination.”

It’s a poetic new subject for an artist whose career is steadily gaining momentum (another solo show, at MASSIMODECARLO’s London gallery, is planned for later this year). Caine is, you could say, on the move. Along the route, the view is beautiful.

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First Old Masters collection valued over $100m to come to auction at Sotheby’s. https://ift.tt/wefnY0j

A major collection of Old Master paintings, built up over decades by Jordan and Thomas A. Saunders III, is poised to shatter auction records this May at Sotheby’s New York. Estimated to be worth $80 million–$120 million, the collection features works by artists such as Jan Davidsz. de Heem and Luis Meléndez and is being billed as the most valuable single-owner collection of Old Master paintings ever to appear at auction.

A total of 56 paintings will be sold, the majority in a dedicated sale on May 21st—Elegance & Wonder: Masterpieces from the Collection of Jordan and Thomas A. Saunders III—while some works will be included in Sotheby’s Master Paintings sale on May 22nd.

Saunders, who passed away in 2022 at 86, was a prominent figure on Wall Street and a private equity executive. He also served as the chairman of the Heritage Foundation from 2009 to 2018 and played an integral role in the formation of its Heritage Action organization.

The Saunders collection is distinguished not only by its financial worth but also by its breadth, with many pieces having been displayed in prestigious institutions such as the National Gallery of Art in D.C. and the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. The auction results are expected to surpass the $76 million total garnered by 11 works from the Fisch Davidson collection at Sotheby’s New York in 2023.

The Saunders’s collection was shaped, in part, by George Wachter, Sotheby’s chairman and co-worldwide head of Old Master Paintings. The couple first connected with Wachter in 1998 when Jordan was captivated by Francesco Guardi’s A View of the Church of the Redentore at an exhibition. A pair of Venetian landscapes by the Rococo artist hold the highest valuation in the auction, estimated at $10 million–$15 million.

With Wachter’s guidance, the Saunders amassed a comprehensive collection that spans the 16th to the 19th centuries and includes works from a variety of European schools. “This collection could never have been assembled without the Saunders’s steadfast determination, decisiveness, impeccable eye, and unwavering trust in me, for which I am deeply grateful,” Wachter said.

Among the highlights is a 17th-century still life by de Heem, now expected to sell for between $8 million and $12 million. The artist’s current record is $7.6 million for A banquet still life at Christie’s in 2020. Another standout is Meléndez’s Still Life with a Cauliflower, a Basket with Eggs, Leeks, and Fish, and Assorted Kitchen Utensils (ca. 1760s), which is expected to fetch $5 million–$ 8 million. The collection also includes portraiture, such as Thomas Lawrence’s Portrait of Miss Julia Peel, estimated at $6 million–$8 million.

“From exceptional Dutch pictures to marvelous Venetian views by Guardi, from Lawrence’s unbelievably beautiful portrait to one of the most exquisite Meléndez still lifes, the collection is truly one of a kind,” said Wachter. “This auction is a profound full circle moment for me, and it is an honor to once again play a part in shepherding these works into the next great collections.”

from Artsy News https://ift.tt/Vh0DOBw