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Masterworks

Curated by Helly Nahmad and Marzina Marzetti

October 6, 2019 – June 21, 2021

Images Artists Back

Installation Views Selected Works Thumbnails

theInstallation view of Masterworks. This photo feature a green painting by Lucio Fontana pierced with holes contained in the shape of a circle. Next to the Fontana painting on the right is a large scale sculpture by Joan Miro, in an assemblage manner made of found objects later poured in bronze and painted over, we can see a box standing on one of its side, pierced on the top by a tall yellow fork. There is also a red ball seating on the box.

Installation view of Masterworks. View of the lobby entrance featuring a medium size sculpture by French sculptor, painter Jean Dubuffet. The sculpture is titled (The Welcomin) L'Acceuillant and was made in 1973. It represents a human shape standing and waiving with its right arm. The sculpture is overall white but is covered with thick blacl lines, red and blue spots and stripes that define in a simple way the face of this figure. This style is the famous Hourloupe signature style that Dubuffet used in many of his paintings and sculptures.

Installation view of Masterworks featuring the sculpture (the welcoming) "L'Accueillant" by Jean Dubuffet.

Installation view of Masterworks. This image features two watercolors by Joan Miro the Spanish painter. On the left a medium size watercolors represent a large head painted in black with a mouth open wide and a lively expression. On the right ot os the cover of a poetry magazine, representing a black fish over. a red spot.

Installation view of Masterworks. This image shows a sculpture by American sculptor Alexander Calder part of the Critter series, titled "Haute Couture" and produced in 1976. It depicts a man standing on three legs. The top part of the sculpture, including the bust and head was produced as an independent piece that is simply seated on the top and revolving when it catches the wind. On the right is a paiinting by fernand Leger, representing in a palette of primary colors, geometric forms and objects, in a abstract way, depicting an imaginary space. The painting is titled "Objets dans l'espace" and was produced in 1931, the year he discovered NY city for the first time and manifests his impression the city had on him.

Installation view of Masterworks. This image features a painting by Matta.

Installation view of Masterworks. ©Helly Nahmad Gallery NY.

Installation view of Masterworks.

Installation view of Picasso, Mousquetaire. Buste, 1967. It shows a portrait of a Muskeeter depicted with long purple. he face is composed with many white stripes and yellow, green, purple areas. the background is yellow mustard with white and grey horizontal stripe which makes the image very dynamic.

This is a photo of a large scale painting produced by Joan Miro titled "Femme à la voix de rossignol dans la nuit" and produced 1971. It is abstract and the rectangular horizontal canvas is composed of 3 ares each divided by a thick black line. The left side is depicting in a calligraphic brushstoke style executed with thick black line a shape that looks like the top part of a large fish, revealing a head and an eye. Theres a rectangular dark green area under that animal like form on the left of it is an area painting in bright yellow. On the right of that form is the center of the canvas shaped as a wide red cone shape with a large black dot at its bottom. On the right of the canvas, the area is divided in four very wide stripes piled up horizontally, the first stripe is black, the second underneath is a rich blue azure, underneath is the raw canvas not painted with the motif of a large star executed with thick black lines there is two dots on the right of it, one green, one purple. underneath there is a black stripe.

Installation view of Masterworks. This image shows sculpture by Dubuffet representing four small tree on a white pedestal in the center of the main area of the gallery. They are all painted in white and covered with thick black lines, like Dubuffet's signature Hourloupe style.

Installation view of Masterworks. ©Helly Nahmad Gallery NY. an hourloupe sculpture by dubuffet depicting four trees

Installation view of Masterworks. This image shows a small sculpture by Jean Dubuffet titles, Group of four trees (Groupe de Quatre Arbres (État Définitif) it was made in 1970. Four small trees are standing they are all painted in white and made in polyurethane. Thick black lines are painted over the white paint to define spaces, this style is known as Dubuffet's signature style, the "Hourloupe" style.

Installation view of Masterworks.

Installation view of Mastersworks. ©Helly Nahmad Gallery NY.

Installation view of Masters Works featuring Pablo Picasso's painting, Mousquetaire aux Oiseaux II, 13 January 1972, 1972, Oil on canvas, 146 x 114 cm. (57 ½ x 44 ⅞ in.) Photography by Bianca Boragi. ©Helly Nahmad Gallery NY.

Calder, Blue and Yellow among Reds, 1964. This sculpture is a large scale mobile by Alexander Calder. It's hung from the ceiling and display a cascade of nine wires held by each other each wire is holding flat disc of metal painted in various colors, red, yellow, black, white and blue.

Picasso, Mousquetaire. Buste, 1967

Pablo Picasso, Mousquetaire aux Oiseaux II, 13 January 1972, 1972 Oil on canvas 146 x 114 cm. (57 1/2 x 44 7/8 in.) This painting represents a man wearing a hat and holding a sword, it represents a mousquetaire. There is two birds painted only with one line on the right side of the canvas.

Pablo Picasso, Homme à la pipe et nu couché, 1967 This painting shows a couple fully occupy who the canvas. The man is seated smoking a pipe and the nude woman is laying down. The overall background is painted in mauve tons we can perceive the large brushstrokes. The figures are painted in white and grey tons and their features are achieved with thick black lines.

Juan Gris_Guitare sur une table_1916

Fernand Léger, Les femmes à la toilette, 1920 Oil on canvas 92.3 x 73.3 cm. (36 3/8 x 28 7/8 in.) Léger painted 'Les Femmes à la toilette' as the penultimate work in a rare and important sequence of eight canvases done in 1920, half of which are now in museum collections, on the theme of a woman seated at her boudoir table and looking into her mirror, as she attends to her daily toilette. This painting, in its lively amalgam of contrasting colors and forms.

Fernand Léger, Nature Morte, 1927 Oil on canvas 130.2 x 88.9 cm. (51 1/4 x 35 in.) A vertical divide bisects the canvas of Nature morte into two unequally sized sections. The presence of two objects dominates the composition: a squat red pot of flowers on the right hand side, offset on the left by the visible portion of a tall black vase. The flowers are ostensibly the only organic element in the present composition, yet they appear artificial; like everything else in the painting, their material substance has been reduced and purified, as if tooled and polished by means of a high-tech industrial process. Léger has reinforced the chosen vertical format of this composition by employing numerous straight up-and-down elements, using the curved lines and contours in the flowers, pot and vase to counteract and mitigate the overall geometric rigidity of the composition. By suggesting the presence of a floor or table-top in the foreground, Léger has created an illusion of receding space, into which the graphically flat rectilinear forms that comprise the setting fall into place, establishing the spatial schematic of an interior, with a mirror over a mantelpiece on the right, and a window at left. Contrasting objects both large and small, Léger has affixed his images of two French postage stamps to the axial column near the center of the composition. The painter has emphasized the hardness of his forms by rendering them in an austere palette based on the stark opposition of red and black, mediated in places by pale yellow, supplemented with two diagonally opposed patches of an earthy mauve tone. There are tensions of all kinds within this canvas--nonetheless, the architectural grandeur of Léger's overall conception steadies the composition and expresses a transcendent vision of stasis and serenity.

Jean Dubuffet, L'Accueillant, 1973. The present work was a maquette for a work that was originally part of a monumental group of five characters titled Welcome Parade, destined to populate the entrance of the new wing of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. The building's architect, I.M. Pei, had requested Dubuffet be invited to conceive of and install this artwork, but it was never realized for reasons that are still unclear.

Lucio Fontana, Concetto Spaziale, 1966 Waterbased paint on canvas with multiple holes (green) 100 x 81 cm. (38 3/8 x 31 7/8 in.) This painting only features one color a rich clover green. The shape of the canvas is a horizontal rectangular shape, an oval circle occupies most of the canvas it is slightly delineated with a thin line barely visible produced with a tip. The circle is perforated by multiple small holes, arranged in fifteen horizontal lines contained inside the oval shape.

Picasso, Guitare (Guitar), 1918 Oil and sand on canvas 54 x 65 cm. (21 1/4 x 25 5/8 in.) ©Helly Nahmad Gallery NY. This beautiful painting by Picasso depicts a guitar. To depict the wooden body of the guitar Picasso filled the area with real sand. Around the guitar and in the center of the canvas Picasso painted a false frame in the shape of an hexagon with six sides, which makes the work interesting, as it represents a painting noting inside the canvas. On top of this false hexagon frame is a small circle as if this internal painting was actually hung inside the canvas we are looking at. The tons are warm as the background of the canvas is painted in a bright yellow. Regarding the framing device surrounding the guitar, the left side is black and the right side is a rich reddish brown. This is a beautiful co position featuring geometric and prismatic shape to depict this instrument.

Joan Miró, Femme et Oiseau, 1967.In Femme et oiseau, a black painted wooden crate is pierced with a bright yellow pitchfork, next to which sits a ball painted a vibrant red. Miró's use of bright primary and secondary colors for each component emphasized the individuality of each of the elements, setting them aside from the whole. In the present sculpture, femininity and fertility are represented by the red ball; in other works, it is an egg or a stone. The beak of the bird is possibly represented. by the green cone-lie element and the pitchfork is a wing or a plume.

Fernand Léger, Objets dans l'espace, 1931

Giorgio de Chirico, Mobili Nella Valle, 1927

Matta_dar a luz un mundo_1960

Jean Dubuffet, Groupe de Quatre Arbres (État Définitif), 1970 96 x 100 x 87 cm. (37 7/8 x 39 x 34) Epoxy paint on polyurethane, in 4 parts ©Helly Nahmad Gallery NY. The present work, Group of four trees from 1970 belongs Dubuffet's acclaimed Hourloupe cycle series from 1962 to 1974. The works created during this period resemble familiar objects and forms and yet these works recall a fantastical parallel universe where the line between the real and the imaginary is blurred. The figures and objects of the Hourloupe cycle all emulate an existing reality or an everyday object. Dubuffet referred to them as a reflection of the tangible as it appears in the mind. It is in this context that one should experience Group of four trees.

Lucio Fontana, Concetto spaziale, Attesa (64 T 101), 1964. This painting is covered of a red surface and has one large and straight vertical cut in the middle

Alexander Calder, Crag with Petals and Yellow Cascade,1974. This sculpture is part of Calder Stabile series which is known as revolutionary gesture in the sculpture history as its getting rid of the pedestal. "Crag with Petals and Yellow Cascade” features two undulating metal stems balanced in the cavities and peaks of this mountainous form, disrupting the dense and static plinth and allowing light polychromatic elements to swirl and catch the air. ⁣

Joan Miró, Femmes et Oiseaux dans la nuit, 1968. This abstract painting by Joan Miro features a poetic visual vocabulary made of dots, thick curvy black lines, scribbles. The overall colors are primary tons of red, blue, green, yellow tons.

Alexander Calder, Black II, 1949. Elegantly standing as though poised on tiptoe, Alexander Calder’s Black II is an exquisite example of the artist’s innovative combination of sculptural dynamism and grace. Comprised of dynamic upward arcs of red metal planes that pierce through a sunny yellow disk before culminating in a carefully balanced arm supporting a floating arrangement of multicolored discs, Black II incorporates many of the iconic motifs that Calder used throughout his career. With this particular form, Calder successfully incorporates both the graceful movement that he pioneered in his groundbreaking mobiles together with the more substantial nature of his mature postwar work.

Alexander Calder, Untitled, 1948 Hanging mobile—sheet metal, wire and paint 134.6 x 182.8 x 63.5 cm. (53 x 72 in. x 25 in.) Untitled, 1948, offers a graceful and harmonious composition held by a single wire. Floating polychromatic elements, resembling the distant sight of birds, gently revolve in their own trajectories when caught by the air. These movements are held by a delicate anchor, offering a point of orbit and balance to this elegant composition.

Joan Miró, Oiseaux devant le soleil, 1978 Oil on canvas 116 x 89 cm. (45 5/8 x 35 in.) This painting by Miro features a rich sky blue background achieved with large visible brushstrokes. On the upper left side of the canvas there is a bright coral circular shape we can distinguish each line that forms it. It seems the gesture was rapid when producing it. The center of the piece features two thick vertical lines, two dots are placed on top of them and one large dot on the bottom right, close tot he signature

Alexander Calder, Haute Couture, 1976

Joan Miró, Femme à la voix de rossignol dans la nuit, 1971. Oil and acrylic on canvas 129.7 x 194.3 cm. (51 1/8 x 76 1/2 in.) Femme à la voix de rossignol dans la nuit presents some of Joan Miró’s most characteristic themes on a dramatic scale and with grand simplicity of means. Birds, women and the night had, since the very beginning of his career, constituted some of the most poetic ingredients of Miró’s universe. In Femme à la voix de rossignol dans la nuit the black parts give structure and rhythm to the composition: the form on the left is counterbalanced by the section with the star on the right, while three vertical lines divide the vast canvas into three chromatic fields.

Georges Braque, Guitare et journal: STAL (recto); Femme à la mandoline (verso), 1913 gouache, charcoal and pencil on board 28 x 42 cm. (11 x 16 1/2 in.) This still life uses an oval shaped composition built with geometric lines and arcs. This compositions employs words, letters and numbers as active pictorial elements. We can read on the upper right the words STAL and Telephone.

Max Ernst, A Maiden, a Widow and a Wife, 1966. Championing dreams and intuition in the making of his works, Ernst invented the “Frottage” technique, placing paper over textured material to achieve different patterns on the canvas. He also made landscape a major theme in the Surrealists endeavors.⁣⠀ “A Maiden, a Widow and a Wife,” offers a compelling example of these three elements, with the coarse surfaces of its red transfigured, organic shapes delineated from a soothing blue and green background.⁣ Ernst’s arcane and powerful imagery resonates in its ability to transmute an ordinary landscape into a mysterious sight.⁣⠀

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