{"status":true,"msg":{"data":{"id":1935,"auction_id":4,"set_id":5,"lot_number":"32","artist":"Fernando Zóbel (1924 - 1984)","title":"Bernard Childs Pintado Mi Retrato en su Estudio de París","starting_price":10000000,"signed_dated":"signed (lower right and verso) dated 1967","medium":"oil on canvas","size":"39 1/2\" x 39 1/2\" (100 cm x 100 cm)","property":null,"coa":null,"provenance":"Memorial Art Gallery, University of Rochester, Rochester, New York","exhibited":"Bertha Schaefer Gallery, Fernando Zobel: Recent Paintings, New York, March 26 - April 13, 1968","literature":"De la Torre, Alfonso and Rafael Pérez-Madero. Fernando Zóbel: Catalogue Raisonné of Paintings (1946 - 1984). Madrid: Fundación Azcona, 2022. Listed as \"nº 67-66\" with full-color photograph and painting description on page 361.","write_up":"This piece encapsulates the friendship between \nFernando Zobel and Bernard Childs, the American \npainter, printmaker, and pioneer of engraving \nmetal plates using industrial tools. Zobel's biographer, \nAngeles Villalba Salvador, writes, \"Childs is the friend \nto influence him the most.\" While he had previously \nventured into engraving beginning in his Harvard days, \nZobel learned from Childs the \"secrets and problems \nof inks, plates, papers, etc.\" Childs mentored Zobel in \nengraving, as evidenced by their frequent exchanges of \nletters. Zobel even visited Childs in October 1962 in his \nParis studio, where the eminent engraver gave private \nsessions to him and companion artists Antonio Lorenzo \nand Gerardo Rueda.<br /><br /> \nIn his personal notes in Madrid in 1962, Zobel writes of \nhis admiration towards Childs. \"The time Bernard spends \nfrom inking the plate to finally passing it through the screw \npress is two and a half hours. He wastes no movements,\" \nZobel recalls. \"...There is nothing more pleasurable than \nwatching somebody do something he knows how to do \nreally well. When inking a plate, Bernard uses his head \nmore than most of the painters that I know use theirs \nwhen they're painting a picture...\" <br /><br />\nZobel painted the work at hand during one of his visits \nto Childs and his family in Paris in 1967. Childs was \nsimultaneously working on Zobel's portrait—a memory \nhe immortalized on this canvas.<br /><br /> \nWe see in this piece glimpses of Child working in his \nParisian studio, interpreted through Zobel's own vision \nof lyrical abstraction that is Delphic yet meditative \nand shows his keen observation and understanding \nof art's diversity and the world around him. In Zobel's \nsketchbook, we can even see Zobel's creative process; \nhow he rendered Child painting his portrait. We see in the \nspectral-like whites Child's bodily contours and him in the \nact of painting. The sharp lines forming a rectangle with \nthe blots of dark browns and siennas represent Child's \ncanvas mounted on an easel. The remaining lines and \nshades, ranging from ochre to grey, give us a peek into \nChild's studio.<br /><br /> \n\"Bernard Childs pintado mi retrato\" forms part of Zobel's \nDialogos, his sublime conversations with art and the \nartists themselves. He described this series as follows: \"I \nthink this series will last all my life until the day I depart \nthis world. The idea behind Diálogos is to speak of art \nwith art but with the brushes at the ready.\" The Dialogos \nis Zobel's \"own way of seeing.\"<br /><br /> Villalba Salvador writes that the years between 1963 \nand 1975 were the longest phase in Zobel's career, \ncharacterized by the artist's \"return to color,\" with \"the \nsiennas, dark browns, ochres, and greys\" appearing in \nZobel's canvas. Previously, Zobel had ventured into his \nSerie Negra—monochromatic canvases characterized \nby black lines on a white background. The Dialogos was \nthe first series borne from this revival. Zobel captures \nthe colorful history of art by studying and contemplating \nvarious elements integral to an artist's process—light, \nmovement, color, gesture, and intention, and \"disarranges \nand rearranges so as to build in his own way,\" as Villalba \nSalvador puts it.<br /><br />\nBut this work at hand veers from Zobel's typical Dialogos, \nopting instead for a lighthearted, casual, and to some \nextent, warm and sentimental conversation (mainly due \nto its delicate and ethereal textures) with his friend, Childs. \nUnlike other works from his Dialogos series, in which he \nconverses with the masters of yore and their masterpieces \nhe saw at the various museums he visited, \"Bernard Childs \npintado mi retrato\" is Zobel's dialogue with a fellow artist, \nwho also happened to be one of his dearest friends. \nMemory became integral to Zobel’s praxis beginning in \n1963, with his lived experiences becoming the basis of \nhis subjects. Thus, the work is a cherished experience \nimmortalized on a canvas, a visit not to the museum \nbut to the hallowed bastion of platonic intimacy. It can also be Zobel's dialogue with himself, what he sees and \nthinks of himself while Childs paints his portrait, imbuing \nin this piece a multi-dimensional quality, a portrait within \na portrait. <br /><br />\nIn many ways, Zobel and Childs mirrored each other. \nBoth were interested and keenly aware of the sublime \ninterplay between light and shadow and color, line, and \nspace, producing works with a distinct kind of poetic \nclarity and lyricism and varying and rich textures. Both \nalso delved into deliberate construction and logical \nspontaneity; Childs would repeatedly modify and alter \nhis plates for months until satisfaction filled him, while \nZobel would draw numerous preliminary sketches and \ndrafts and write notes before working on his canvas. \nBut both still gave free rein to their creative instincts. \nZobel and Childs also weaved hints of figuration into \ntheir overtly abstract works. In one way or another, we \ncan see Childs' influence on Zobel's return to color in \nhis Dialogos since the former was known for using the \nunbridled movement and potency of colors to evoke \nrecollections. Zobel then unleashed a refined lyricism \nthat enshrined his memories of personal experiences \nin his altar of consciousness, wedding the spiritual \nand corporeal, in the same manner that Child put his \nstories of survival during the Second World War as the \nfoundation of his art. (Adrian Maranan)","lot_group":"PAINTING","lot_details_html":null,"alias":null,"hp":18000000,"bp":0.2016,"isWithdrawn":0,"accounting_hp":18000000,"userBid":5926,"isPaid":0,"userId":22,"lot_status":"SOLD","isDone":1,"bid_history_id":null,"reserve_price":null,"hammer_price":21628800,"fav":0},"image":[{"id":1964,"img_url":"https://leongallery.sgp1.digitaloceanspaces.com/v2/auction/4/5/lot/32.jpg","isFeatured":1},{"id":1968,"img_url":"https://leongallery.sgp1.digitaloceanspaces.com/v2/auction/4/5/lot/32a.jpg","isFeatured":0}]},"increment":[11000000,12000000,13000000,14000000,15000000,16000000,17000000,18000000,19000000,20000000],"prev":31,"next":33,"count_bid":0,"bid_history":[],"tokenExpired":1}