Koller View 4/20

8 ’The Umbrellas’ from 1991 is considered the most ambitious and at the same time the most cost- ly art project in the visionary and elaborate work of Christo and Jeanne-Claude. As with all other projects, Preview of the Postwar and Contemporary Art Auction on 5 December 2020 Umbrellas on two continents they financed their unique installations by selling stud- ies, preparatory drawings, collages, scale models and original lithographs. One of these two-part (as they often are) drawings will be offered in the 5 Decem- ber auction (ill. 3). For the umbrella project, the artist couple placed a total of 3,100 large-sized umbrellas – 6 meters high and nearly 9 meters in diameter – in two valleys, one in the USA and the other in Japan. In the precious and limited space of the Japanese pre- fecture of Ibaraki, the umbrellas were placed next to each other and sometimes following the geometry of the rice fields. Among the lush vegetation, which is ir- rigated all year round, the umbrellas were blue. In the sheer endless expanse of the uncultivated Southern Californian pasture land, on the other hand, the um- brellas spread widely, sometimes sporadically, in all di- rections. Here, in this hilly, barren landscapemarked by dried grass, the umbrellas were yellow. The extensive installation lasted 18 days, attracting some 500,000 art enthusiasts in Japan and more than 2 million in the USA. ’The Umbrellas’ used artistic means to highlight the social and cultural differences between the two places. It was the only project by Christo and Jeanne- Claude that took the form of a dialogue across two continents. Christo and Jeanne-Claude also left their mark in Switzerland, with the enveloping of the Kunsthalle Bern in 1968 – at the instigation of its director at the time, Harald Szeemann – and the wrapping of nearly 200 trees near the Fondation Beyeler in Riehen near Basel in 1998. One of the studies made by the artist couple for the ’Wrapped Trees’ will be offered in the 5 December auction (ill. 1). Mark Tobey moved to Basel in 1960 at the invitation of gallery owner and collector Ernst Beyeler, when he was working on the contemplative colour pictures (ill. 2) that defined his last creative years. Tobey’s work is considered a precursor of Abstract Expressionism. After the success of his ’WhiteWriting’ paintings in the United States in the mid-1940s, Tobey also achieved international recognition through his participation in the Venice Biennale and the ’documenta’ in Kassel. FOR FURTHER INFORMATION POSTWAR & CONTEMPORARY Silke Stahlschmidt stahlschmidt@kollerauctions.com ONLINE CATALOGUES www.kollerauctions.com 1 Pierre Alechinsky (born 1927). Untitled. 1958. Oil on canvas. Estimate: CHF 80 000/120 000 2 Mark Tobey (1890–1976). Untitled. 1967. Tempera on paper. 68 × 48 cm. Estimate: CHF 70 000/90 000 3 Christo (1935–2020). The Umbrellas. 1987. Mixed media and collage on paper. 243 × 38 cm / 244 × 106,6 cm. Estimate: CHF 150 000/200 000 2 © 2020, ProLitteris, Zurich 1 © 2020, ProLitteris, Zurich