KOLLER VIEW 4/22

6 1 Richard Paul Lohse (1902–1988). Zwei und zwei gleiche Farbgruppen. 1965/69. Oil on canvas. 60 × 60 cm. Estimate: CHF 40 000/60 000 2 Victor Vasarely (1906–1997). Felhoc. 1972–76. Acrylic on canvas. 100 × 100 cm. Estimate: CHF 60 000/90 000 3 Niki de Saint Phalle (1930–2002). L’Oiseau amoureux. 1990/92. Painted polyester. 155 × 150 × 60 cm. Estimate: CHF 140 000/180 000 Preview of the PostWar & Contemporary Art auction on 1 December 2022 Colourful Love Bird The painter and sculptor Niki de Saint Phalle (1930– 2002) is one of the most enigmatic artists of the second half of the 20th century. Her ‘L‘Oiseau amoureux’ from 1990/92 (ill. 3) displays the fire- works of colour typical of de Saint Phalle, clearly in- spired by the art of Dubuffet and Gaudí. Although it depicts two figures – the standing ‘bird in love’ and the woman clinging to its breast – the sculpture es- tablishes a formal unity, as the two bodies merge into one. ‘The open wings of the birds allow me to breathe’, Niki de Saint Phalle said. The love bird, like her strong and self-confident female figures, recurs through several decades of her work. Although her brightly coloured Nana figures were often ridiculed at first, it was above all these sculptures placed in public spaces – such as the Stravinsky Fountain next to the Centre Pompidou in Paris, which she designed together with her partner Jean Tinguely in 1982, and ‘L‘Ange protecteur’, which has hovered above the hall of Zurich’s main railway station since 1997 – that made de Saint Phalle an icon of feminism. The Constructivist paintings of the Zu- rich artist Richard Paul Lohse (1902– 1988) are also characterised by the sen- suous power of colour (ill. 1). Trained as a commercial artist, he started painting in the 1920s, and began to create mod- ular picture series in the mid-1940s. His work was formally influenced by theoretical con- cepts such as additive series, objective rhythmic and quantitative colour equality. Parallel to his per- sonal artistic work, he remained a graphic artist and book designer, as well as an exhibition designer in collaboration with Sigfried Giedion, Alfred Roth and others. In the 1960s, the period of the colour group painting in our 1 December auction, Lohse’s Con- structivist paintings caused a sensation at exhibi- tions worldwide. Zdeněk Sýkora uses very little colour in his square-format line painting from 1978 (p. 8). His strictly constructed, reduced works, which emerged from the dialogue between intent and chance, left their mark on Czech post-war modernism. His line paintings in particular achieved worldwide recog- nition. Sýkora’s love of music played an essential role in his work; musical compositions had a direct impact on his visual creations. It was not by chance that he called the series of numbers on which his line pictures were based ‘scores’, and in the late 1970s he had the idea of making his line pictures musically audible. © 2022, ProLitteris, Zurich © 2022, ProLitteris, Zurich 1 2 FOR FURTHER INFORMATION POSTWAR & CONTEMPORARY Silke Stahlschmidt stahlschmidt@kollerauctions.com ONLINE CATALOGUES www.kollerauctions.com