Mexican Painter Shines at Auction
 El Universal
| | "Mujeres con Flores" by Alfredo Ramos Martínez |
Mexican artist Alfredo Ramos Martínez emerged from relative obscurity to shine at an auction at Christie´s with an all-time personal record of US$1.8 million for the sale of "Women with Flowers."
Created in 1938, Ramos Martínez´s stylized Deco-infused painting of a pair of exotic flower sellers in a fantasy Mexican market, rendered in a tropical palette of greens, oranges and yellows, was estimated to sell for as much as US$450,000.
Several bidders on the phone and in the salesroom vied for the work, which eventually sold to an anonymous phone bidder. The previous record for a Ramos Martínez was US$405,500 fetched at Sotheby´s New York in 2002.
"The painting has all the characteristics the market is looking for: freshness, excellent quality and supreme artistic merit," Virgilio Garza, director of Christie´s Latin American department, told reporters after the sale.
The painting, a composition of a typical Mexican subject but executed in a very European way, with stylized figures that evoke the Art Deco style, is "beautiful and honest" and "belongs to the artist´s rarest period, the Californian," Garza said.
In his judgment, the work of Ramos Martínez (1872-1946), which was collected by Hollywood´s elite in the 1940s, is being rediscovered both in Mexico and in the United States, and this auction will "absolutely" open the doors of the world to this precursor of modern Mexican art.
The Monterrey-born artist, who died in 1946, moved to California in the late 1920s and befriended the Hollywood elite. His collectors included director Alfred Hitchcock, actor James Stewart and costume designer Edith Head.
"Women with Flowers" illustrated the cover of Christie´s auction catalogue as well as that of the October issue of Art and Auction magazine.
Enthusiasm prevailed throughout the auction in which Christie´s took in US$17.2 million for the sale of 57 of the 68 lots offered, an amount slightly above the maximum estimate for the night of US$16.6 million.
There were a few pockets of trouble. A 1934 Diego Rivera painting of a stern little girl with long braids and a pink dress, "Juana Rosas," was estimated to sell for as much as US$600,000 but never made it past US$300,000 and did not sell. The painting is required to remain in Mexico, bound by national heritage laws, which limited the buyer pool.
Another doomed piece last night was Rufino Tamayo´s blazing red "Woman and Her Reflection," from 1973, sold by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Estimated to sell for as much as US$450,000, it drew no takers above US$280,000.
The fact that the woman was in profile, rather than standing frontally, made the work less desirable, according to Christie´s Virgilio Garza, who runs the Latin American department.
The Tamayo was part of a 1,800-piece Mexican art collection the Los Angeles County Museum acquired in 1997 from California dealers Bernard and Edith Lewin.
The museum has been pruning the collection, and seven other paintings from the Lewin collection will be offered Wednesday at Christie´s. The works are being sold to benefit future acquisitions. |
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Vallarta Living | Art Talk | November 2006 
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