Patricia Phelps de Cisneros to sell Calder Mobile for $15M at Christie’s

Collector Patricia Phelps de Cisneros will sell an Alexander Calder mobile phone at Christie’s during next month’s closely watched New York auction season.

Painted wood (1943) has an estimate of $15 million to $20 million and will appear in the 20th Century Art Evening Sale, alongside works by David Hockney, Joan Mitchell and other market stars.

It won’t be the most expensive work in the sale, which also includes Claude Monet’s “Water Lilies” series of paintings worth $40 million. The work, along with paintings by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Marc Chagall and others, comes from the Kawamura Memorial DIC Museum, a Japanese institution that recently announced plans to downsize and relocate.

But Calder’s work is certainly notable for a different reason: never before has the late modernist’s other work been held in such high regard. Whether that estimate can be exceeded and Calder’s new record set is less certain. The benchmark price, $25.9 million, was set by a phone on display at Christie’s in New York in 2014.

Painted wood Part of the reason for this high regard is its historical importance. The work appeared in Calder’s 1943 MoMA retrospective and was associated with his “Constellations” series, in which abstract elements varied from animals, ships and molecules. Like other works in the series, this one features paintings that move as the air flows over them.

According to Christie’s, the work was originally a gift from Calder to architect Enrique Mindling and was acquired by Cisneros more than thirty years ago. she often appears in art news She is on the list of top 200 collectors and is known for her collection of works by Latin American artists.

“There are eleven forms of complex and huge systems in the sky, Painted wood Ana Maria Celis, head of postwar and contemporary art at Christie’s, said in a statement, “This is a unique example of Calder’s mastery of wooden suspended movement. We are delighted to show it at Christie’s this autumn and look forward to seeing collectors’ reactions.”

The house presumably hopes to capitalize on the impetus provided by Calder Gardens, a newly opened sculpture park in Philadelphia for the artist that opened in September.