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A painting by the surrealist master René Magritte is expected to fetch up to £50 million, or US$63 million, at Christie’s standalone sale of surrealist art in March in London.
L’ami Intime (The Intimate Friend), 1958, depicts Magritte’s iconic bowler-hatted figure looking onto mountainous scenery and a blue sky from what appears to be a stone balcony. A baguette and glass of wine float behind him.
The painting was owned by collectors Gilbert and Lena Kaplan. Gilbert Kaplan, who died in January 2016, founded the Wall Street publication Institutional Investor when he was a 25-year-old economist, and later gained worldwide recognition for his conducting of Gustav Mahler’s Second Symphony, according to Christie’s and published reports at the time of his death at age 74.
The painting hasn’t been seen at an auction since the Kaplans bought it in 1980, not long after it was sold at a Sotheby’s auction in London for a hammer price of £90,000, according to Christie’s. It was last exhibited at the Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique in 1998, Christie’s said.
The Magritte is the only work being offered by the Kaplan family this season, according to a Christie’s spokeswoman.
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Despite not being exhibited for more than 25 years, the bowler-hatted man at the picture’s center is a well-known figure, having first made an appearance in Magritte’s Les rêveries du promeneur solitaire (The Musings of a Solitary Wanderer) in 1926.
“The figure came to function within Magritte’s oeuvre as a symbol of the bourgeois, of the anonymous, faceless masses, the everyday working man and that of the lone wanderer,” Christie’s said in a news release.
Olivier Camu, Christie’s deputy chairman, impressionist and modern art, said the auction house “was looking forward to the market’s reaction” to the painting, “the like of which has not been seen at auction since the Torczyner sale of Magritte paintings in 1998.”
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Camu was referring to a sale from the collection of Belgian lawyer and art collector, Harry Torczyner, who was a friend of the artist.
L’ami Intime (The Intimate Friend), which is being offered with a wide estimated price range of between £30 million and £50 million, is being shown at Christie’s in Los Angeles through tomorrow before it moves to the auction house’s Rockefeller Center galleries in New York from Friday through Feb. 14. The painting will be exhibited in Hong Kong from Feb. 21-23 before going on view in London ahead of the March 7 sale.
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