Christie’s forthcoming sale revolves around Old Master, Modern & Contemporary Prints

KOLKATA: Christie’s forthcoming sale revolves around Old Master, Modern & Contemporary Prints, which will be held on Wednesday, 19 March 2014, and is set to attract buyers and collectors from around the world.

The sale offers a vibrant and varied range of works from the late 15th century to the present day by many of the most important printmakers of the Western canon, including: old masters Albrecht Dürer and Rembrandt; expressionists Edvard Munch, Otto Dix and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner; modern greats Pablo Picasso, Marc Chagall and Joan Miró as well as post-war giants Francis Bacon and Andy Warhol, amongst many others. Offering 228 works, the sale is expected to realise in the region of £4 million.

In addition, Christie’s auction of James Ensor Prints: The Mira Jacob Collection will take place on the morning of 19 March 2014, offering one of the most comprehensive groups of the artist’s graphic oeuvre in private hands.

The sale is led by an important lithograph The Sick Child I, 1896, by Norwegian master Edvard Munch (1863-1944) (estimate: £200,000- 300,000). Offered from a private collection, this extraordinary work is a moving testament to Munch’s traumatic childhood experience of the death of his mother in 1868, followed by that of his elder sister in 1877.

"The only influences in The Sick Child were my home; my home was to my art as the midwife is to her children. I remember it well - those were the days of pillows, of sickbeds, of feather quilts. But I firmly believe that scarcely any of these painters has ever experienced the full grief of their subject as I did in The Sick Child. Because it was not just I who was suffering then: it was all my nearest and dearest as well," Edvard Munch had said, according to an email statement from Christie’s.