By Carter B. Horsley

Phillips Auctioneers, which is based in London, has been active in the New York marketplace for some time, but this season has raised its sights ambitiously and is presenting a superb Impressionist & Modem Art evening auction Thursday at 5 PM, May 11, 2000 and an Impressionist & Modern Art day auction Friday at noon, May 12, 2000 and should make a big splash. Both auctions will be held at 40 West 53rd Street although the auction house has had smaller facilities for many years on East 79th Street.

Its timing could not be better for Sotheby's and Christie's, the two giants that have dominated the high-end of the art auction business here and internationally for decades, are under a cloud due to a Federal anti-trust investigation launched this winter into alleged fee-fixing. The investigation led quickly to the resignations of A. Alfred Taubman and Diana D. ("Dede") Brooks, chairman and president, respectively, of Sotheby's and while Christie's was granted some provisional immunity for coming forward first with pertinent information, it remains uncertain what the investigation's outcome will be. (See The City Review article.)

For its evening auction that will be held at the American Crafts Art Museum at 40 West 53rd Street across from the Museum of Modern Art, Phillips has assembled a very impressive group of works that clearly rivals the best being offered this season at Sotheby's and Christie's.

The much publicized and anticipated event launched a major initiative by its new owner to became a significant player in high-end of the art auction business.

While the evening's results were mixed with several major lots failing to sell, Phillips's owner, Bernard Arnault, shown at the top of this article, and other major executives, made it clear that it plans further major auctions. "We will continue," he said, adding that the "long-term plan" was to make it a "significant" part of the luxury-goods group.

Phillips's foray into the "big leagues" so long dominated here by Sotheby's and Christie's has been the topic of conversation all during this major week of sales. One executive from one of those auction houses left the Phillips auction early, mumbling "it's a parody," but such remarks could not disguise the fact that major collectors and dealers turned out and that Phillips had achieved an enormous amount of publicity and had mounted a very tastefully designed exhibition and produced a very handsome catalogue. The New York Times even wrote an article entitled "Natty New Image for the 'Other' Auction House" on the front page of its House & Home section the day of the auction.

The good news was that the auction's star lot and cover illustration, Lot 31, "Suprematist Composition," by Kazimir Malevich (1878-1935), sold for $17,052,500, which includes the buyer's premium, as do all sales results in this article, a very impressive price for such a severly intellectual, sophisticated pure abstraction by an artist whose name is not bandied about in most households.

The bad news was that superb paintings by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901), Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919), and Paul Gauguin (1848-1903), failed to sell even though they were of major museum class and not unreasonably estimated. It is quite amazing and most mystifying that these works, discussed below, did not sell.

The total sales results for the evening session were about $44 million and only 61 percent of the 31 offered lots sold whereas the other major auctions this week sold generally 85 percent or more of the lots, which is far better than the early 1990s when the market was at a low and many sales had 30 percent or so of their offerings unsold.

Christopher Thomson, the chief executive officer of Phillips, shown above, remarked after the auction that it was neither a spectacular success nor a diaster, but a big step. He said that Phillips planned similar major auctions as soon as next fall and he and Dan Klein, its international director who also served as the evening's auctioneer, said it was seeking larger and more permanent quarters, possibly in midtown. There was limited ticketed seating for the auction and a crush of people attempting to get in without tickets delayed the start. Because of the limited, but beautiful space, and the demand for tickets, Phillips decided to only let 10 members of the press attend, whereas several times that number normally attend the major auctions.

Mr. Arnault described the evening auction as a "big success" and said he had no regrets about it or guarantees to consignors, adding that they are part of the business and he would "do it again."

Mr. Klein said that Phillips was now "safely launched on a trajectory we hope to continue," emphasizing that it was "amazing" how far it has come. He remarked that its policies about financial interests were "more transparent than the other auction houses." Mr. Klein had some help in spotting bids for Alfred Sisley's "Un Jardin à Louveciennes" from Sharon Stone, the actress who is chairperson of the American Foundation for Aids Research to which Phillips was contributing 3 percent of the sales. The Sisley sold for $3.2 million, more than twice its high estimate.

An article in the Wall Street Journal May 5, 2000 by Daniel Costello and Alexandra Peers, noted that Phillips "garnered some of the top items of its sale with generous guarantees, or even purchased some highlights outright, to encourage sellers to take a chance on the company," and quoted Bernard Arnault, the owner of Phillips as well as LVMH Moet-Hennessy Louis Vuitton SA, as saying "You have to do it in some cases - it's a seller's market." In recent years, Sotheby's has been aggressive in offering such financial inducement to sellers, although Christie's has been more reluctant and the practice is not without some controversy.

In any event, no serious collector can ignore the quality of Phillips' offerings this season.

Highlights include a great landscape by Paul Cézanne (1839-1906), a great portrait by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, a very important abstraction by Kazimir Malevich , a fine landscape by Paul Gauguin , a very good port scene by Camille Pissarro (1830-1903), a memorable portrait sculpture by Julio Gonzáles (1872-1942), a fine Joan Miró (1893-1983), a good Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), and two very delectable and fine works by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, an exquisite group of knock-out works worthy of any museum.

The Cézanne, Lot 14, "Environs de Gardanne," is an oil on canvas, 23 by 28 1/4 inches, shown above, that was painted between 1886 and 1890 and whose provenance includes Ambrose Vollard, Paul Cassirer, Paul Rosenberg & Co., Mrs. John Wintersteen and Mr. and Mrs. Charles Shipman Payson. The work has been widely exhibited and has extensive literature.

While most landscapes by Cézanne have an unfinished, unresolved, sketchy appearance, this work represents a complete, finished vision that is rather unusual for the artist in its long, horizontal format and its palette that is brighter with more oranges and yellows than many of his works. It is very strong and striking.

The catalogue provides the following pertinent commentary:

"The years between 1885 and 1895 are often described as the classical period of Cézanne's art and the landscapes executed near Aix as the apex of his achievement at this time. Abandoning the network of oblique, parallel brushstrokes that had characterized his work earlier in the decade, Cézanne began to apply paint in thin, translucent coats that emphasize the structure and solidity of his compositions. Space is rendered as a series of large planes, architecture and landscape reduced to their geometric essentials, producing works of a clarity and monumentality unmatched in Cézanne's career. As Joseph Rischel asserted on the occasion of the 1996 Cézanne retrospective, 'What is certain is that there is a new quality of tranquility and grandeur in the landscapes done in the second half of the 1880s."'

The catalogue also quotes John Rewald: "The fruit of Cézanne's Parisian experiences, both visual and technical, appears in the pictures he painted on his return to the Jas de Bouffan; they constitute a virtual rediscovery of Provence. He sees it now in terms of colored planes organized in a firm, almost architectural construction, irreconcilable with the doctrines of Impressionism." Of the eight views around Gardanne that the artist is known to have made, this is the only one in private hands. The other seven are in the Barnes Foundation in Merion, Pennsylvania, the Metropolitan Museum Art, and the National gallery of Art in Washington, DC. Gardanne was, the catalogue, maintained, "a small, steep hamlet in the center of a coal district, located between Mont Sainte-Victoire and the mountain range of L'Étoile. The town was situated on a gentle slope, with the majority of the houses nestled against the hillside and a steepled church a with a square bell tower standing at the apex."

"The overall effect of the painting is one that Rewald has called "an indescribable serenity, as though the artist had found here the very harmonies, pure shapes, and soft colorations that struck a particularly felicitous chord."

The catalogue also provides the following 1943 quotation by Erle Loran about the painting:

"by the ... avoidance of aerial perspective and the forward tilting of the entire plane of the earth and hills, Cézanne has achieved a mural quality that is an essential element of the monumental austerity characterizing this great painting. And yet, very few paintings by Cézanne demonstrate more obviously the element of three-dimensional solidity, which he always aimed to achieve. The textural character of trees and plants has been avoided completely. Austere and naked form alone has been expressed. One may even say that the form of houses, fields, and hills has a solidity comparable to the three-dimensionality of a sculptured relief. But of course the painting is anything but an imitation of sculpture, and all the form-space effects are ideally related to the picture plane."

The catalogue also maintains that "with their rigorously structured geometries and interlocking planes of color, the views that Cézanne made in and around Gardanne have been called the most Cubist of his paintings. The term is more than an anachronism; pictures like the present one represents a key source of inspiration for the landscapes executed by Braque and Picasso at L'Éstaque, La Roche-Guyon and Horta de Ebro in 1908 and 1909 ... Both artists recognized the enormity of their debt to Cézanne."

The painting, which is not signed, has a very conservative estimate of $6,000,000 to $8,000,000. It was sold for $5,062,500.

The Russian Suprematists and Constructivists were an astounding group of abstract artists whose work flourished during the period right after World War I and whose works rarely appear on the market. The highlight of the Phillips auction is Lot 31, "Suprematist Composition," by Kazimir Malevich, an oil on canvas, 31 5/8 inches square, shown above, which shows a slanted red and black cross against a white background and was painted circa 1919-20.

In 1927, the artist was granted an exit visa from Russia to exhibit at the Grosse Berliner Kunstaustellung. He took with him many of his best works, but a few months later was summoned back to Russia and left the art still on display, including this work, for safekeeping in Germany. Despite repeated requests, Malevich was not allowed to leave the Soviet Union again.

In 1935, Alfred Barr, then director of the Museum of Modem Art, was traveling in Europe gathering works for a "Cubism and Abstract Art" exhibition planned for the next year and was overwhelmed to discover the cache of Malevich works that were stored at the Hanover Landesmuseum on display behind curtains as the museum's curator, Alexander Dorner, was concerned about Nazi campaigns against modern art. Barr arranged for a group of 21 paintings, gouaches, drawings and charts by Malevich to be included in his exhibition and in MOMA's collection.

In June, 1999, Malevich's 31 descendants reached an agreement with MOMA in which several works, including this one, were returned to the painter's heirs - grandchildren, nieces and nephews.

In a Phillips press release about the painting, a spokesman for the heirs was quoted as telling the auction house that the family "believes that it is important for the international community art lovers and museum curators to have their first chance to compete for a major work by Kazimir Malevich offered on the free market in this way." "This first opportunity to purchase a major work by the legendary founder of the abstract art movement is a truly justified triumph, long in coming, both for our family and for Malevich himself," the spokesman continued. Christopher Thomason, the CEO of Phillips, was quoted in the same press releases as declaring that the work is the highlight of the ... sale....[that] will add to our reputation as a significant force in the international art market."

The painting has long hung at MOMA and this is the first offering of a Suprematist work by Malevich at auction. "Suprematism" was a term coined by Malevich in 1915 to describe his new art theories and he used the term to describe the supremacy of his new art that was purely aesthetic in form, free from any political or social meaning. "From the very beginning, Malevich saw Suprematism as the crowning achievement of the Western modern movement - the successor to Cubism and Futurism....he is recognized as the forerunner of Minimalism and geometric abstraction generally," according to a Phillips press release.

The famous and bold painting has an "estimate on request" and is likely to fetch more than $10 million.

Another stunning work in this auction is Lot 19, "Tête de jeune fille," a thin, wrought iron sculpture, 8 5/8 inches high, by Julio González, dated 1928. The artist moved to Paris in 1900 and worked as a metalsmith and by 1925 he was assisted Constantin Brancusi in his studio. González would collaborate with Pablo Picasso on several works between 1928 and 1931, but the catalogue notes that this work "bears a more striking resemblance" to Brancusi's work. The catalogue provides the following commentary on this powerful sculpture:

"In its radically reductive treatment of the human form, the present work may be related to the series of resting heads that Brancusi produced throughout the 19 20s and 1920s, including Sleeping Muse, The Newborn, and the Beginning of the World. González's certain exposure to these sculptures is evidenced by a 1918 photograph of González and his sisters in the Paris apartment. A marble version of Sleeping Muse can be seen on the mantelpiece....Similar to Brancusi's treatment of his bronze, marble, and wooden forms, González has minimized anatomical detail in order to emphasize the material reality of his sculpture as an iron object. Margit Rowell [in an essay in the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum 1983 retrospective exhibition on González] has explained this affinity as follows, 'Together, yet separately, Brancusi and González transformed the face of twentieth century sculpture from an art of representational images to an art of invention: an art of formally self-referential objects evoking ideas. A subway was no longer a model to be imitated but a theme on which to compose autonomous formal variations. A material was no longer a medium in the literal sense but the basic determinant of form....In fact, it was through the artist's direct realization of his work - Brancusi through direct carving in wood and stone, González through the direct forging of metals - the new vision of sculpture as we know it today was born."

The catalogue correctly observes that the work has an "exquisite, economic counterpoint." It is also brooding and mysterious, the oblique, muted face shrouded with a cloak of parted hair but not hidden in shadow. This is a sensitive, exposed Darth Vader, a blind Justice. What perhaps is most striking is the startling simplicity of the sharp nose line emerging from the weighty mass beneath the very soft curves of the parted hair. The piece is solitary, but dynamic. Quixotic, but interested. A masterpiece.

This lot has an slightly ambitious estimate of $1,500,000 to $2,000,000. It sold for $1,552,500, an impressive price for such a small sculpture.

While these potent icons of abstraction are riveting, the unquestioned star of the auction is Renoir, who is represented by two great paintings that show this uneven artist at his best.

Lot 12, "La Loge au Thêatre des Variétés," is an oil on canvas, 26 by 32 1/2 inches, painted in 1898, shown at the top of this article. Its provenance includes Ambrose Vollard, Jacques Gelman, Ruth Lamar Lehman, M. Knoedler & Co., and Mr. and Mrs. Edgar William Garbisch. It is one of the artist's most spectacular paintings because of its very vivid, broad expanse of emerald green and its unusual and finely animated composition. The young woman, a well-known actress, wearing the emerald-colored dress has her back to the viewer and is turned around in her box at the theater to chat with a handsome man who is bending forward towards her over the back of her friend who wears a bright red sash around her neck and is quietly listening to the conversation with her eyes cast down. Wearing a white dress that is largely obscured by the extended arms of the woman in green, she is the real focus of the painting as her face is among the most beautiful Renoir has painted. Two other women are sketched in rather fully in the background and are obviously attentive to the magnetic attractions of the two seated women. The woman in green has both her arms extended outwards and centers the composition. The left side of the picture is very sketchily painted and faint, so as not to distract from the "action" at hand - the possible flirtation between the young woman and the man. Like many of the best Impressionist paintings, it appears to have be halted in progress, unfinished intentionally because the artist has achieved the effect he envisioned and had no need to further embellish. Renoir's brushwork here is more robust than in much of his work and the sleeves of the young woman's emerald-colored dress and the voluminous pile of reddish blond hair tied atop her head have great depth and dimensionality - one very much wants to touch....It is a night on the town. It is the peak of romance. It is the first blush of the pangs of the heart. It is the moment.

This work has an estimate of $5,000,000 to $7,000,000 and a very strong argument that Renoir is deserving of a major retrospective that only shows his best work. It was "passed" at $3.7 million.

The other major Renoir painting is Lot 7, a still life entitled "Grand corbeille de fleurs d'été," an 'I on canvas, 25 by 31 1/8 inches, dated 1890. This painted was formerly in the collections of Colonel C. Michael Paul and The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Renoir painted many still lifes, but this one is overwhelmingly lush, colorful, alive, and painted in a much looser and freer style than most of his other works. The painting has an estimate of $4,000,000 to $5,000,000. It was passed at $2.6 million. For those on a smaller budget, there is another Renoir still life, Lot 9, "Nature morte aux fraises," that is an oil on canvas, 9 7/16 by 19 5/8 inches, that is must calmer but a very excellent work with a modest estimate of $400,000 to $500,000. It sold for $310,500.

Lautrec is a far more consistent artist than Renoir, of course, and Lot 13, "Femme de maison refaisant son chignon," an oil on board, 25 5/8 by 12 1/4 inches, painted in 1893, shown at the left, is a superb work that is something of a surprise for the strong and deep pink colors of the woman's gown and the strongly mottled gray and blue patterning of the wallpaper in the background and the focused verticality of the simple composition. As always, Lautrec's line brilliant create a portrait of a beautiful woman perhaps past her prime and the profiled face fully conveys a sense of contentment in her expression. Lautrec has sometimes been wrongly criticized for a lack of involvement with his subjects. Here the scene is terribly intimate and warm, but the unusual palette exudes both coolness and heat.

"Belying Lautrec's reputation as a painter of caricature, his bordello denizens are depicted with sensitivity and subtlety, not as coarse or venal types. Their placid stares and weary postures, the calm resignation with which they conduct even the most humiliating of routines, the slight smile that accompanies an intimate exchange with a fellow fille: all these suggest the poignant combination of hope and despair, warmth and alienation that distinguished the marginal life of the soumise. Lautrec himself provided perhaps the best characterization of this peculiar admixture when he described his search for "that touch of ugliness without which there is no salvation,"' the catalogue noted.

This wonderful lot has a quite conservative estimate of $3,000,000 to $4,000,000, perhaps reflecting the fact that it seems to have been in two pieces at one point. It was passed at $2.6 million.

For those in search of a more conventional Impressionist painting, one look no further than Lot 15, "Port du Havre, marée haute," an oil on canvas, 25 3/4 by 32 inches, by Camille Pissarro. This wide-angle scene of boats puffing smoke, sail boats wafting by, a trolley making a stop, a horse pulled a carriage taking a breather, and people milled about the waterfront under a cloudy blue sky is fresh and an unusually busy but successful composition. It has an estimate of $2,000,000 to $3,000,000 and was executed in 1903. It sold for $1,542,500.

Another Pissarro painting is Lot 5, "Un verger de Pointoise en hiver," an oil on canvas, 18 1/2 by 22 inches, dated 1877, is a very good and painterly landscape that was once in the collection of Alain Delon, the actor. It has an estimate of $400,000 to $500,000. It sold for $431,500.

Lot 8, "Le Seine près de Bougival," is a pleasant river scene by Claude Monet, an oil on canvas, 19 1/4 by 37 1/2 inches, painted in 1872, that would make a nice pendant for Pissarro's Havre scene. This Monet has an estimate of $5,000,000 to $6,000,000 and is notable for its stretched horizontal composition highlighted by the white house in the distance and its rippled reflections in the water. It was passed at $3.7 million.

A more dramatic but less satisfying Monet is Lot 10, "Plage de Juan-les-Pins," an oil on canvas, 28 3/4 by 36 1/4 inches, dated 1888. This painted was once owned by Theo van Gogh who included it in an exhibition of 10 Monet paintings executed in Antibes, France, the first in which the artist showed paintings depicted one locale exclusively, the catalogue noted. The boldness of the composition is the cluster of trees on the right that overhang the water with a hill faintly in the distance. The top of the trees extends beyond the confines of the canvas and there is almost a sense of vertigo in this work. It is one of those works that seem to have a slightly askew perspective and the quality of light here is that super bright light of a clear day at twilight or shortly after dawn. The brushwork of the very prominent tree trunks and their leaves, however, is rather rudimentary and uninspired. The lower right corner seems to have part of a pier but it is odd and distracting. The lot has an ambitious estimate of $6,000,000 to $8,000,000. It failed to sell.

A much more satisfying landscape is Lot 11, "Paysage martiniquais," by Paul Gauguin, an oil on canvas, 26 1/2 by 45 inches, painted in 1887, a year after he had fled Paris for the more savage environment of Pont-Aven. In 1887, Gauguin, escorted by Charles Laval, a friend and painter, traveled to Martinique after a two-month trip to Panama. The catalogue provides the following pertinent quotation from Françoise Cachin as quoted in an essay in the exhibition catalogue on "The Art of Gauguin" at the National Gallery of Art in Washington in 1988:

"There they found a veritable drunkenness of color. The canvases he brought back from his stay in the Antilles, though few in number, represent an important step in his stylistic development ... Gauguin's stay in Martinqiue may be seen as the first concrete step toward the exoticism and primitivism for which the artist would search during the remainder of his life."

This fine painting has an estimate of $5,000,000 to $7,000,000. It failed to sell.

Three other good works in the auction are Lots 21, "L'Arlequin au violon," by Juan Gris, an oil on canvas, 36 3/8 by 28 3/4 inches, 1919, is a strong example of Gris's simplified but strong version of Cubism and it has an estimate of $1,800,000 to $2,500,000. It did not sell.

Lot 23, "Le Baiser," by Joan Miró, is an oil on canvas, 28 3/4 by 36 1/4 inches, 1924, that is the cover illustration of the auction catalogue and a very refined and subtle example of this vibrant artist's talent. It has an estimate of $2,000,000 to $3,000,000. It sold for $1,652,500.

The catalogue has very handsome reproductions, although many of the lots have fold-out color reproductions rather than switching more conveniently to flipping the image on the page, which would result in smaller pictures for the horizontal pictures but doing away with the fold-out pages that are annoying to some.

The day auction of Impressionist & Modern Art at Phillips May 12, 2000 is at noon, a rather unusual time. It is a relatively small auction, consisting of lots 100 to 154, but it has very high quality items including many superb works by lesser-known Cubist and Suprematist artists.

The sale was even less successful than the evening sale the night before as only about half of the lots sold, and again many of the best paintings were among those that passed.

Among the many stunning and surprising paintings are works by Arthur Segal (1875-1944), Georges Valmier (1885-1937), Alexander Shevchenko (1883-1943), Ilya Chashnik (1902-1929), Pierre Fevre (1889-1975), and Marie Vassilieff (1884-1957).

Lot 116, the Segal, is entitled "Still Life with Candle-Holder and Box, an oil on panel with painted frame, 32 by 39 1/2 inches including the painted frame, 1926, shown above. The catalogue provides the following commentary:

"Romanian by birth, Segal began his art studies in Berlin at the Académie des Beaux-Arts. In 1896, he left Berlin for Munich and then traveled through France and Italy before returning to Berlin in 1904. During the First World War, the artist left Germany for Ascona, then traveled to the Monte Verita community, a melting pot for anarchist thought, and finally stayed in Zurich where he was introduced to the founders of the Dadaist movement. Segal participated in the 1916 exhibition at the Cabaret Voltaire, the birthplace of Dadasim, and from 1916-1919 he contributed to important Dada exhibitions, including Dada 3. He also published many articles about the group's radical vision. at the end of 1919, Segal returned to Berlin where he met Raoul Hausmann and became a member of the Novembergruppe. Forerunners to the Weimar Bauhaus, the Novembergruppe aimed to unify arts, architecture and city planning in the socialist state. After 1919, Segal's works were marked by several innovations. Inspired by Rayonism and the work of Larionov, he experimented with light, particularly light filtered through prisms. Segal placed a new emphasis on painting beams of pure color that evoked apparent movement in his canvases."

This magnificent work has a very conservative estimate of $90,000 to $120,000. It sold for $101,500.

Lot 120, "Composition Cubiste," by Georges Valmier, watercolor, gouache and collage on paper, 6 5/8 by 3 3/4 inches, 1919, shown above, is an exquisite Cubist work worthy of the more famous Cubist masters. While more delicate and colorful than many other Cubist works, it has a vibrant three-dimensionality quality that is most impressive. It has a conservative estimate of $25,000 to $35,000. It failed to sell.

Lot 119, "Rayist Composition," by Alexander Shevchenko, gouache on paper laid down on board, 8 by 5 1/2 inches, 1913, is a startling work that shows that Jasper Johns was about half a century late!

"Shevchenko," the catalogue remarked, "began exhibiting with various avant-garde groups after studying at the Stroganov Art School, the Moscow Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture and the Académie Julien in Paris. Well-known for his still-life paintings, Shevchenko became a professor at Svomas, Vkhutemas, Vkhutein, the Ukranian academy of Arts, the Leningrad Proletarian Arts Institution, the Stroganov Art School and the Moscow Textile Institute. In 1913, the year of the present work, the artist wrote the manifesto Neoprimitivism, Its Theory, Its Potentials, Its Achievements. The artist was influenced by the work of Mikhail Larionov as well as by the theories of the Futurists and he placed great emphasis on apparent movement and lines of force."

This stunning work has a very conservative estimate of $15,000 to $20,000. It did not sell.

Lot 124, "Suprematist Composition," by Ilya Chashnik, gouache, watercolor and pencil on paper, 11 1/2 by 8 inches, 1926-7, shown above, is a very strong work that is a preparatory study for an oil painting in the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection in Lugano, Switzerland. It has an estimate of $40,000 to $60,000. It sold for $46,000.

"Chasnik began his study of art in 1919 under the direction of Malevich at the Vitebsk Institute of Applied Arts. There the artist learned to apply Suprematist aesthetics to industrial subjects, following the dictums imposed by Communism. In many of Chasnik's works warm-toned reds, oranges and yellows collide with cooler-toned blues, purples and greens. He scattered these colors across his surfaces as thin, long, colored rectangles and arranged them vertically and horizontally in the form of crosses. These abstract pictorial compositions, based on geometric figures, were dynamic diagrams organized as rhythmic and sequential arrangements," the catalogue noted.

Lot 130, "Untitled," by Pierre Fevre, gouache on paper, 11 by 8 inches, circa 1917, shown above, is a beautiful work that conjures both Feininger and Sheeler in its cool palette and dynamic geometries. It has a very conservative estimate of $3,000 to $5,000. It sold for $3,738.

Lot 115, "Femme assise," is a strong oil on canvas, 38 by 23 1/2 inches by Marie Vassilieff (Mariya Ivanova Vasil'eva) that has a modest estimate of $60,000 to $80,000. It sold for $145,500.

"Abandoning her studies in medicine in St. Petersburg," the catalogue noted, "Vassilieff traveled to Paris in 1905, enrolled in the Académie des Beaux-Arts. after a brief return to Russia, she permanently settled in Paris in 1907 and worked as a correspondent for a number of Russian journals. At this time she studied under Matisse and it was an article she published in the Toison d'Or that prompted the famous Moscow collector Sergei Ivanovich Shchukin to add mumerous works by Matisse to this collection of avant-garde paintings. In 1908 she founded the Académie Russe, which was re-christened the following year as the Académie Vassilieff. Her studio became a locus for the cutting-edge art of her time, frequented by Picasso, Gris, Léger, Matisse, Braque and Modigliani among many others. The academy continued its activities well into the First World War, serving as avenue for Léger's famous series of lectures and as a refuge for the artists and writers of the avant-garde afflicted by the visissitudes of the war."

Other excellent works in this very interesting and good auction is a fine Cubist work by Henri Laurens (1885-1954), Lot 118, shown above, "L'Homme à la pipe," a 10 1/4-by-7-inch gouache and pencil on paper mounted on board, 1919, that rivals similar works by Pablo Picasso and has a conservative estimate of $120,000 to $140,000, but did not sell; Lot 122, a strong work by Ivan Semenovich Blokin (1887-1954) that has an estimate of $60,000 to $80,000, but did not sell; Lot 123, a very good oil by Rudolf Bauer (1889-1953) that has a conservative estimate of $20,000 to $25,000 and sold for $36,650; Lot 125, a strong work by Wassili Scherischew (circa 1900-1930) that has an estimate of $50,000 to $70,000, but failed to sell; Lot 132, an excellent but dark Max Ernst (1891-1976, "Vogel im Wald," a 12 5/8-by-9 1/16-inch oil on board, 1917, that has an estimate of $125,000 to $150,000, and did not sell; Lot 133, a quite lyrical work by Bela Kádár (1877-1956), that has a modest estimate of $4,000 to $5,000, and sold for $10,925; Lot 134, which is the catalogue's cover illustration, "Bildnis Ernst Kirschbaum," a 1924 portrait by Paul Citroen (1896-1983), that has a modest estimate of $15,000 to $20,000, and sold for $10,525.