The late owner of Radiocentro’s private art collection is being auctioned on 29 June in New York City as part of Sotheby’s Impressionist & Modern Art Evening Sale. Art experts expect a record value for the auction.
Isaac Lif’s collection of museum-quality works from Latin America, named “The Vanguard Spirit: Modern and Surrealist Masterworks,” is a stellar part of the evening sale. This collection is anchored by Wifredo Lam’s Omi Obini, an electrifying canvas from 1943 considered the apex of Lam’s fully realized aesthetic vision. Women Surrealists are well-represented in the collection, notably by Remedios Varo’s Armonía and Microcosmos (or Determinismo), two outstanding examples of her signature fantastical imagery and complex narratives. Works by Leonora Carrington, Leonor Fini and Alice Rahon round out this exceptional group.
The Vanguard Spirit is 35 works and is considered one of the largest compilations of surrealist and modern art in Latin America. Sotheby’s announces that an additional 200 works from the collection will be presented in subsequent sales in various categories from next fall until 2022.
Also part of the collection are paintings by Cuban vanguard artists, including Mario Carreño, Cundo Bermúdez, Mariano Rodríguez and René Portocarrero, as well as iconic examples of Mexico’s modern artists, such as Rufino Tamayo, José Clemente Orozco and David Alfaro Siqueiros.
Anna Di Stasi, director of Latin American art at Sotheby’s, says the collection “reveals the foresight of a talented and inquisitive eye, capable of discerning museum-quality works of art before they are coveted by the wider collecting world.”
Of Cuban origin, Isaac Lif lived for more than fifty years in the Dominican Republic where he founded Radiocentro, a company dedicated to import and sale of electrical appliances.
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Sotheby’s
Listin Diario
10 June 2020