christies arnold joan saltzman fernand leger picasso matisse 1234756050

Christie’s will sell over 70 works from the collection of Arnold and Joan Saltzman during its fall marquee sales in November, with a group estimate exceeding $70 million. The modern art collection includes pieces by Pablo Picasso, Fernand Léger, Edvard Munch, František Kupka, Robert Delaunay, Henri Matisse, and Henry Moore. The top lot is Léger’s 1914 painting *Composition (Nature Morte)*, estimated around $20 million, from his celebrated 'Contraste de formes' series. Other highlights include Henry Moore’s bronze sculpture *Reclining Woman: Elbow* (1981), estimated at $9–12 million, and Henri Matisse’s *Femme au chapeau fleuri* (1923), estimated around $10 million. The collection, built over 60 years, will be featured in Christie’s 20th century evening sale on November 17 and day sales on November 18.

Primitivism to Reinvent Art

Le primitivisme pour réinventer l’art

Philippe Dagen has published the third and final volume of his series on primitivism, covering the period from World War II to the late 1970s. The book traces how Western artists, from Barnett Newman and Jackson Pollock to members of the CoBrA movement and figures like Jean Dubuffet, Lucio Fontana, and Yayoi Kusama, engaged with so-called "primitive" art from Africa, Oceania, and the Americas, often as a means of rejecting or redefining modern civilization. Dagen also examines the intellectual debates surrounding primitivism, including the critiques of colonized peoples who refused the label "primitive," and the shifting attitudes of thinkers like Claude Lévi-Strauss, Michel Leiris, and Aimé Césaire.