The painting Arc de Triomphe by Belgian surrealist artist Rene Magritte was sold at auction for $ 22.5 million. This was reported on Twitter Christie’s auction house.
Magritte’s painting has become the top lot of online trading in London. Bidding was first held in parallel in the British capital, as well as in Hong Kong, Paris, and New York. The canvas left on Friday, July 10, doubling the estimated cost. Experts of the auction note that in this work, the artist glorified the triumph of harmony, a sense of absolute unity and the integrity of the divine design. He also tried to convey the process of creation and constant renewal, which we observe only in nature.
The online auction, dubbed ONE: A Global Sale of the 20th Century, is being held instead of the one planned earlier in New York and canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic. Rene Magritte’s painting (1898-1967) “Arc de Triomphe” was painted in 1962. It was in the hands of three owners. The canvas depicts a tree with green foliage against a background of blue-green leaves of a chestnut.
In 2018, another work of the artist was sold for a record $ 26.8 million. It became the painting “The Principle of Pleasure” (Le Principe du Plaisir) painted in 1937. It depicts a portrait of the British poet Edward James (1907-1984), instead of whose face is written a shining ball of light.
Magritte’s paintings are characterized by a detached as if unperturbed style. Magritte’s goal, by his own admission, is to make the viewer think. Because of this, the artist’s paintings often resemble rebuses, which are impossible to fully solve, since they raise questions about the very essence of being. Magritte always speaks of the deceitfulness of the visible, of its hidden mystery, which we usually do not notice. A well-known series of works by the artist, in which he writes under ordinary subjects: this is not it. Especially popular is the painting The Treachery of Images, which depicts a pipe with the caption: This is not a pipe. Thus, Magritte again reminds the viewer that the image of the item is not the item itself.
