Sotheby's annual sale of more than 190 lots is optimistically expected to bring $4.2 million-$5.8m.
By MEIR RONNENrubin art 88 298(photo credit: )
Sotheby's annual sale of Israeli and International Art in New York City takes place on Tuesday, February 27, and includes paintings, drawings and sculptures by Reuven Rubin, Mordechai Ardon, Moshe Castel, Yehezkel Streichman, Michael Gross, Ori Reisman and Israel Prize recipient Moshe Gershuni. Also offered are lots by Jankel Adler, Marc Chagall, Moise Kisling, Max Liebermann, Lesser Ury, Bela Kadar and Hugo Scheiber. The sale of more than 190 lots is optimistically expected to bring $4.2 million-$5.8m.
Rubin's early Landscape of the Galilee, 1925, has an estimate of $150,000-$200,000. This idealized portrayal of tracks and houses expresses Rubin's fascination with a newly found landscape and his newly found trick of formalizing everything via a naive technique. Also by Rubin is Landscape with Figures, circa 1923, an earlier and unresolved attempt to paint the Arabs of Palestine ($120,000-$180,000). Here, the formalizations have not yet evolved. The many other lots of Rubin paintings and drawings are mostly post-20s sentimental kitsch.
Mordechai Ardon's Composition with Cards and Piano, 1981, is just one of three lots offered by this artist ($250,000-$300,000). La Fontaine, by Moshe Castel, is an early depiction of women balancing water jugs on their heads ($70,000-$90,000).
Ori Reisman's wonderfully colorful minimalist landscape should sell well ($100,000-$150,000). Several fine compositions by Moshe Kupferman start at around $5,000 and will go higher, while I predict at least $30,000 for a delightful 1967 abstraction by Lea Nikel.
In the international section is Seated Woman, 1928, one of Jankel Adler's modernist works ($70,000-$90,000), painted in Germany.
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