Monumental sculptures from around the world

New Delhi, July 1

An ambitious exhibition of monumental sculptures will be held online across the summer through Christie’s Private Sales. Using digital enhancements to bring the works to life online, most sculptures will be sold in-situ from their current homes around the world – from Australia to Yorkshire and from San Francisco to Monaco.

Over 50 works led by Ai Wei Wei, Jeff Koons, Nikki de Sant Phalle, Richard Serra, Robert Indiana and Lynn Chadwick are up for sale with values ranging from $100,000 to $10 million. The exhibition will run online from June 25 through the summer.

Alice de Roquemaurel, Head of Christie’s Private Sales for Post War and Contemporary Art in EMEA and David Kleiweg de Zwaan, Senior Director of Impressionist and Modern Art in New York, said: “At a time when outdoor space at home is valued more than ever, this selling exhibition pays tribute to monumental sculpture by the greatest artists of the 20th century. The works will be presented thematically under ‘The Human Form’, ‘Nature’ or ‘Abstraction’, from Rodin to McCarthy, whether in bronze, stone or steel.”

To bridge the gap between a real and a virtual exhibition, the team will use video, enhanced photography, a helpful guide to scale, detailed essays on the works and of course the advice of specialist teams on Christies.com

Park in the UK, is Ai Wei Wei’s Iron Tree from 2013. Comprised of 99 inter-connected pieces of cast iron modelled as branches of a 7-metre high tree, the piece is inspired by the wood sold by street vendors in Jiangxi province to be admired as decorative objects in the home.

Oiseau Amoureux, a sculptural fountain by French feminist film-maker, painter and sculpture Niki de Sant Phalle measures 3 metres and is currently sited on the edge of Lake Geneva. With wings outspread and a smaller figure gripping on to her body, the water cascades from her wing tips and head across the distinctive multi-coloured, geometric forms covering the creatures’ body.

Bought directly from the artist, the present work was created in 1993 from the artist’s fabled Nana series of mythical and whimsical creatures. Sadly Niki de Sant Phalle died early in part from her exposure to the fumes inhaled in the experimental materials used in her work.

Jeff Koons’ 7-foot Smooth Egg with Bow, is one of five versions in different colour-ways. The distinctive multi-layered polished lacquer surface is from Koons’ Celebration Series made between 1994-2009. It is currently on loan at the Dixon Museum in Memphis, Tennessee.

Alexander Calder’s The Spiral (No! to Frank Lloyd Wright), from 1966 and made of aluminum and painted steel, was exhibited at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C. from the late sixties until the late nineties. It was also in the 1967 sculpture show at the Guggenheim in New York where it was placed in the atrium, it’s spiral top mimicking the interior of the famous museum’s space. The brass spiral rotates and rocks, powered by a motor inside the red base.

Barbara Hepworth’s Ultimate Form belongs to The Family of Man series from 1970 of nine free-standing figures placed together as an outdoor ensemble, with the example shown here being the largest of the group. Following her move to Cornwall, Hepworth encountered the roughly hewn and eroded Neolithic stones that so greatly influenced her career, once saying: “when you make a sculpture you’re making an image, a fetish, something which alters human behaviour or movement”.