Over greater than 4 many years, Neil Zukerman, a New York gallery proprietor, and his husband, Tom Shivers, stuffed their Chelsea loft with work, books, ceramics, glassware, collectible figurines, silk blooms and numerous different treasures. “We solely ever had issues in our home that we liked. And if we liked it, we discovered a spot for it,” stated Shivers.
However after Zukerman’s dying on the age of 81 final yr, Shivers determined to promote among the couple’s extraordinary assortment, together with 90 works by Leonor Fini, the Twentieth-century artist well-known for her depictions of highly effective and erotic girls.
The primary of 10 gross sales from the couple’s assortment will happen on-line from Thursday, alongside an exhibition of works by Fini and different girls artists at Sotheby’s London galleries. “Neil liked Fini’s artwork, and all the time stated if proudly owning one is sweet, proudly owning 100 is healthier,” stated Shivers.
Fini – born in Argentina in 1907, raised in Italy and later a resident of Paris – was maybe probably the most ferociously impartial feminine artist of the Twentieth century, in line with artwork historians.
Though her works have been included in nearly each main surrealism exhibition for the reason that Thirties, she refused to label herself a surrealist, partly due to the misogyny of the motion’s chief, André Breton. She died in 1996.
Zukerman and Fini spoke often by telephone for 2 years earlier than a face-to-face assembly in Paris within the early Eighties. “Neil discovered to talk French so as to have the ability to converse together with her. She may very well be extremely form, however she wasn’t an angel,” stated Shivers
“As soon as an artist despatched her considered one of his work to critique. It was returned to the gentleman in a manila envelope, lower into items. She stated: ‘Sorry, couldn’t discover a bigger envelope.’”
On one event, whereas she was lunching with Pablo Picasso and the artwork seller Julien Levy, the latter reached for a serviette that Picasso had doodled on. “Leonor picked up the serviette and stated: ‘Oh Pablo! The identical outdated shit.’ She tore it up and threw it into the gutter,” stated Shivers.
“She lived with two males for 35 years. She all the time stated a girl ought to have two lovers: one for intercourse, and one for the emotional and mental.”
Final yr, Fini’s 1938 self-portrait, Autoportrait au scorpion, offered for $2.3m. Her work are within the everlasting collections of the Met, Tate Fashionable and Centre Pompidou.
Lisa Stevenson, Sotheby’s fashionable and modern specialist, stated it was “difficult to restrict Fini’s work to a class or a motion; she introduced a brand new and actually fashionable sense of the female”.
She added: “Fini’s work was revolutionary. She explored sexuality and interrogated and asserted the place of the girl away from the normal function as a muse or mom. Together with her steady investigation into the notions of feminine id, and her rejection of the rational, it’s pure that Fini discovered herself so carefully linked to the surrealist motion. However her relationship to the surrealist artists was a posh one.
“Over the previous decade we’ve seen girls that have been traditionally thought of on the sidelines of the surrealist motion being rightly cultivated as severe and vital artists.”
Among the many works being offered from Zukerman and Shivers’ assortment is Fini’s 1975 fantastical portray Rasch Rasch Rasch … Meine Puppen Warten (Hurry, Hurry, Hurry … My Dolls Are Ready). It depicts the artist as a baby, being dressed by an grownup lady whereas trying by means of a window at 5 partially clothed girls.
The collection of gross sales additionally contains Fini’s many depictions of sphinxes and different figures metamorphosing into cats, birds and skeletons. However Shivers is retaining his favorite, a portray of Tristan and Isolde which hangs over the couple’s mattress. “That can keep till I’m gone,” he stated.
The condominium, in a former industrial constructing, incorporates a “backyard room” with a mosaic flooring made up of 80,000 tiles, an enormous assortment of classic fragrance bottles taking on a rest room wall, and a cinema room devoted to Marilyn Monroe.
Zukerman and Shivers had all the time meant to promote quite a lot of works to fund their retirement. However Shivers, 79, nonetheless collects “a number of bits and items”, and a storage room within the loft is “stuffed flooring to ceiling” with artworks. The condominium would “by no means look minimalist”, he stated.