Modern art and impressionism from Lèger, Picasso, Matisse to Magritte and Otto Dix

Femme dans un fauteuil by Fernand Léger (1913, estimate on request) and Picasso's L'Homme et femme (1968, estimate: £10.000.000-15.000.000) will lead the auction, both offering radical visions of the female form as artists pushed the boundaries of representation during the 13th century. The Landscape of a Mind: Surreal Vision from a private collector, a group of XNUMX Dada and Surrealist works, will include paintings by Yves Tanguy and René Magritte and a major drawing by Salvador Dalí.

The Collier d'Ambre by Henri Matisse (1937, estimate: £5.000.000-8.000.000) is a further highlight. An odalisque painting, it is among the most rigorously designed and impressively orchestrated compositions Matisse painted after World War I. The young model in Henri Matisse's Le Collier d'Ambre wears a kaftan, a shirt and a sash, garments that Matisse pulled from his costumes and fabrics, purchased mainly in the markets of Nice. This 1937 painting differs, however, from many odalisque paintings he created the previous decade.

Homme à la pipe by Henri Laurens (1919, estimate: £700.000-1.000.000) and Soldat mit Tabakspfeife by Otto Dix (1918, estimate: £500.000-800.000) they are both presented to the market for the first time since the early 60s when they were purchased separately for private collections. The sale includes 34 works, many of which have been venerated in private collections for many years and are being offered at auction for the first time. All works will be exhibited in the King Street galleries, London from 13th to 18th June 2019.

Léger / Picasso: icons of the 20th century – Two important works from a private collection: Fernand Léger's Femme dans un fauteuil is part of a groundbreaking series of paintings and drawings which, together with the radical abstractions of Kandinsky, Kupka and Malevich, substantially changed the course of the art. Known as Contrastes des formes, this group, created between 1912 and 1914, saw Léger achieve a new and unprecedented form of abstraction. Femme dans un fauteuil is one of a small group of five figurative works from 1913 representing a seated female figure, three of which are now housed in museums: the Musée d'Art Moderne, Paris, the Beyeler Foundation, Basel and the Sprengel Museum, Hanover – with the location of the remaining job unknown.

Painted over the course of a single day, Pablo Picasso's monumental composition, Homme et femme, sizzles with erotic tension, the bodies of his two amorous protagonists intertwine and overlap as they find themselves together in an intimate moment of sensual pleasure. With her dark hair and Grecian profile, the female nude appears to be a tribute to the artist's wife Jacqueline. His companion appears to be a surrogate for the artist himself, an extension of the defiant mosquetero character that had first emerged in Picasso's work in the latter months of 1966, drawing inspiration from numerous art historical precedents, particularly the paintings of Rembrandt and Velázquez.

One of the pioneers of Cubist sculpture, Henri Laurens' Homme à la pipe is one of the artist's finest works in stone. Encouraged to adopt a Cubist idiom in his sculpture by his friend Georges Braque around 1911, Laurens created a series of polychrome constructions in paper and cardboard and assemblages, before taking stone and terracotta as his mediums in 1917. It was acquired in 1961, and it has remained in the same collection ever since.

Otto Dix's fine work on paper, Soldat mit Tabakspfeife, dates from 1919 – the year the artist founded the Dresden Secession Group – and has remained in the same collection since the 60s. Both works are being offered for auction for the first time.

Cover image, René Magritte (1898-1967)
Le parc du vatour
signed 'Magritte' (lower right)
oil painting on canvas
(64.5 x 149.8cm.)
Painted in 1926Estimate GBP 2,500,000 – GBP 4,000,000 (USD 3,177,499 – USD 5,083,999)