Lot 5W
FRANÇOIS STAHLY(1911-2006)Untitled (Totem)
7 December 2021, 13:00 EST
New YorkUS$15,000 - US$25,000
Looking for a similar item?
Our Impressionist and Modern Art specialists can help you find a similar item at an auction or via a private sale.
Find your local specialistAsk about this lot
Preeya Franklin
Senior Specialist
Aimée Honig
Senior Specialist
Emily Wilson
Specialist/Head of Sale
FRANÇOIS STAHLY (1911-2006)
Untitled (Totem)
polished bronze
75 3/4 in (192.4 cm) (height)
polished bronze
75 3/4 in (192.4 cm) (height)
Footnotes
Provenance
Amalia de Schulthess Collection, Santa Monica (acquired directly from the artist).
Thence by descent to the present owners.
François Stahly grew up in Switzerland and was born into an artistic family; both his grandfather and father were painters who encouraged him to aspire to a career as an artist. After he attended art school in Zurich in the 1920s, he went to Paris in 1931 to immerse himself in the artistic climate and became part of the group Temoignage soon after his arrival.
In the Post-War era, Stahly was involved in several architectural projects and contributed to the established art magazine Werk. Stahly, who lost most of his works during the war, also founded the Art Informel movement together with artists such as Hans Hartung, Antoni Tapiés, and Francis Picabia. In response to the traumatic events of the World War II, the group broke with previous traditions of modernism and pursued a spontaneous and erratic style of artmaking, whereby geometrical and figurative forms were largely ignored.
Stahly's reputation grew in the following decade, and he received recognition on an international scale. His works were exhibited alongside artists such as Pablo Picasso and Alexander Calder at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (1961), the Tate Gallery, London (1964) and the Musée d'art moderne, Paris (1965). Today, Stahly's work can be found in acclaimed public collections such as that of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
