Christie’s will offer a number of pieces from the Dada movement in an upcoming auction.
The collection features big names, including Dada’s patron saint Marcel Duchamp – who moved to America in 1915.
Duchamp took this paper from his place of work
“Duchamp had been enticed across the Atlantic in the first place by his old friend from Paris, Francis Picabia, who had already made the same move,” Sotheby’s explains.
“A wide-eyed Picabia said New York caused ‘a complete revolution’ in his methods.
“‘It flashed on me that the genius of the modern world is in machinery — and that through machinery, art ought to find a most vivid expression.’”
Lots include Duchamp’s French Military Paper, a so-called readymade Duchamp repurposed from his day job as a secretary at the French War Office.
The four names crossed out with an “X” are a party of French military attaches who needed rooms in the city. Below the artist has signed “From Marcel Duchamp”.
It’s valued at $400,000-600,000.
There’s also Typoskript-Manifest (1920), a collage by Max Ernst and Johannes Baargeld, valued at $20,000-30,000.
The work was produced very soon after the celebrated Dada exhibition in Berlin in 1920. Ernst and Baargeld would spearhead the establishment of the movement in Cologne.
We have some wonderful pieces of art and photography memorabilia for sale.
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