Swann Auction Galleries, 212-871-3020 ext. 112 presents
items from some of the greatest minds in science, including a group of letters signed by Albert Einstein
Art, Press & Illustrated Books (October 24)
This sale will feature approximately 350 desirable lots of rare books in areas such as architecture, fine and applied arts, modern and contemporary art, and limited editions from small hand-press printing houses known as private press books. Collectors of works by Chagall, Miró, Matisse, Picasso, Braque, Paz, Motherwell, Warhol and other hot-market artists can find beautiful and important artists’ books in this sale.
This sale will also feature a rare edition of the ancient Greek Longus’s novel, Daphnis and Chloe, with 156 breathtakingly sweet and romantic lithographed images by Bonnard (estimate: $20,000 – $30,000). A decades-long devotion to the Greeks, Aristide Maillol produced his own glorious woodcut images for Daphnis and Chloe, and of Horace and Virgil’s The Georgics (1950) (estimate: $1,000 – $1,500). Matisse tried his hand at James Joyce’s modern parallel of Homer’s Ulysses, published by the successful artists’ book publisher Limited Editions Club, whose output was the marriage of artists and illustrators to famous texts (estimate: $2,000 to $3,000).

Reflecting a rise in desirability of Chinese ceramics and porcelain over time, this auction will offer a scarce copy of Chinese Porcelain and Hard Stones by Edgar Gorer from 1911 (estimate: $6,000 to $9,000).

The Roaring Twenties and Art Deco Thirties produced an explosion of fashion journals and books featuring couture-clad socialites in glamorous settings. Brightly hand-colored stenciled images, known as pochoir, were the medium of choice by famous illustrators George Barbier, Umberto Brunelleschi, and Georges Lepape. These images were featured in a 70-volume run of the Parisian publication Gazette du Bon Ton, 1912 – 1925 ($15,000 to $25,000) and in Journal des Dames et des Modes, 1912 – 1914 ($6,000 to $9,000).

The Armory Show at 100: America’s Introduction to Modern Art (November 5)
In conjunction with the centennial of the 1913 Armory Show, this thematic auction features works by the European and American artists who were included in the groundbreaking exhibition, which is often remembered for the public’s reaction to Marcel Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase.
Many of the 300 original artists are represented, and highlights include Alfred Maurer’s important 1906 Fauve Nude, oil on canvas (estimate: $60,000 – $90,000); Pablo Picasso’s proto-Cubist 1912 etching Tete d’Homme; Jacques Villon’s, La Mariée, color aquatint, 1934, ($12,000 – $18,000) based on the same-titled Marcel Duchamp painting from 1912 and John Marin’s iconic Woolworth Building (The Dance), etching and drypoint, 1913 (estimate: $80,000 – $120,000).
Autographs (November 26)
A large selection of extraordinary music autographs by some of the greatest composers and musicians will be offered in this sale, including an autograph musical manuscript by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. This unsigned manuscript is from two pages of Mozart’s “Serenade in D Major,” scored for two oboes/flutes, two horns, two trumpets and strings with a solo violin, and include working draft notations in brown ink on eight staves per page (bars 52 – 70) (estimate: $120,000 – $180,000).
Also available are letters signed by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Gustav Mahler, Richard Wagner, Johannes Brahms, and Felix Mendelssohn, as well as other items by Ludwig van Beethoven, Niccolò Paganini, Carl Maria von Weber, and Georges Bizet.
Items from some of the greatest minds in science will be offered, including a group of autograph letters signed by Albert Einstein to fellow theoretical physicist Paul Hertz between 1910 and 1915 ($20,000 – $30,000), some of which show Einstein’s outrage against the unreason of World War I, and others grappling with the problems that beset him while formulating his general theory of relativity.

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