George Condo - 20th Century & Contemporary Art & Design Day Sale Hong Kong Tuesday, June 21, 2022 | Phillips

20th Century & Contemporary Art & Design Day Sale

Hong Kong Auction 21 June 2022

  • "Part of my process is like, these characters are in my head and I want them outta there, so I’m trying to kind of paint them out of my system. The thing is, if I tried to paint people the way I really see them, it’s not going to be the way they see themselves. So what good is that going to do? But when people see the monsters in my paintings, sometimes they are able to see a very distorted version of the way they see themselves—they can recognise something of themselves in it.”
    — George Condo

     

     

    Picasso, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (detail), 1907

    Collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York

     

     

    “And I guess that was the other thing I got from Picasso. It’s the idea of Cubism—but rather than seeing and depicting this coffee cup, say, from four different angles at the same time, I’m seeing a personality from multiple angles at once. Instead of space being my subject, I’m painting all of someone’s emotional potentialities at once, and that’s what I’d call Psychological Cubism.”
    — George Condo 
     

     

     

    The present work (marked in red) exhibited at London, Simon Lee Gallery, George Condo,
    7 February – 21 April 2007

     

    • Provenance

      Simon Lee Gallery, London
      Private Collection, London
      Simon Lee Gallery, London
      Private Collection
      Sotheby's, Hong Kong, 7 October 2019, lot 525
      Acquired at the above sale by the present owner

    • Exhibited

      London, Simon Lee Gallery, George Condo, 7 February – 21 April 2007, p.31 (illustrated)

    • Artist Biography

      George Condo

      American

      Picasso once said, "Good artists borrow, great artists steal." Indeed, American artist George Condo frequently cites Picasso as an explicit source in his contemporary cubist compositions and joyous use of paint. Condo is known for neo-Modernist compositions staked in wit and the grotesque, which draw the eye into a highly imaginary world. 

      Condo came up in the New York art world at a time when art favored brazen innuendo and shock. Student to Warhol, best friend to Basquiat and collaborator with William S. Burroughs, Condo tracked a different path. He was drawn to the endless inquiries posed by the aesthetics and formal considerations of Caravaggio, Rembrandt and the Old Masters.

      View More Works

154

George Condo

Female Nude Composition

signed and dated 'condo 07' upper left
pencil on paper
59.5 x 45.5 cm. (23 3/8 x 17 7/8 in.)
Executed in 2007.

Full Cataloguing

Estimate
HK$600,000 - 800,000 
€73,100-97,400
$76,900-103,000

Sold for HK$600,000

Contact Specialist

Danielle So
Specialist, Head of Day Sale
+852 2318 2027
danielleso@phillips.com

20th Century & Contemporary Art & Design Day Sale

Hong Kong Auction 21 June 2022