Henri Cartier-Bresson, Madrid (1933) Eric Franck/Augusta Edwards, Paris Photo, 10-13 November
Priced between €20,000 and €30,000
Adding historical weight to the offerings at Paris Photo fair are vintage photographs from the 19th and 20th centuries, including a number of photographs taken by Henri Cartier-Bresson. The father of reportage photography, Cartier-Bresson travelled across Europe during the 1930s, prowling the streets with a lightweight Leica to record the lives of the poor. One of the most famous from this series is Madrid (1933), in which playful street children are anchored by a portly man walking in the background.
Frank Auerbach, Head of Gerda Boehm (1965) Bowie/Collector, Sotheby’s London, 10 November
Estimate £300,000-£500,000
“It will give spiritual weight to my angst. Some mornings I’ll look at it and go, ‘Oh, God, yeah! I know!’ But that same painting on a different day can produce in me an incredible feeling of the triumph of trying to express myself as an artist.” So said David Bowie of Frank Auerbach’s paintings. British art was particularly dear to the late musician. He found Auerbach’s “bas-relief way of painting”, exemplified by this portrait of Auerbach’s cousin, Gerda Boehm, “extraordinary”. Last exhibited at the Royal Academy retrospective in 2001, the rich impasto exemplifies Bowie’s observation that sometimes, with Auerbach, “I’m not really sure if I’m dealing with sculpture or painting.”