June 6, 20th Century Arts

Great names of the 20th century

This June 6, 2025, Auctie's auction house honors the great names of the 20th century at the Hôtel Drouot. From Charlotte Perriand to Jean Prouvé, from Henri Pontoy to Jean Carzou, via Georges Jouve, Odile Noll or Georges Lapchine, this vacation brings together iconic paintings, sculptures, ceramics and design pieces. Through an exacting and harmonious selection, Auctie's celebrates the inventiveness, modernity and diversity of creation of the last century.

Among the star lots, a Centurion by Igor Mitoraj, a bronze sculpture with a blue patina, rare enough in the artist's corpus to be highlighted. This fifteen-centimeter sculpture is characteristic of the artist's fragmented universe.

Less well known, Marie-Paule Deville-Chabrolle deserves to be rediscovered, through her work on the female figure, which she magnifies through the medium of bronze.

An artist whose works are regulars at Auctie's sales, Georges Jouve, is also among the exceptional lots in this sale. The " Boule " vase, in red glazed ceramic promises fine bids.

An ebony bowl by Odile Noll, active in the 50s - 70s, also deserves close attention. Hand-carved in the vein of the creations of her father, Alexandre Noll, in a very noble wood (ebony), this sculpture is characteristic of the essence of Odile Noll's work: slow, measured, abstract work, which above all respects the material by bringing out its finest veins.
In the same spirit, Pierre Chapo and his elm sliding bench illustrate this concern for material and the French richness of post-war French production.

Alongside him, the other great masters of furniture are present: Charlotte Perriand with various pieces of furniture including a sideboard for éditions Steph Simon, and a Dactylo desk by Jean Prouvé illustrate the desire to make post-war furniture streamlined and practical, embodying modernist functionality in all its rigor.

Painting also features prominently in this selection: Georges Lapchine's Market Day, an evocative and lively painting, helps put Russian artists back in the spotlight. Orientalists make their presence felt again and again, this time with a selection of oils on canvas by Henri Pontoy, including Fête berbère, an extremely colorful composition reminiscent of the Pointillists' work on pure color.

Finally, Armenian painting is also in the spotlight, with Profile au bouquet by Jean Carzou, a painting fascinating for the finesse of its lines and the density of its composition, which convey all the complexity of the artist's work.

This sale thus offers a remarkable panorama of twentieth-century artistic creation, through works that are both historic and resolutely current.