Femme se coiffant

Name: MARTHE 'TOUR' DONAS (1885-1967)
Brand: Femme se coiffant
Price: 75000.00 GBP
Availability: SoldOut

Price Realised GBP 93,750

Estimate

GBP 30,000 - GBP 50,000

Closed: 14 Jul 2020

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MARTHE 'TOUR' DONAS (1885-1967)

Femme se coiffant

Price Realised GBP 93,750

Closed: 14 Jul 2020

Price Realised GBP 93,750

Closed: 14 Jul 2020

Details Lot Essay Related Articles More from

MARTHE 'TOUR' DONAS (1885-1967)
Femme se coiffant
signed 'Tour Donas' (lower centre); signed, titled and numbered 'Femme se coiffant Tour Donas no. 16' (on the bracket at the reverse)
oil on panel
30¹⁄₂ x 13 in. (77.5 x 33.1 cm.)
Painted circa 1918-1919

Private collection, Germany, circa 1960s, and thence by descent to the present owners.

P.J.H. Paweuls, Marthe Donas: A Woman Artist in the Avant-Garde, Antwerp, 2016, p. 148 (illustrated).

Geneva, Librairie Kundig, December 1919.
Berlin, Galerie Der Sturm, Nell Walden, Tour Donas, Gesamtschau: Gemälde, Bildwerke, Aquarelle, Zeichnungen, June 1920.
Milan, Palazzo Reale, L'altra metà dell'avanguardia, 1910-1940, February - May 1980, p. 244 (illustrated); this exhibition later travelled to Rome, Palazzo delle esposizioni, July - August 1980; and Stockholm, Kulturhuset, February - May 1981.
Brussels, Musée d'Art Moderne, L'Avant-Garde en Belgique, 1917-1929, September - December 1992, no. 46, p. 247; this exhbition later travelled to Anvers, The Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, September - December 1992.

Artist's Resale Right ("Droit de Suite"). Artist's Resale Right Regulations 2006 apply to this lot, the buyer agrees to pay us an amount equal to the resale royalty provided for in those Regulations, and we undertake to the buyer to pay such amount to the artist's collection agent.
Please note this lot is the property of a consumer. See H1 of the Conditions of Sale.

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Lot Essay

Born in Antwerp in 1885, Marthe Donas was also known also under the androgynous aliases Tour Donas and Tour d'Onasky. Encouraged as she was by her artist friends at the time who considered her a great talent, Donas sought to obscure her sex by use of these alternative names in order to avert the bias assigned to female artists as potentially less capable. Having studied at the Academy of Art in Antwerp from 1902 to 1905, and after some peregrinations, she settled in Paris to focus on her artistic ambitions.

In late 1917, Donas travelled south to Nice where she worked in Alexander Archipenko's studio. Through him, she was introduced to and allied herself with the avant-garde artists of Paris, Archipenko’s constructivist compositions proving to be visible influence on her work during that time, as evidenced in the present work. Archipenko said once that Donas was his ‘best pupil’, and indeed, her oeuvre manifests a dynamic assimilation of cubism, where geometric shapes intersect and create a bold, three-dimensional sense of volume and space. Pushing the boundaries of perception, Tour Donas’ fake wood grain is masterly painted in in , reminiscent of Picasso and Braque’s groundbreaking experimentations that paved the way for the Section d’Or group.

1919, the year when the present work was painted, was a very active and successful one for Tour Donas. She was given a review in De Stijl as Tour d'Onasky, exhibited at the famed Galerie Der Sturm in Berlin as well as the Section d'Or in London, and was later featured at the Salon des Indépendants in 1920 and 1923. In 1920 she returned to Belgium where she met Van Doesburg in June of that year, the same month a solo exhibition of her work was held at Galerie Der Sturm, further solidifying her reputation as a significant artist of the avant-garde.

Post Lot Text
Artist's Resale Right Regulations 2006 apply to this lot. You must pay us an extra amount equal to the resale royalty and we will pay the royalty to the appropriate authority. Please see the Conditions of Sale for further information.