Lot 2
  • 2

Nicos Hadjikiriakos-Ghika

Estimate
25,000 - 35,000 GBP
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Description

  • Nicos Hadjikiriakos-Ghika
  • The Coffee Service
  • signed lower right
  • tempera on panel

  • 34.2 by 22.7cm., 13½ by 9in.

Provenance

D. Patmore, London
Private Collection, London

Literature

Michel Beaugency, L'Arlequin de Vitrail, Paris, 1955, no. 38, illustrated
Christian Zervos, Ghika, Paris, 1965, no. 38, illustrated 
Nicholas Petsalis-Diomidis, Hadjikiriakos-Ghika, Athens, 1979, p. 212, no. 180, illustrated

Catalogue Note

One of Ghika's cubist masterpieces from the 1930s, The Coffee Service was executed using the technique of setting objects against a dark background and outlining them. Cubism was one of the most influential movements in 20th-century Western art, as its rejection of illusionistic representation in favour of an autonomous pictorial language opened the way to abstraction. Artists including Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque and Juan Gris were among those who had developed and popularised this method across Europe.

Ghika left Greece in 1922, enrolling at the Sorbonne and later the Ranson Academy in Paris. In France he participated in the Salon des Indépendents, and from 1930-1934 took part in the Salon des Surindépendents.