Judit Reigl

The artist's studio
Galerie de France, Paris
Purchased from the above by the present owner

Bourg-en-Bresse, Musée de Brou, Judit Reigl, 2 March - 12 April, 1992, no.9
Budapest, Műcsarnok, Reigl, 4 October - 13 November 2005
Debrecen, MODEM Centre for Modern and Contemporary Arts, Judit Reigl, 22 March - 22 June 2010
Nantes, Musée des beaux-arts de Nantes, Judit Reigl depuis 1950: le Déroulement de la peinture, 9 October 2010 - 2 January 2011
Budapest, Ludwig Museum of Contemporary Art, Judit Reigl: Emptiness and Ecstasy, 21 March - 22 June 2014

Exhibition catalogue Judit Reigl, Bourg-en-Bresse: Musée de Brou, 1992, no.9 illustrated
M.Pleynet, Judit Reigl, Paris, 2001, p.45 illustrated (with incorrect dimensions)
Exhibition catalogue Reigl, Budapest: Makláry Artworks KFT, 2005, p.102 illustrated (with incorrect dimensions)
Exhibition catalogue Judit Reigl, Debrecen: Makláry Artworks KFT, 2010, p.136 illustrated
Exhibition catalogue Judit Reigl depuis 1950: le Déroulement de la peinture, Nantes: Musée des beaux-arts de Nantes, 2010, p.64 illustrated
Exhibition catalogue Judit Reigl: Emptiness and Ecstasy, Budapest: Ludwig Museum of Contemporary Art, 2014, p.128 illustrated

Structural Condition The canvas is unlined and is securely attached to the artist's original, keyed wooden stretcher. This is providing an even and stable structural support. The reverse of the canvas is inscribed by the artist and there is a label adhered to the centre of the reverse. The tacking edges are covered with black fabric tape. Paint Surface The paint surface has the artist's original unvarnished appearance. There are scattered areas of slightly raised lines of craquelure within the green and black pigments in the lower part of the composition. These appear stable and are not visually distracting. There are also some very fine lines of craquelure within a small area where the brown pigments of an underlying paint layer are exposed in the centre of the composition. These also appear stable and are not visually distracting. There are two thin horizontal lines of abrasion to the paint layer and the canvas above the centre of the lower edge. Inspection under ultra-violet light shows scattered areas of uneven fluorescence. These appear attributable to the artist's materials and techniques. Inspection under ultra-violet light also shows two horizontal lines of retouching corresponding to the abrasions mentioned above, and a further small spot of retouching above and to the right of this. Summary The painting would therefore appear to be in good condition and would benefit from the improvement of the three small areas of restoration mentioned above.
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

A mysterious and meditative work with seemingly infinite painterly depth, the present lot is one of very few works from the Guano series to remain in private hands. Others can be found in major museum collections, including the Guggenheim, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Centre Georges Pompidou and the Tate; of the 18 known to be in private hands in Canada, the USA and France, the work in this catalogue is one of the largest in size. Fresh to the auction market, Guano, (1959-63) which was created through a process of chance, layering and erasure, represents the culmination of several years of artistic development.

Born in 1923, in Kapuvár, Hungary, Judit Reigl is widely recognized as one of the most important Franco-Hungarian painters of her generation. Reigl became friends with Simon Hantaï and François Fiedler early on in her career while still a student at the Hungarian Academy of Fine Arts, Budapest. After the Soviet take-over in 1945, Reigl followed many of her contemporaries and emigrated to France in 1950, leaving behind the official style of Socialist Realism. Upon her arrival in Paris, Hantaï welcomed her with open arms, and in 1954 introduced her to André Breton who immediately offered her a solo exhibition at A l’Étoile scellée, then the gallery of the Parisian Surrealist group. Breton was shocked by the power and energy of Reigl’s works and in a letter to her dated 5th July 1954 he exclaimed: 'You have given me one of the greatest marvels of my life: you cannot imagine the deep and sincere joy which overcomes me (…). I do not know, Judit Reigl, how to explain the gift you have given me. (…) I am astounded by your talents (…) I believe you are able to achieve great things.'

Initially influenced by Yves Tanguy, Max Ernst, Marcel Duchamp and Roberto Matta, Reigl started experimenting with gestural and automatic paint application, slowly shifting away from the Surrealist aesthetics after the 1954 exhibition. Studying the achievements of the New York School, Reigl – in parallel with Hantaï – discovered the radiant and liberating practices of Abstract Expressionism, which led her to create the series Outburst (1955-58), Centre of Dominance (1958–59), and Mass Writing (1959–65).

As Reigl describes it herself, her body of work developed organically in these years, without the aforementioned series, the conception and execution of the Guano series (1958-65) would not have been possible: 'To protect a new parquet floor, I covered it with several layers of rejected canvases – those with marks on a white background that allowed for no correction. On these impromptu floor coverings, I worked, walked and poured pictorial matter that ran, saturated and were trampled underfoot. As time went by, these excremental rags slowly became stratified layers, like the guano that comes from the isles of Latin America. Completely ruined as paintings, they excelled in their very self-negation, becoming fertile ground. I reworked them systematically beginning in 1962. Their white background and the black writing initially no longer existed. Depending on the layer they chanced to belong to, they were more or less saturated, encrusted or worn down, even threadbare. I came next. A final layer – white in most cases – which was immediately scraped off, leaving a streaky and opaque veiling behind; a kind of “background layer,” as it were. A backwards operation.' (Exhibition catalogue Judit Reigl, 1974, Maison de la Culture, Rennes).

Directly challenging the traditions of classical image-making, Reigl reuses discarded materials, and instead of applying paint on an untouched, meticulously prepared clean surface, she repurposes previously rejected canvases. In an almost sacred approach, she resuscitates “dead” material and transforms it into an iconic memento of earlier artistic periods. Like Jackson Pollock’s action paintings, Reigl’s works comprise a collection of marks and stains, or traces of movements. Within its Richter-like rich and beautiful layers of deep purple and emerald green, Guano, 1959-63 is nourished by memories, and by successes and hesitations. With its remarkable exhibition provenance, the present work is a truly exceptional masterpiece, situated at the apex of Reigl’s career.