Latest Modern art Stories

By Tom Avril The Philadelphia Inquirer PHILADELPHIA - The painting of the lean-faced, bearded man with the penetrating stare is unmistakably a self-portrait by Vincent van Gogh. An art historian can tell by looking at the riot of bold, colorful brushstrokes. Researchers at Pennsylvania State and Princeton Universities, however, use an analytical tool that surely the troubled Dutch master never imagined: the computer. Their method is far from foolproof, but the two teams, along with a...

By Marianne Fronsdal OSLO, Norway (Reuters) - "The Scream" and another stolen masterpiece by Norwegian artist Edvard Munch were recovered by police on Thursday, two years and nine days after gunmen seized the paintings from an Oslo museum. "'The Scream' and 'Madonna' are now in police possession," police chief Iver Stensrud told a news conference. "The damage is much less than we could have feared." He said the pictures were recovered on Thursday afternoon in "a successful police...

By Jim Bessman NEW YORK (Billboard) - Many recording artists paint, more or less as a hobby. But for Tony Bennett, painting has become a bona fide second career. His paintings have been exhibited in prestigious galleries throughout the world, including the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C., which recently accepted his oil painting "Central Park" for its permanent collection. His "Homage to Hockney" is likewise on permanent display at the Butler Institute of American...

By Mike Collett-White LONDON (Reuters) - A painting returned to the heirs of its Jewish owners by a German museum last month will go under the hammer at Christie's in New York on November 8 and is expected to fetch $18-25 million. The street scene by German expressionist artist Ernst Ludwig Kirchner is the latest valuable work of restituted art to be sold on quickly by new owners. In June news emerged that cosmetics magnate Ronald S. Lauder had bought a Gustav Klimt portrait for $135...

By Ian MacKenzie EDINBURGH (Reuters) - When Scottish art dealer Alexander Reid returned from Paris with two paintings by Vincent van Gogh, his father berated him for bringing such "atrocities" home and sold them to a French dealer for five pounds ($9) each. It did not matter that the paintings, a portrait of Reid and a still life of a basket of apples, were in fact gifts to the young Scot, who had lived for several months in Paris with Vincent and his brother, Theo, in Montmartre in...

By Chris Michaud NEW YORK (Reuters) - British composer Andrew Lloyd Webber's foundation will sell a Picasso portrait that is expected to fetch over $40 million at auction, with the proceeds being donated to charity, Christie's said on Friday. The 1903 work from the artist's Blue Period, "Angel Fernandez de Soto," will be sold at Christie's fall auction of Impressionist and modern art on November 8. The haunting portrait of Picasso's close friend, who he met in 1899 in Barcelona and...

By John Ruwitch HONG KONG (Reuters) - The thick brush strokes, brilliant colors and angular figure of Dora Maar depicted in Pablo Picasso's 1941 painting of his mistress and a cat are a world away from the delicate detail of traditional Chinese scrolls. Nevertheless, "Dora Maar au Chat" and more than two dozen other works by Western impressionist and contemporary masters like Picasso, Vincent Van Gogh, Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein were on display in Hong Kong this month -- and not...

By Scott MaloneNEW YORK -- A Pablo Picasso portrait of his mistress Dora Maar that has been in private hands for more than 40 years will be auctioned in New York in May and could raise more than $50 million, Sotheby's said on Thursday."The portraits of Dora Maar are among the most popular and most important works that he did," Charles Moffett, vice chairman of Sotheby's, told Reuters. "For the better part of a decade she was his muse, his model, his intellectual companion, his...

By Larry Fine NEW YORK (Reuters) - Vincent Van Gogh's portrait of a cafe owner, based on a sketch by his friend and fellow artist Paul Gauguin, could fetch more than $40 million when it is auctioned in New York later this year. "L'Arlesienne, Madame Ginoux" was executed in February 1890, five months before the Dutch artist's suicide. It depicts the proprietress of a cafe in Arles, France, frequented by Gauguin and Van Gogh. It is expected to be a highlight of Christie's Impressionist...

OSLO (Reuters) - Edvard Munch's masterpiece "The Scream" was apparently undamaged in a 2004 robbery but the less well-known "Madonna" suffered a minor tear, a man accused in connection with the theft said on Monday. "The paintings weren't wrecked in the robbery," Thomas Nataas told Reuters of the two works stolen by gunmen from Oslo's Munch Museum in August 2004 and then stashed for several weeks in a bus owned by Nataas on farmland north of Oslo. "I saw there was what looked like an...