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Rosalie Ballester (b. 1949) Composition with Russian Newspaper, c. 1990's
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Details
Signed ‘R. Ballester’ (lower right).
Sizes:
Frame: 56.5 × 48 cm | 22.2 × 18.9 in
Artwork: 46 × 38 cm | 18.1 × 15 in
Pages of a Russian newspaper, the Moscow business weekly ‘Ekonomika i zhizn’ with its small advertisements and telephone numbers, are laid into the canvas and half veiled under washes of grey, umber and white; over them Ballester draws a scaffold of tilted planes and ruled lines, a dark red disc, a small white target and scattered printed letters, S, E, L, V, that float free of any word. At the foot, bold cut-out words from the headlines, ‘podpishis’, ‘nashel’, ‘magazin’, are pasted at an angle like a Constructivist slogan.
Rosalie Ballester (born 1949), a French painter with roots in the newspaper collage of the Nouveaux Réalistes and an avowed debt to Russian abstraction, here brings the two together: the torn and layered print of Villeglé and Hains with the geometry of Malevich and Lissitzky. The Cyrillic text dates the picture to the years after 1991, when the Russian press and its advertisements suddenly became material for a Western artist.
Provenance
Acquired in France.
Private Collection, Spain.
Condition Report
Mixed media and newspaper collage on canvas, unlined. The surface is stable, the collage elements well adhered; light surface dust. Presented in a plain wooden frame. Please contact us to request a detailed Condition Report.
Shipping
Packed as size S (up to 60 × 50 cm) · 56.5 × 48 cm framed
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- Made-to-measure wooden crate (works over 20,000 €)
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Authenticity & Buyer Information
This lot is catalogued under the artist’s name without qualification. Provenance, dating and condition are described to the best of our knowledge; the sale is governed by our Conditions of Sale.
Buyers should review the catalogue carefully and raise any questions before bidding; additional information is not ordinarily provided after the auction.
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What it costs
Bidding on this site, the buyer’s premium is 25%, Spanish IVA included. There is no VAT on the hammer price and no card fee.
| Starting price | Low estimate | High estimate | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hammer price | €300 | €300 | €500 |
| Buyer’s premium 25% (IVA included) | €75 | €75 | €125 |
| Total on auroraathena.com | €375 | €375 | €625 |
| Total through a bidding platform (30%) | €390 | €390 | €650 |
Through LiveAuctioneers, Invaluable, Drouot or Bidspirit the premium is 30%: the same hammer of €500 costs €650 there against €625 here. Shipping and insurance are quoted separately; the estimator below gives the figure for your country. Buyers outside the EU pay no Spanish tax on the lot; the destination’s import rules apply (United States: original paintings and drawings enter duty-free; United Kingdom: 5% import VAT on art). Card payments are accepted up to €10,000; larger amounts by bank transfer.
Questions about this lot
How does the estimate compare with the artist’s recent auction results?
The estimate of €300–€500 is our opinion of the range this work should reach; the starting price of €300 is the lowest bid we accept. We have not published comparable results for this lot; ask us before the sale and we will send the results we based the estimate on.
What will this lot cost in total?
Bidding on this site, the buyer’s premium is 25%, Spanish IVA included, and there is no VAT on the hammer price and no card fee: at the starting price of €300 the total is €375; at the low estimate of €300 the total is €375; at the high estimate of €500 the total is €625.
Through LiveAuctioneers, Invaluable, Drouot or Bidspirit the premium is 30%, so the same hammer of €500 costs €650 there. Shipping and insurance are quoted separately; the estimator on this page gives the figure for your country. Buyers outside the EU pay no Spanish tax on the lot; the destination’s import rules apply (United States: original paintings and drawings enter duty-free; United Kingdom: 5% import VAT on art). Card payments are accepted up to €10,000; larger amounts by bank transfer.
How is this lot catalogued?
Under the artist’s name without qualification. Provenance, dating, condition and value are described to the best of our knowledge; the sale is governed by the Conditions of Sale.
Can I see the condition report, more photographs or the work itself?
A condition report with ultraviolet photographs is prepared on request, normally within two working days; the condition summary on this page is examined in-house and is not a conservator’s report. Further photographs of any detail, the reverse or the frame are sent on request. The work can be examined in our Barcelona showroom by appointment before the sale, and you are welcome to send your own conservator or specialist.
How does bidding work, and can a maximum bid make me overpay?
You can leave a maximum bid before the sale (the sale is on Saturday, November 28th - 17:00 (CET)) or bid live in our online room. A maximum bid is executed by the auctioneer only as much as is needed to stay ahead of other bidders, in the sale’s increments, never above your maximum.
Where a reserve exists it never exceeds the low estimate; a lot without a reserve sells to the highest bid at or above the starting price of €300.
Is there a limit on how much I can bid?
Every account is approved for bidding as soon as the e-mail address is confirmed, with a limit of €5,000 per bid until the identity is verified. The limit applies everywhere: in the live room, on the lot page and to maximum bids. To bid without a limit, verify your identity in your account on this site: it takes about three minutes on a phone, is done once, and the limit is lifted automatically as soon as the check is complete. Please do it at least an hour before the sale.
Rosalie Ballester
Rosalie Ballester, born in 1949, is a French painter whose work grows out of printed paper. The daughter of a journalist, she took from her father a fascination with typography, and newspaper pages, torn posters, letters and fragments of old print are the raw material of her canvases, laid in and then half veiled under washes of paint, ruled lines and geometric planes.
Her practice places her in the line of the Nouveaux Réalistes and the affichistes, Jacques Villeglé and Raymond Hains above all, who made art from the torn posters of the Paris streets in the 1950s and 1960s; Ballester herself names Russian abstraction, Malevich and the Constructivists, as the other source of her compositions.
Her paintings combine the two: the accidental texture of printed and layered paper with a deliberate, drawn architecture of planes, discs and letters that float free of their words. In the 1990s she worked with Russian newspapers, whose Cyrillic headlines and small advertisements she cut and pasted as Constructivist slogans.
She exhibits in France and is represented on the French art market; a fuller account of her exhibitions has yet to be published.
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