Sotheby’s To Sell Hascoe Family Collection of Important Czech Art --The Finest Collection of Czech Cubist Works Outside The Czech Republic--

LONDON, FRIDAY, 4 MARCH 2011 -- On Monday, 13 June 2011, Sotheby’s London will offer Czech Modernist paintings, sculpture and Cubist furniture from the outstanding  Hascoe  Collection  of  Czech  Modern  Art.  This collection is an extraordinary testimony to the vision of its creators, Norman and Suzanne Hascoe, who over the course of twenty-five years assembled what is now one of the most important private collections of Czech Modernist art, and the most exciting group of Czech works to come to the market in the last decade. Together, the works in the sale – nearly 200 lots – are estimated to realise in excess of £5 million.

The Hascoe Collection offers a remarkably complete survey of Czech painting and sculpture of the first half of the twentieth century. The core of this collection of paintings revolves around the leading figures of Czech Modernist painting: František Kupka, Bohumil Kubišta, František Foltýn, Emil Filla and other fellow Osma artists, such as Antonín Prochaszka and Josef Čapek, who were at the forefront of international Cubism.

Norman and Suzanne Hascoe are remembered for their buoyant, cheerful and energetic spirit, easily inspiring
friendships all over the world, and for  their shared dedication in their quest for objects of beauty and cultural
significance across a wide spectrum. Their discerning eye and passionate focus is reflected in their collection of Czech art, which was housed in a wonderful waterfront home in Greenwich, Connecticut, in America.

The sale will feature twenty works by František Kupka, including his tour de force of early abstraction, Movement,painted between 1913 and 1919 (estimate £500,000-700,000), pictured on the previous page. Movement is one of the finest examples of Kupka’s paintings from this key period in his artistic career. Although the stridently red central motif can perhaps be read as evoking a recumbent human form, Movement  is essentially what its title implies: a study of objects in dynamic shift.