135

"The Beatles I"

Júlio Pomar (1926-2018)


Estimate

80.000 - 90.000


Session

20 April 2022



Description

Acrylic on canvas
Signed and dated 65 on the reverse

65x81 cm


Category

Modern and Contemporary Art


Additional Information

Exhibitions:
"Júlio Pomar: Obras Recentes, 1963-1965", Galeria de Arte Moderna da Sociedade Nacional de Belas Artes, Lisboa, 1965-66, Brochura nº22; "Júlio Pomar: um artista português", Pinacoteca, São Paulo, Brasil, 2008, Cat. p.33; “O desenho impreciso de cada rosto humano, reflectido. Retratos de Júlio Pomar”, Atelier-Museu Júlio Pomar, Lisboa, 2020/21, Cat..

Literature:
Entrevista de Adriano de Carvalho, in O Século Ilustrado, 26 Fev. 1966, p. 18; "Júlio Pomar - Catálogo "Raisonné" I - Pinturas e "Assemblages" 1942-1968", ed. La Différence, Paris/Arte Mágica, Lisboa, 2004, pp. 224-225, ill. 327; “O desenho impreciso de cada rosto humano, reflectido. Retratos de Júlio Pomar”, ed. Atelier-Museu Júlio Pomar/Documenta, Lisboa, 2021, pág. 65.

Provenance:
Acquired at "Júlio Pomar: Obras Recentes, 1963-1965" exhibition and kept in the family ever since.


Lot Essay by Alexandre Pomar

What can now be called the Pop years of Júlio Pomar, which include the series dedicated to Rugby and May '68, then to The Turkish Bath according to Ingres, and to Portraits (from 1967 to 1976), began with the 1965 paintings dedicated to The Beatles, then just at the beginning of their immense popularity. And it was thanks to the movies, Richard Lester's Help! and A Hard Day's Night, that Pomar became interested in the Liverpool quartet, whom he had never seen play. Around this time, in Paris, the painter was discovering Anglo-Saxon pop and appreciated Allen Jones, Kitaj, Peter Phillips, and especially Rauschenberg, as he stated in an unpublished personal letter. The Beatles paintings, shown in the 1966 exhibition but neither commented nor understood at the time, still follow the sign language of horse racing and the Metros (the first Parisian themes), but they are already a sign of Pomar's painting's adherence to the "air of time" and especially to popular culture and the appropriation of media images, which are hallmarks of international Pop.



Closed Auction