Edvard Munch’s The Scream (1895). Photo by Aubrey Roemer for Art Observed.

Today marks the beginning of a two week flurry of art sales in the New York auction houses. This week is focused entirely on Impressionist and Modern Art, with next week centered on Post War and Contemporary Art. Chances are that you have already been bombarded with the numerous and impressive highlights that both houses have to offer, as the many of the lots from both houses are iconic, impressive, and will quite possibly break world records left and right.

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Francis Bacon, “Portrait of Henrietta Moraes” (1969). All pictures courtesy of Helly Nahmad Gallery.

New York’s Helly Nahmad Gallery is currently showing the first comparative assembly of works by the painters Chaim Soutine and Francis Bacon. Connections between Soutine, whom de Kooning famously called his “favorite artist,” and Bacon, the subject of two Tate Modern retrospectives in his lifetime and one in 2008, have never before been examined by an exhibition at a museum or gallery. SOUTINE/BACON closes on June 18.

Chaim Soutine, “Autoportrait” (1918).

More images and text after the jump…

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Marc Chagall, “To My Betrothed” (1913), at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. All pictures by Art Observed.

Art Observed was at PMA’s newest show, a celebration of Marc Chagall and his Paris contemporaries. The show encompasses 70 works in various media, including paint, sculpture, and paper, by the emigré artists of Paris.  Here are masterpieces by Modigliani, Kisling, Lipchitz, and Soutine, all set against and borne of La Ruche, a jumble of art studios in this early 20th-century community. As he did with the museum’s gorgeous Picasso show last year, PMA curator Michael Taylor recreates an artists’ colony, a whiff of nostalgia threaded throughout its galleries.

Detail, Marc Chagall’s “Paris through the Window” (1913) at Philadelphia Museum of Art.

More images, story, and relevant links after the jump…

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