Brussels: Europe and the Arabs
This fall, the American auction house Christie's will auction a painting from the series "Empire of Light" by the Belgian surrealist artist Rene Magritte in New York. The artwork is estimated to be worth more than $ 95 million (85 million euros). According to what the media in Brussels reported from the BBC, which added that the painting, which dates back to 1954, is part of a series of works depicting a bourgeois house at night with illuminated windows under a light blue sky: in the works it seems like night and day at the same time.
The various oil paintings entitled L'empire des lumières were, according to experts, Magritte's only real attempt to create a "series" within his oeuvre. The works evolved over time, but they continued to speak to each other, just like Vincent van Gogh's Starry Nights and Claude Monet's Water Lilies. The paintings depict a house in Brussels near Josaphat Park. The series was an immediate success with the public and collectors. The work in question comes from the estate of Meca Ertegun, an interior designer who was married to Ahmet Ertegun, co-founder of Atlantic Records and an avid art collector. A special evening auction of the Ertegun collection will be held in New York on November 19, followed by daytime auctions and two online auctions. Two years ago, another work from the Belgian artist’s series sold at Sotheby’s in London for a record £59.4 million (more than €71 million).