Sotheby's Auction Lots: Paris Modern Art

School of Paris (French: École de Paris) refers to three distinct groups of artists: a group of medieval manuscript illuminators, and a group of non-French artists working in Paris before World War I, and a similar group of artists living in Paris between the two world wars and beyond.

The School of Paris describes, not an art movement or a learning institution, but instead is more indicative of the importance of Paris as a center of Western art in the early decades of the 20th century.

The group of non-French artists in Paris before World War I created in the styles of Post-Impressionism, Cubism, and Fauvism, and includes artists like Pablo Picasso, Marc Chagall, Amedeo Modigliani, Piet Mondrian and French artists like Pierre Bonnard, Henri Matisse, Jean Metzinger and Albert Gleizes.

Many of these same artists, plus Jean Arp, Amedeo Modigliani, Robert Delaunay, Sonia Delaunay, Joan Miró, Constantin Brâncuşi, Raoul Dufy, René Iché, Tsuguharu Foujita, Emmanuel Mané-Katz; the Artists from Belarus, including Chaim Soutine, Michel Kikoine, Pinchus Kremegne, Ossip Zadkine, Jacques Lipschitz; the Russian prince born in Saint Petersburg Alexis Arapoff, and others worked in Paris between World War I and World War II, in various styles including Surrealism and Dada. A significant group of Jewish artists working together came to be known as the Jewish School of Paris. This group included Mané-Katz, Soutine, Marc Chagall, Moise Kisling, and Jules Pascin.

After the Second World War the term School of Paris often referred to Tachisme, Lyrical Abstraction, the European equivalent of American abstract expressionism and those artists are also related to Cobra. Important proponents were Jean Dubuffet, Pierre Soulages, Nicolas de Staël, Hans Hartung, Serge Poliakoff, Bram van Velde, Georges Mathieu and Jean Messagier, among others.



A dreamy picture of a leggy dancer slunk low in a yellow chair against a checkerboard background, brought $20.8 million, eclipsing its estimate of $12 million-$18 million. The price came within a few bids of matching the $21.7 million the painting sold for at Sotheby's London in June 2007, in the market’s salad days.