30 - Rosalie Ballester (b. 1949) | French

Rosalie Ballester (b. 1949) | French Composition with Russian Newspaper, c. 1990's Mixed Media on Canvas Signed: Signed ‘R. Ballester’ (lower right). Dimensions: Framed: 56.5 × 48 cm | 22.2 × 18.9 in Artwork: 46 × 38 cm | 18.1 × 15 in Provenance: Acquired in France. Private Collection, Spain. Condition: Mixed media and newspaper collage on canvas, unlined. The surface is stable, the collage elements well adhered; light surface dust. Presented in a plain wooden frame. Please contact us to request a detailed Condition Report. Conditions of Sale: All lots are sold as is, in the condition described. The condition summary is given as a courtesy; a full condition report is available on request before the sale. Attributions are governed by our Terms and Conditions. All enquiries must be made before bidding; no further information can be provided after the sale. By placing a bid you confirm that you have read and accept our Terms and Conditions in full, as set out in the terms of this sale. Shipping: Aurora & Athena coordinates professional, insured shipping for every purchase through vetted logistics partners: packing, transport, insurance and the export paperwork are arranged on the buyer's behalf and charged at the provider's cost. Buyers are equally welcome to collect in Barcelona or to appoint a carrier of their own. Lots are released once the total purchase price has been received. For shipments outside the EU an export licence may be required and Spanish export duties may apply to certain higher-value works; these are the buyer's responsibility. No export tax applies within the EU. Full shipping and export information is available on request. -- Pages of a Russian newspaper, the Moscow business weekly ‘Ekonomika i zhizn’ with its small advertisements and telephone numbers, are laid into the canvas and half veiled under washes of grey, umber and white; over them Ballester draws a scaffold of tilted planes and ruled lines, a dark red disc, a small white target and scattered printed letters, S, E, L, V, that float free of any word. At the foot, bold cut-out words from the headlines, ‘podpishis’, ‘nashel’, ‘magazin’, are pasted at an angle like a Constructivist slogan. Rosalie Ballester (born 1949), a French painter with roots in the newspaper collage of the Nouveaux Réalistes and an avowed debt to Russian abstraction, here brings the two together: the torn and layered print of Villeglé and Hains with the geometry of Malevich and Lissitzky. The Cyrillic text dates the picture to the years after 1991, when the Russian press and its advertisements suddenly became material for a Western artist.