Rare Magritte, Picasso & Tanning: Gems From the Sybil Shainwald Collection | Sotheby’s

Why It Matters

Shainwald’s foresight proves that championing under‑valued, especially female, artists creates enduring cultural capital and lucrative investment opportunities.

Key Takeaways

• Sybil Shainwald collected rare modernist works before market recognition
• Focused on female artists, securing pieces now highly coveted
• Magritte’s ‘Femme Bouteille’ exemplifies wartime resourceful surrealism technique
• Dorothea Tanning’s 1947 desert painting reveals layered narrative tension
• Sotheby’s showcases intimate, understated works that command lasting cultural relevance

Summary

The Sothe & Co video spotlights the Sybil Shainwald collection, a meticulously assembled survey of modernist masterpieces ranging from Magritte and Picasso to Dorothea Tanning and Diane Arbus. Shainwald, a pioneering women’s‑rights lawyer, built the assemblage alongside her husband, leveraging personal taste and a commitment to under‑recognized talent.

The collection emphasizes early, often prescient acquisitions of female creators—Tanning, Bontecou, Sherman, Arbus—at a time when their market values were modest. Highlights include Magritte’s rare “Femme Bouteille,” painted on a wartime wine bottle, a 1947 Tanning desert scene that morphs domestic calm into surreal tension, Matisse’s “Femme Nue,” a reclining Picasso with a bird, and Lee Arp’s precise abstract composition.

Narrative anecdotes reinforce Shainwald’s collector’s eye: she chased a lost Magritte bottle across Belgium, relished the line “breakfast, lunch, or dinner,” and valued intimate works that whisper rather than roar. The video also showcases iconic photographs—Lange’s “Migrant Mother,” Arbus’s portrait box, and Sherman’s noir‑inspired film stills—underscoring her foresight in photography’s rising stature.

For today’s market, the collection illustrates how early support for marginalized artists can yield cultural cachet and financial upside. Institutions and investors can learn from Shainwald’s blend of personal passion, social advocacy, and strategic timing, which turned modest purchases into timeless gems.

Original Description

Sybil Shainwald was not a typical collector. A pioneering attorney who transformed the landscape of women’s health advocacy, she approached art with the same conviction and discerning eye that defined her life’s work.

The Collection of Sybil Shainwald reflects her deep love of art, savvy acquisitions of under-represented women artists and appreciation of feminine themes. It encompasses a wide-ranging group of works spanning European and American modernism as well as postwar abstraction. The psychologically-charged imagery of Dorothea Tanning and the surreal painted Femme-bouteille by René Magritte sit alongside compositions by Sophie Taeuber-Arp and Lee Bontecou. Drawings by Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso further extend the dialogue and expand the vision of the Collection. Though varied in media and approach, the Collection is unified by an engagement with the female figure, explored across generations and artistic languages.

This May, works from the Collection of Sybil Shainwald will be offered across Sotheby’s marquee sales in New York, including the Modern Evening Sale and Modern & Contemporary Day Sales, presented by CELINE.

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