Christie's to auction Rene Gruau works

A contemporary of Christian Dior, Gruau concocted some of the fashion house’s headiest fragrance and fashion advertisement images.

‘He managed to create a whole mood, and evoke a sense of luxury and glamour, with such an incredibly intuitive use of line and the employment of block colour,’ Joy McCall, head of Christie's 20th Century Decorative Art and Design department, told us.

The six lots in Wednesday’s auction include a Christian Dior drawing, magazine illustrations and theatrical posters, such as this design promoting the Gala Revue.

Gruau’s drawings will go under the hammer following furniture and decorative lots from Gio Ponti, Alvar Aalto and Arne Jacobson. The sale also includes a sculptural side table by Eileen Gray, a designer favoured by Yves Saint Laurent (a Gray armchair from the Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé collection set an auction record for 20th century decorative art when it sold for €21.9m in 2009).

‘There’s been a reappraisal of Gruau’s importance, and we’ve found that the market has an appetite for his work that hasn’t been there in the past,’ McCall says, noting that recent sales of Gruau’s work have achieved ‘staggering prices’—his Reverie drawing from 1980 sold for $218,500 last June.

‘The timelessness of his work means there’s a freshness still that’s relevant to the contemporary market.’