FIG Auction 4

Image: Jordi Labanda, ‘Flowers, vase, column and woman’, 2019.

‘Violets are Blue…’

FIG is delighted to present Violets are Blue. FIG’s fourth online auction to date. New works by Tanya Ling, Jacky Blue and for the first time through FIG, Jordi Labanda and John Booth.

Labanda is Spain’s most celebrated illustrator, and probably best known here in London for his drawings for Wallpaper where his work appeared throughout Tyler Brûlé’s reign. His gouache on paper works are considered and cool. His models, accessorised by bonnets, shades, dangly earrings are either wearing clothes that sport large floral prints or in two cases, inhaling the scent of huge Jeff Koon’s like flower arrangements. Like Koon’s, everything about Labanda’s work is perfect. Nothing is left to chance. He is a master of design and execution. Never before have original works previously left his studio for the open market.

John Booth is something of a polymath. He’s a ceramicist, designer and illustrator who has worked in the dark heart of fashion for Fendi, Zandra Rhodes and John Galliano. He creates highly idiosyncratic imagery produced using black felt tip line with childlike colour infills. One of the drawings offered mirrors recent ceramic vases crafted so flowers pop up and out to create a decorative head dress on a young man’s head. The male face is a recurring theme in Booth’s drawings, appearing on vessels or etched into the pistil of the flower itself.

Ling’s collection of coral pink flowers are typical of the artist’s inventiveness and originality. Rendered with a technique that brushes paint into hundreds of wispy and feathery lines, no two replicate each other. They provide a glimpse into a wonderland where stems, stamens and petals have flourished and reproduced to create hybrids; new, precious, delicate and fantastical.

Reflecting a beautiful simplicity, Jacky Blue has made watery ink and charcoal transcriptions of Robert Mapplethorpe’s flower photos of tulips, poppies and anemones, plus a masterwork by Karl Blossfeldt. 

For appointments to view the works in person please contact mia@fashionillustrationgallery.com

Start Date: 12:00 Friday 14th June 2019
End Date: 21:00 Saturday 22nd June 2019

The auction start/end times are displayed in London, UK local time (GMT).