Pierre Alechinsky valuation
The last of the CoBrA painters, and the one who put a border of small drawings around the picture.
Pierre Alechinsky was born in Brussels in 1927 and joined CoBrA in 1949, at twenty-two, the youngest of the group and in the end the longest-lived.
What a work by Pierre Alechinsky is worth
Send photographs and whatever paperwork came with it. The first question is what the work actually is — edition or unique, when, and in what condition — because everything else follows from the answer. A valuation is free, made online from the photographs you send, and it commits you to nothing. We act for sellers across the United Kingdom, Europe and the United States.
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Bio
Pierre Alechinsky was born in Brussels in 1927 and joined CoBrA in 1949, at twenty-two, the youngest of the group and in the end the longest-lived. He trained in typography and illustration, moved to Paris in 1951, and studied brushwork in Japan, which changed how he painted more than anything CoBrA had taught him. In 1965 he abandoned oil for acrylic and, with it, the easel: the paper goes on the floor, the ink is worked fast, and the sheet is afterwards mounted on canvas. That format is the signature. So are the remarques marginales, the strip of small framed drawings he runs around the central image like a predella, commenting on it.
Most of what comes to market is on paper. The large ink and acrylic works mounted on canvas sit at the top; below them are drawings, gouaches and a very large printed output of etchings and lithographs, much of it made with Paris publishers over five decades. Because the works are on paper, condition does a great deal of the work in a valuation — light exposure, cockling, and whether an old mount has been trimmed to it. Signature, date and edition size are all normally present and should be legible.
La Cambre, Atelier 17 and Japan
Alechinsky was born at Schaerbeek and studied illustration, printing and photography at La Cambre in Brussels from 1944. In 1951 he went to Paris to study engraving at Atelier 17 under Stanley William Hayter. He was the Paris correspondent of the Japanese calligraphy journal Bokubi, and in 1955 he travelled to Japan, where he made the film Calligraphie japonaise.
By 1960 he had shown in London, Bern and at the Venice Biennale. He worked with Walasse Ting and stayed close to Christian Dotremont, and in 2018 he received the Praemium Imperiale. His work is in the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Tate and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Whitebank Fine Art is an art advisory and gallery, not an auction house, and is not affiliated with any auction house or with the artist, their estate or their representatives. This page describes the range we advise on. Nothing here is investment advice.
