Lot 255: Hoberman, Nicky 1967 South Africa Butterfly Ball.

2002. Acrylic on canvas. 198 x 365,8cm. Signed and dated on wrapped around canvas on verso: Nicky Hoberman 2002.
Titled on stretcher: Butterfly Ball and again signed: Nicky Hoberman and indication of size: 144" x 78" x 1 3/4" T.B.

Provenance:
Feigen Contemporary New York (from Saatchi Collection, London)
Private possession Hamburg

Literature:
art. Das Kunstmagazin. Spielplatz der starken Mädchen, von Hans Pietsch, issue 04/2003,
ill. p. 38

"Schmalz, kitsch and childhood dreams - in her works painter Nicky Hoberman plays with sweet clichés. But in the long run it is hardly possible to hold the little creatures' gaze - they are amazingly wise and cunning. Little girls everywhere. Dresses with flowery design, striped T-Shirts, blue painted toe nails, finely combed hair. Alone or in groups, with only a few props, little dogs, littly cats, scampering bunnies. With Nicky Hoberman everything is as cute as a button - at least at first sight.
But any suspicion of kitch can't be held up: These children are older than their bodies,
they have experienced, knowing faces. It's hard to hold their provocative, cunning gaze in the long run. The nervousness, complacency and aggression of these nymphets has something erotic, even sexual. Or do the adult beholders just transfer their sexual knowledge on them? The game with clichés, provocation and staged breach of taboos remains open. (...) 'In my work I deal with deception, multiple layers, illusion', Nicky Hoberman says.
She makes her shadowless figures hover weightlessly against a coloured background, almost like angels against the gilt background of medieval paintings. At times they have contact with each other but there is no real emotional connection between these lone fighters in that indistinct pictorial space. (...) Intelligently and knowingly Hoberman works on her view of childhood and womanhood. Her little girls seem to look into the future and wonder what it might have in store for them." (Hans Pietsch, Spielplatz der starken Mädchen, in: art 4/2003, p. 38).