On 15 June seven new paintings will be placed on the market

What is it that makes the success of an artist A relevant work in the history of art course, but it is not enough. If Picasso market is flourishing, it is because, in addition to his genius, the artist produced in quantity but also because very early merchants occupied his posterity. In particular by the 1920s, dealer Paul Rosenberg - the grandfather of Anne Sinclair-, has implemented a strategy of promotion in Europe and the United States, not only to private collectors, but still with the museums.

Nothing similar has happened for the German artist Otto Wols (1913-1951). June 15, at the hotel Drouot will be dispersed 162 of his works in indirect source of his workshop, by the play of the estates.

Wols is an unclassifiable. This artist died at age 38 was first produced in a surrealist style. His photographic prints will be also dispersed in November next at Paris-Photo. But it was never officially associated to the circle of André Breton. Then his production of paintings is a "fantastic" time to type in the 1940s to an abstraction of organic type. Fantasmatiques microscopic visions which become then a gestural painting specialists classify in the "informal Art", to which belong also Jean Fautrier and Jean Dubuffet.

Even though today his works are in museums such as the Pompidou centre, even though it benefited from retrospective important as in 1973 at the Museum of Modern Art, the city of Paris in 1989 at the Kunsthaus in Zurich this painter and photographer had an unclassifiable work. The corpus of his creation includes a few canvases that Cyrille Cohen of Sotheby's amounts to approximately 50.

Wols never became really famous artist and his rating suffers. In addition, the Parisian merchant of the end of his career, René Drouin, has failed to give an international profile. Finally, problems of allocation have helped create a climate of suspicion about his watercolours after his death. Today, the market responds to the request of a circle of insiders of art history buffs enthusiasts.

However, recently, two tables have reached large sums of money. The two dated years of membership in the power of informal Art. On 10 February in London, Sotheby's gave one of her paintings in the years 1946-1947 for the record price of EUR 2.7 million. May 31, still at Sotheby's, but in Paris, another canvas confirmed Wols now ascending rating, with an award to EUR 1.3 million.

Since the end of the 1980s, only 17 paintings of Wols are passed to the auction. On 15 June, seven new paintings will be placed on the market. They chant the evolution of its creation. 1932: "Floating objects," banana"is a strange composition that takes a bit of Miro and represents species of sweet potatoes stained in space. Estimate: 80,000 euros. 1940: "Fishes and waves" is a tangle of forms such as a shell with multiple beads. Estimate: 80,000 euros. 1949: "The pale" is a composition made of a set of movements of the brush on the canvas. Estimate: 200,000 euros, but it could achieve a much higher sum. Finally, the year of his death, in 1951, he painted "The Scorpion", a set of purple traces on a beige canvas. Estimate: 150,000 euros.

For more modest budgets of its auction, unique, is the large number of works on paper scattered. The specialist merchant of surrealism, Natalie Seroussi, exposing his work for more than twenty years, presented in several at the Basel fair next week. It considers that quality of Wols watercolours are currently negotiating from 30.000 euros. On 15 June, pen drawings in a surreal verve are estimated from 6,000 euros and watercolours from 8,000 euros. Even though some estimates of the catalogue are, professionals would "inordinately low", one can hope, with the amount of scattered paper, get one of these sheets, testimony of the history of the art of the 20th century, for less than 10,000 euros.