Roseberys presents a remarkable group of prints from the private collection of avant-garde artist Agathe Sorel (1935-2020) and her husband Gabor Sitkey, a painter and textile designer.
Comprising 56 lots with a combined high estimate of £72,000, they will be offered in Roseberys’ Prints & Multiples auction on Thursday 16 April.
Agathe Sorel in her studio
The sale brings together a group of prints distinguished by a high proportion of printer’s proofs, variant impressions and works acquired directly from artists and print studios.The prevalence of printer’s proofs and works outside standard editions suggests that Sorel herself was directly involved in producing some of the prints that form the collection.
“What makes this collection particularly compelling is the way it traces a clear trajectory through 20th-century printmaking, from the Symbolist experiments of artists like Gauguin and Munch, through the French avant-garde and through to the post-war London printmaking scene. This was not a passive collection but a working archive. The prints were actively studied and used to inform Sorel’s own practice, and that direct relationship to making is reflected in the material itself. Works with this level of provenance, particularly those connected to studio practice and artistic exchange, are seldom seen on the open market,”
Ed Plackett
Head of Prints & Multiples, Roseberys
Born in Budapest in 1935, Sorel trained at the Academy of Applied Arts and the Academy of Fine Arts before leaving Hungary in 1956. She continued her studies in London at Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts under Michael Rothenstein, Julian Trevelyan and R.B. Kitaj.
She later moved to Paris on a Gulbenkian Scholarship to work at Stanley William Hayter’s Atelier 17, the influential printmaking studio that brought together an international avant-garde to experiment with new techniques and approaches to the medium.
This experience shaped both her own practice and the formation of the collection; the unusual concentration of printer’s proofs and works outside standard editions, material that was never intended for wide circulation, is therefore rarely encountered on the secondary market.
Lot 19: Sonia Delaunay, French 1885-1979, Untitled (Circular Composition) or Patchwork, c.1970
Many of the works were acquired directly by Sorel and Sitkey from fellow artists or received as signed proofs in return for assisting in the production of editions.
The collection reflects a sustained engagement with the ideas of Cubism, Futurism, Vorticism and Constructivism, visible in its emphasis on abstraction, dynamic composition and the constructed image, as opposed to the directly observed.
A highlight of the sale is David Bomberg’s Russian Ballet (1919), a set of six lithographs in colours on wove, from an edition of circa 100, published by Hendersons, London. This is the only prints series Bomberg is known to have produced during his career.
Lot 5: Edvard Munch, Norwegian 1863-1944, Satyr's Head [Schiefler 328], 1908-1909
lEstimate: £1,200 - £1,800
The collection also includes rare early prints by symbolist artists Paul Gauguin and Edvard Munch, whose works in this medium are scarce owing to small, often irregular editions, extensive reworking of plates and blocks and the production of unique or variant impressions rather than standardised print runs.
Lot 2: Paul Gauguin, French 1848-1903, Femmes, Animaux et Feuillages (Women, Animals and Foliage), 1898
Estimate: £600 - £800
Sorel’s career extended across Europe and the United States. Following her time at Atelier 17, she travelled widely, including periods in the United States where she engaged with leading figures in post-war printmaking such as Mauricio Lasansky, Leonard Baskin and Gabor Peterdi.
A founding member of the Printmakers Council in the UK, she developed a distinctive practice encompassing experimental livres d’artiste and her three-dimensional “Space Engravings.”
Lot 44: Julian Trevelyan RA, British 1910-1988, Boule Players, 1961
Estimate: £600 - £800
Her work has been exhibited internationally, with solo presentations at venues including the Curwen Gallery, Camden Art Centre, Galerie La Hune in Paris and the Paul Kövesdy Gallery in New York. A retrospective was held at Cartwright Hall, Bradford, in 2004. Today, her work is held in major public collections including the Tate, the British Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum and the British Library, as well as the National Gallery of Art, the Library of Congress, the Art Institute of Chicago and the Smithsonian Institution.
Over time, Sorel and Sitkey expanded their holdings into a collection of over 460 works of national significance. Far from a passive investment, the collection functioned as a working archive, informing Sorel’s own practice and reflecting the dynamic exchange of ideas between Parisian Surrealism and the post-war London printmaking scene.
Select highlights include:
Lot 1: Paul Gauguin (1848-1903), Auti Te Pape (Women at the River), 1894
Gauguin’s Tahitian woodcuts mark a decisive break from academic printmaking, using rough, hand-carved blocks to produce deliberately simplified forms and areas of dense black and open space. In Auti Te Pape, the compressed composition and carved textures emphasise surface and pattern over depth, aligning with the artist’s broader rejection of naturalism. Impressions from this period are incredibly rare, reflecting small, often inconsistent printings and Gauguin’s tendency to treat each impression as a variation rather than part of a fixed edition.
Lot 4: Edvard Munch (1863-1944), Spukgestalten (Ghostly Figures)
Munch’s prints are central to the development of Expressionism, using line and tone to convey psychological intensity rather than physical likeness. Although Munch only began printmaking in his thirties, it quickly became a core element of his practice, with techniques such as etching, drypoint and woodcut offering a level of spontaneity and material unpredictability that enabled some of his finest works. Impressions of this scale and quality, particularly signed examples, are scarce on the market.
Lot 40: Francis Bacon (1909-1992), Logic de la Sensation, 1981
Bacon’s lithographs translate the visceral intensity of his paintings into print, retaining the same sense of distortion, tension and spatial ambiguity. In Logic de la Sensation, the contorted figure is suspended within a stark, constructed interior, its form partially obscured and fragmented, emphasising the instability of the body. The soft gradations of colour, achieved through lithography, heighten the sense of flesh as both material and vulnerable surface, demonstrating how print could extend Bacon’s exploration of the human figure into a different medium.
Lot 9: Jacques Villon (1875-1963), Le Petit Équilibrist, 1914
An early Cubist work, Le Petit Équilibrist shows Villon translating the fractured geometry of the movement into etched line, with the figure broken into angular planes and structural rhythms. This impression is an unsigned proof aside from the edition, offering insight into the working process before the image was fixed.
Lot 43: Julian Trevelyan (1910-1988), Windsor Castle, 1969
A signed proof printed by Agathe Sorel, this work provides direct evidence of her role within the printmaking process. Trevelyan, a key figure in British printmaking and one of Sorel’s teachers, is here represented through a work that passed through her hands in the studio.
Lot 24: David Bomberg (1890-1957), Russian Ballet, 1919
Bomberg’s Russian Ballet is widely regarded as the artist’s only editioned print series, making it a rare example of his engagement with printmaking. Produced at a pivotal moment in his career, the lithographs translate his Vorticist-influenced approach into bold, simplified forms and dynamic composition.
Lot 52: Agathe Sorel (1935-2020), Le Balcon, 1964
This portfolio of ten engravings reflects Sorel’s practice at a formative stage, demonstrating her engagement with structure, space and serial composition. Produced early in her career, the works show a clear interest in the constructed image and the possibilities of print as a medium for variation across a sequence.
Lot 56: Printmakers’ Council Portfolio, 1981
This portfolio reflects Sorel’s role as a founding member of the Printmakers’ Council, an organisation central to the development of post-war British printmaking. Bringing together works by leading practitioners including Gertrude Hermes and Julian Trevelyan, it situates the collection within the collaborative networks that shaped the medium in Britain during the 20th century.
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