8/3/2019 Sothebys Contemporary Art Evening Auction To Feature Major Gerhard Richter, Jean-Michel Basquiat & Francis Bac
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For Immediate ReleaseFor Immediate ReleaseFor Immediate ReleaseFor Immediate ReleasePress Release London
London | +44 (0)20 7293 6000 | Matthew Weigman | [email protected] Warren | [email protected]
Sothebys Forthcoming Contemporary Art Evening AuctionSothebys Forthcoming Contemporary Art Evening AuctionSothebys Forthcoming Contemporary Art Evening AuctionSothebys Forthcoming Contemporary Art Evening AuctionHighlighted byHighlighted byHighlighted byHighlighted by Desirable and FreshDesirable and FreshDesirable and FreshDesirable and Fresh----ToToToTo----MarketMarketMarketMarket
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((((EstimateEstimateEstimateEstimate: : : : 3333----4444 millionmillionmillionmillion****))))
LONDON,LONDON,LONDON,LONDON, TUESTUESTUESTUESDAYDAYDAYDAY,,,, JANUARYJANUARYJANUARYJANUARY 22224444THTHTHTH,,,, 2012012012012222 --- Following Sothebys third most successful year ever (2011)
for global auctions of Contemporary Art, which totalled $1.17 billion, the company is delighted to present its
forthcoming Contemporary Art Evening Auction. The sale, which will be staged in London on Tuesday, FebruaryTuesday, FebruaryTuesday, FebruaryTuesday, February
15151515 thththth,,,, 2012012012012222, will include an array of major artworks by established Post-War and Contemporary artists including
Gerhard Richter, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Alighiero Boetti and Alberto Burri, and will also feature an exceptionally
strong British Art section, comprising works by Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud, Bridget Riley, Leon Kossoff, among
others. The Evening Auction is estimated to realise in excess of 35.8 million*.
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Commenting on the forthcomingCommenting on the forthcomingCommenting on the forthcomingCommenting on the forthcoming sales,sales,sales,sales, Cheyenne Westphal, Sothebys Chairman of Contemporary ArtCheyenne Westphal, Sothebys Chairman of Contemporary ArtCheyenne Westphal, Sothebys Chairman of Contemporary ArtCheyenne Westphal, Sothebys Chairman of Contemporary Art
Europe,Europe,Europe,Europe, saidsaidsaidsaid:::: With the outstanding total of $1.17 billion achieved for Sothebys global sales of Contemporary Art in
2011, Sothebys leads the market in this field. Attesting to last years successes, the Evening Auction we have been able to
assemble this winter will be led by numerous desirable and fresh-to-market artworks by internationally collected blue-chip
artists such as Gerhard Richter, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Francis Bacon, Takashi Murakami, Andy Warhol and Lucian Freud,
among others, and the sale carries a pre-sale low estimate of 35 million which is in-line with the various-owners
Contemporary Art Evening Auctions we staged in February and June last year.
Gerhard Richter's Eis (Ice) of 1981 is the
definitive paragon of the artists landscape
paintings. The breath taking frozen seascape
was based on a photograph the artist had
taken in Greenland, while on a solo retreat in
1972. Widely acknowledged as a reflection of
Richters psyche, Eis, whose cold landscape
shows no sign of life, poignantly captures the
artists struggle with his marriage and illustrates
his physical and emotional exodus from his
troubled life in Dusseldorf to a polar haven.
The painting carries an estimate of 23 million.
Gerhard Richters Abstraktes Bild (Rot), which was executed in
1991, exemplifies Richters intellectual inquiry into abstraction. The
1990s saw the artists thematic use of red colour throughout a
monumental series of canvases. This abstract work is at once
challenging and dense yet strikingly beautiful. Chromatically
expansive, the sweeping red hues and pulsating greens, yellows and
greys ofAbstraktes Bild, for which Richter deployed a squeegee as
his primary tool, masterfully explores the relationships between the
instinctual, the spontaneous and the arbitrary. It is estimated at
2.5-3.5 million.
Illustrated on the first page is one of the most important highlights
in the sale, Jean-Michel Basquiat's Orange Sports Figure, an
unrivalled pictorial masterpiece and an exceptionally rare work to
come to auction. The work, estimated at 3-4 million, was painted
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in 1982, the definitive year for Basquiats oeuvre. Adorned with his trademark crown, this work engenders a powerful
and ambiguous scrutiny of black athleticism: the aspirational black sports figure is celebrated yet simultaneously
satirised by an autobiographical allusion to Basquiat's Haitian heritage the cheap labour destination for the export
manufacture of baseballs, an American sport notoriously regarded as predominantly white. This racial tension is
powerfully presented by Basquiats inimitable and remarkable synthesis graffiti, primitivism and abstract expressionism.
Nero Plastica, a marvellous volcanic topography of molten black
plastic, is demonstrative of Alberto Burris poetic use of fire as an
artistic tool. It follows in the wake of Burris Combustione legno,
which realised the remarkable price of 3,177,250 at Sothebys
London in October 2011. Nero Plastica has never before
appeared at auction, presenting an exciting debut of a work from
Burris most important corpus of works. Heralded as the first artist
to introduce the unpredictability of this natural phenomena into
artworks, Burri began executing his first corpus of dedicated
plastic works in 1960, of which this work, made in 1965, is a fine
example. The visceral qualities of the work belie Burris past as a
qualified doctor, then as a prisoner-of-war from 1944-45, during
which time he turned to art. Nero Plastica appears to reference a
living and bleeding body, lacerated and tortured by the atrocities
of war. The work carries an estimate of 800,000-1,200,000.
Figure with Monkey by Francis Bacon, which depicts a suited
man reaching towards a caged monkey, captures an important
theme within Bacons oeuvre whereby man and beast appear
indistinguishable and interchangeable. Executed in 1951, this
remarkable work followed a stay in Zimbabwe and Southern
Rhodesia during 1951. During his travels Bacon produced
wildlife paintings and a small series of encaged, screaming
monkeys. The present work, in which the open-mouthed,
bestial scream of the monkey forms the focal point of the
painting, presents Bacons fascination with wild animals and his
impulse to expose mans primal nature. Scarcely reproduced
and rarely exhibited since its creation, the re-emergence of
this significant early work marks a moment great art-historical
significance. The work is estimated at 1.8-2.5 million.
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In the wake of the strong prices achieved for works on paper by
Lucian Freud in 2011, including the auction record which was
established by Sothebys London in June 2011**, the sale will include
an outstanding group of works on paper by Lucian Freud. This
exceptional and encyclopaedic fresh-to-market private collection of
five drawings spans more than four decades and attests to Freuds
masterful draughtsmanship. Combined, these extraordinary works are
estimated to realise in excess of 1.5 million. Highlighting the group
is Lucian Freuds black charcoal on paper Lord Goodman, executed in
1985. This masterful portrait magnificently illustrates the artists
inimitable analysis of the human subject and his incomparable
aptitude as a draughtsman. Paralleling a smaller drawing of the same
sitter that is now held in the permanent collection of the National
Portrait Gallery, this drawing is of museum quality and ranks in the
very highest tier of works on paper by Freud from the 1980s. Freud's Lord Goodman is one of the outstanding
portrayals in the medium of Lucian Freud's entire oeuvre and is estimated at 400,000600,000. (Please see
separate press release for further details about this collection.)
Mappa is a superlative example from Alighiero
Boettis famed series of bold map tapestries, in
which Boetti uses world maps to delineate
geographical territories and conceptualise the
evolving geopolitics of the Cold War. The work,
estimated at 700,000-900,000, was
acquired directly from the artist and will be
offered for sale for the first time. Mappa was
designed in 1983 in Trastevere, Rome and
subsequently sent to Kabul, Afghanistan to be
embroidered. Boetti was fascinated with the
culture and indigenous craft of Afghanistan, a territory that had been off-limits to the artist following political unrest in
1979. The embroidered text around the map poignantly alludes to the artists protest against the Soviet military
occupation that prohibited him from returning to his beloved Kabul; translated from Italian, it reads Give birth to the
world in Kabul Afganistan. Boetti simultaneously draws attention to his artistic powers of creation in re-imagining the
world, while also alluding to the transitory nature of the political world versus the seemingly unchangeable geography
of the planet.
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Appearing at auction and on public view for the first time, Gerhard
Richters Abstraktes Bild(numbered 768-4) represents one of the
most vivid and commanding works from the artists astounding opus
of abstract paintings. With its powerfully graphic vertical stripes, this
work which is estimated at 3-4 million, belongs to a cycle of
abstracts executed in 1992 for which Richter innovatively
implemented a squeegee as his paintbrush. The result is an
extraordinary visual tension between controlled action and chance.
Richter explained his technique as letting a thing come, rather than
creating it in order to gain access to all that in genuine, richer, more
alive: to what is beyond my understanding. (Gerhard Richter, Notes
1985 in: Hans-Ulrich Obrist, Ed., Gerhard Richter: The Daily
Practice of Painting, Writings 1962-1993, London 1993, p. 119).
The present works remarkably complex, monochromatic scheme makes it an irrefutable rival to Richters other
extraordinary abstractions currently held in the prestigious collections of the National Gallery of Art in Washington,
D.C.; the MoMA in San Francisco; the Kunstmuseum Winterthur in Switzerland; the Hamburger Kunsthalle in
Germany and numerous others.
Takashi Murakamis vibrant Open Your Hands Wide, Embrace
Happiness!, which carries an estimate of 600,000
800,000, is a superlative example among his anim-inspired
floral motifs, a globally-recognised trademark of the renowned
artist. The motif has notably been embraced in collaborations
with Louis Vuitton and hip-hop artist Kanye West. According
to Murakami, the present works endless, repeating plane of
flowers stems from his time teaching schoolchildren how to
draw flowers at a preparatory school. His initial repulsion by
overtly cute flowers, which made him feel uneasy, soon
blossomed into artistic appreciation. Murakami explains, I
really wanted to convey this impression of unease, of the
threatening aspect of an approaching crowd (the artist cited in: Exhibition Catalogue, London, Serpentine Gallery,
Takashi Murakami, 2002, pp. 84-85).
Diamond Dust Shoes by Andy Warhol is an impressively large-scale, glittering composition of acrylic and diamond
dust depicting womens shoes provided to the artist by iconic fashion designer Halston, and references his early days
as a fashion illustrator on Madison Avenue. Warhol recognised high-heels as an agent of glamour, and when re-visited
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this emblematic theme in 1980, he employed his new silkscreening
technique using diamond dust a direct reference to movie-star glamour,
high fashion, fame and money, subjects Warhol loved and frequently
explored. For the present work, which is estimated at 700,000-
1,000,000, Warhol took a series of Polaroid pictures of the shoes,
selected one to print, then finished the composition using large crystals of
pulverized glass to achieve brighter sparkle than that of real diamond dust.
Roy Lichtenstein's Nude in
Apartment is a spectacular late
work executed in 1995, and
which has never before appeared at auction. It references the early
images of ladies from his Cartoon series, for which the artist is
internationally acclaimed. Dominating the work is the life size female
figure facing a full-length mirror. In other important works, the artist has
employed mirrors, windows and other reflective surfaces to explore rich,
complex visual interactions with light. This work is estimated at
600,000-800,000.
Leon Kossoffs Christ Church No. 1, August 1991 is an arresting image
of an iconic landmark of Londons East End, and the first of Kossofs
Christ Church series to have ever been offered for sale. For the Christ
Church paintings, Kossoff made a dedicated pilgrimage half-way across
London to revisit the East End, where he spent his formative years
amongst the areas immigrant community. Kossoff, born to a Jewish
family of Ukrainian descent, found the Christ Churchs imposing
Christian architecture to be a representation of foreign territory. His
intense rendering of a bold icon of Christianity expresses his own
assimilation into an ostensibly hostile culture, in which he and other
London immigrants like him are outsiders. The painting is also highly
indicative of Kossoffs lifelong artistic engagement with Londons
particular inner-city urban landscape. London, like the paint I use seems
to be in my blood stream,Kossoff wrote. Its always moving the skies, the streets, the buildings, the people who walk
past me when I draw have become part of my life(the artist in: Exhibition Catalogue, London, Tate Gallery, Leon
Kossoff , 1996, p. 36).
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Bridget Rileys exuberant Tabriz, executed in 1984, belongs to
the cycle of Egyptian Palette paintings produced following
Rileys travels in Egypt in the winter of 1979-1980, which had a
profound influence on the artist. Riley was immediately struck
with the art found in the tombs of the Pharaohs, which depicted
magnificent scenes in a surprisingly limited number of hues.
Tabriz, estimate at 250,000-350,000, is among the most
optically arresting and jubilant of this important series. In keeping
with Rileys inimitable technique and inspired colour palette, the
present work is restricted to only six colours of uniformly sized
lines. The result is a spectacular optical illusion, which distorts the
width of the lines and even the tone of the pigments, creating a
rhythmic, pulsating effect.
Notes to Editor:Notes to Editor:Notes to Editor:Notes to Editor:
*Estimates do not include buyers premium**Lucian Freuds Beach Scene with a Boat, colour chalk and pen and ink, executed in 1945, sold at Sotheby's London on June 15, 2011, 2.6million ($4.2 million)
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