Sotheby’s Contemporary Art evening auction on March 5th, featuring works by Freud, Basquiat and Emin raised a total of £93.2m.
Top lot of the night was Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Apex, sold for £8.2 million. Three further works on paper by the artist exceeded their high estimates and achieved a combined total of £2.9m.
Lucian freud’s Head of a Boy, a portrait of Guinness heir Garech Browne from 1956 fetched £5.8m in its auction debut, while Jenny Saville’s Juncture achieved £5.7m, over 1,000 percent increase from its sale price a decade ago.
Roy Lichtenstein’s Vicki! I—I Thought I Heard your Voice from 1964, a quintessential evocation of the artist’s celebrated Pop vernacular, achieved £5.8 million.
Thirteen works by female artists were offered, including by Louise Bourgeois, Marlene Dumas, Tracey Emin, Agnes Martin and Bridget Riley.
Sixty-six lots made up the sale, the highest number of lots in a Contemporary Art Evening Auction at Sotheby’s since October 2015, and 91 percent sold by lot, including five works reaching over £5m.
This week’s sales follow stellar results for the Contemporary Curated sale in New York, which achieved $36.8 million – the highest ever total for the Sotheby’s series.
More details here.
See also:
Roy Lichtenstein Panel Composition Up For Auction at Sotheby’s
Jenny Saville’s ‘Juncture’ Leads Works by Pioneering Female Artists in Sotheby’s Auction
Sotheby’s offers groundbreaking Artificial Intelligence artwork at auction for the first time