The scene at Sotheby's contemporary evening sale.
Sotheby’s evening Contemporary Art sale on June 29 brought in £108,803,550 the highest total ever for such a sale in London. Francis Bacon’s Crouching Nude from 1961 was the top selling lot. It made £8,329,250.
The Duerckheim Collection of contemporary German art, which comprised the first 34 lots, realised £60,401,650. Almost every lot here was contested by multiple bidders. New artist records were established for Blinky Palermo, Sigmar Polke, Eugen Schönebeck, Markus Lüpertz and Georg Baselitz.
Andy Warhol’s electric pink acrylic and silkscreen ink on canvas of Blondie’s lead singer Debbie Harry – the only major painting of renowned lead singer of the new wave and punk rock band ever to come to auction – sold for £3,737,250/ against an estimate of £3.5-5.5 million. An early Jean-Michel Basquiat painting, Untitled, made £5,417,250 to become the second highest priced lot.
Headlining the Duerckheim collection were a number of paintings by Sigmar Polke. His record was broken three times in quick succession. Dschungel, the largest of the Rasterbilder (dot paintings) from the 1960s ever to appear for public sale, made £5,753,250. A new record was set for Georg Baselitz when Spekulatius from the celebrated ‘Hero’ series sold for £3,233,250. Baselitz’s Grosse Nacht made £2,393,250. There was exceptional prices for Gerhard Richter whose 1024 Farben from 1974 more than doubled its pre-sale high estimate to make £4,297,250. Buyers from 14 countries took part in an auction which was 89.8% sold by lot and 93.9% by value. No less than 29 works sold for over £1 million, and 45 lots made over $1 million.
See antiquesandartireland.com posts for April 26 and June 7.