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  • A RECORD BREAKING NIGHT FOR BRITISH ART

    Frank Auerbach’s Head of Gerda Boehm sold for £3.8m

    Frank Auerbach’s Head of Gerda Boehm sold for £3.8m

    With participants from 46 countries there were records for 11 British artists at Part 1 of the sale of the David Bowie Collection at Sotheby’s.  The first session, a white glove sale in which every lot found a buyer in a record breaking night for British art,  doubled the high estimate and totalled  £24.3 million.

    There were artists records for Frank Auerbach, Peter Lanyon, Bernard Leach, Winifred Nicholson, Wilhelmina Barns-Graham, Henry Lamb, Harold Gilman, Ivon Hitchens, Kenneth Armitage, Bryan Wynter, Patrick Caulfield and Meret Oppenheim.  Over the course of the 10-day pre-sale exhibition in London, more than 37,000 people came to Sotheby’s to view the collection, making for the best attended pre-sale exhibition London has ever witnessed.  The top lot of the evening was Air Power 1984 by Jean Michel Basquiat which made £7.1 million.

    Bowie famously said of the Frank Auerbach painting illustrated left: “My God, yeah!  I want to sound like that looks”. 

    Sleep Sound by Jack B. Yeats sold for £233,000 over a top estimate of £180,000 and Image of James Joyce by Louis le Brocquy sold for £68,750 over a top estimate of £15,000.

    Part I: Modern and Contemporary Art, Evening Auction: £24.3m

    Part II: Modern and Contemporary Art, Day Sale: £7.2m

    Part III: Design: Ettore Sottsass and the Memphis Group: £1.4m

     

    “David Bowie’s personal art collection captured the imagination of the tens of thousands who visited our exhibitions and the thousands who took part in the sales. Sotheby’s is truly honoured to have had the opportunity to share this collection with the world and, in doing so, offer a fresh insight into the creative mind of one of the greatest cultural figures of our time.”– Oliver Barker, Chairman, Sotheby’s Europe

    Image of James Joyce by Louis le Brocquy sold for £68,750.

    Image of James Joyce by Louis le Brocquy sold for £68,750.

    Sleep Sound by Jack B. Yeats sold for £233,000.

    Sleep Sound by Jack B. Yeats sold for £233,000.

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