The scene at Sotheby’s tonight.
Gerhard Richter’s Wand (Wall) was the top lot at Sotheby’s Contemporary Art evening sale today. It made £17.4 million in a sale which brought in £87.9 million and attracted bidders from 40 countries. Richter had kept the work in his own collection for 15 years and it was the third highest price for one of his paintings. Cy Twombly’s Untitled (Rome), the second largest of his works, sold for £12.2 million after a prolonged bidding battle, significantly over the estimate of £5-7 million. This is an auction record for the artist.
CY TWOMBLY (1928 – 2011)
UNTITLED (ROME) Sold for a record £12,178,500
Andy Warhol’s red canvas Mao (1973) made £7.6 million. This was almost 20 times what it made when last at auction in 2000 when it sold for £421,000. Lucian Freud’s Head on a Green Sofa (1960-61) sold for £2.9 million and a rediscovered work by Frank Auerbach, Morning – Mornington Place, sold for £1.8 million. Tenor from 1985 by Jean Michel Basquiat made £4,338,500 and Rosso Plastica by Alberto Burri sold for £3,666,500.
German works brought strong prices: Sigmar Polke’s Rokoko made £2,546,500; Martin Kpppenberger’s Egg Woman made £1,818,500 and Thomas Struth’s Self Portrait sold for £482,500.
Here is a video from Sotheby’s on Richter’s Wand.