Last sold at auction in in 1993 for £353,000 Francis Bacon’s seminal self-portrait from 1977 made £14.7 million.
The £123.5 million brought in tonight was the highest ever total for a Sotheby’s sale of Contemporary Art in Europe. Gerhard Richter and Francis Bacon, dominated the evening, with Richter’s vibrant Abstraktes Bild from 1986 selling for £30.4 million, establishing a new record for any living European artist. It is one of his largest abstract paintings and one of his favourite works.
Gerhard Richter’s Abstraktes Bild sold for £30.4 million.
A powerful self-portrait diptych by Francis Bacon made £14.7 million, more than 41 times the price it achieved when last at auction, at Sotheby’s in 1993. The work is an extremely rare example from a series of profoundly introspective self-portraits Bacon conducted following the suicide of his lover George Dyer in 1971. A previously unseen masterpiece by Lucio Fontana from a Swedish private collection sold for £8.4 million, a landmark for any of his slash paintings.
Alex Branczik, Sotheby’s Head of Contemporary Art, London said: “The enormous global appetite for Contemporary masterpieces played out tonight as bidding shot up in leaps of £2 million for Richter’s landmark abstract. It is emblematic of the depth of the market that new benchmarks were set not only for rising star Jonas Wood, but also for the greats: Richter, Fontana, Bacon. This evening’s record-breaking sale sets the scene for a stellar season of Contemporary art at Sotheby’s”.
UPDATE: The combined total of the evening and day sales was £140.4 million.