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  • Posts Tagged ‘David Hockey’

    HOCKNEY’S CALIFORNIA (1965) TO MAKE A BIG SPLASH AT CHRISTIE’S

    Thursday, January 25th, 2024
    David Hockney – California (1965). UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR £18.7 MILLION

    David Hockney’s California (1965) will be a highlight of Christie’s 20th / 21st Century evening sale in London on March 7. One of his first pool paintings and the first to include figures it has been Held in the same European private collection since 1968. It stands amonghis first great swimming pool paintings and has been unseen in public for more than 40 years. Christie’s estimate it in the region of £16 million.

    California is the largest and finest in the extraordinary group of early pool paintings created in London after Hockney’s first visit to Los Angeles in 1964. The art historians Paul Melia and Ulrich Luckhardt have noted that ‘Hockney considers it to be one of his most important pool paintings’. The paintings that followed have come to be synonymous with his oeuvre, combining dazzling technical virtuosity with strains of fantasy, desire and longing. 

    Hockney incorporated a swimming pool in the 1964 painting California Art Collector but it was not until he returned to London for Christmas that year that he made his first full pool painting: a figureless composition entitled Picture of a Hollywood Swimming Pool (1964). California followed shortly afterwards, along with the closely related painting Two Boys in a Pool, Hollywood (1965). California anticipates many of the achievements that followed in Hockney’s subsequent masterpieces. Its kaleidoscopic depiction of moving water lays the foundations for the techniques explored in A Bigger Splash (1967, Tate, London) and Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures) (1972). Its naked figures foreshadow the sensuous male nudes of Sunbather (1966, Museum Ludwig, Cologne) and Peter Getting Out of Nick’s Pool (1966, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool). So essential did Hockney consider the painting to his oeuvre that, when unable to include it in his 1988 retrospective at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, he made his own copy, now held in the museum’s permanent collection. 

    HOCKNEY DOUBLE PORTRAIT SELLS FOR £37.6 MILLION AT CHRISTIE’S

    Wednesday, March 6th, 2019

    David Hockney – Henry Geldzahler and Christopher Scott.

    David Hockney’s double portrait of Henry Geldzahler and Christopher Scott sold for £37,661.250 at Christie’s in London tonight.  The portrait features Hockney’s close friend Henry Geldzahler, legendary curator, critic and king of the New York art world, and his then boyfriend Christopher Scott.  David Hockney became the world’s most expensive living artist last November when his Portrait of an Artist (Pool with two figures) sold for $90.3 million at Christie’s in New York. The 1969 double portrait of Geldzahler and Scott is one of seven double portraits, including the pool with two figures.  The acrylic on canvas captures Geldzahler at a time when he was organising the most revolutionary exhibition of his career, New York Painting and Sculpture: 1940-1970  at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

    There was world auction records for Jordan Casteel  whose Patrick and Omari from 2015 made £299,250; for Jonathan Yeo, whose 2013 painting Claire’s Room (Grayson Perry) made  £125,000; and for Barry Flanagan, whose  Nijinski Hare  was acquired for £1,451,250.

    The Post War and Contemporary Art evening sale totalled £79,282,000 and was 93% sold by lot and 94% by value.

    A CONTEMPORARY ART SALE SET TO BE MOST VALUABLE EVER IN EUROPE

    Friday, June 26th, 2015

    The Contemporary art evening auction at Sotheby’s on July 1 is set to be the most valuable sale of its kind ever staged in Europe.  The sale features masterpieces by the greatest names in contemporary art including Francis Bacon, Andy Warhol, Lucien Freud, Gerhard Richter and David Hockney.  The pre-sale estimate if £143.2-204.6 million.

    Sotheby’s announced today that the Impressionist and Modern art sales series at Sotheby’s in London this week achieved a combined total of £207.8 million, an increase of almost 40%  on last years equivalent sales. There was a 10% increase in participation and global reach went up by almost 20%. Here are some of the upcoming contemporary lots.

    UPDATE:  The auction realised £130,376,500.

    David Hockney ARRANGED FELLED TREES Estimate: £1,500,000 — 2,000,000

    David Hockney
    ARRANGED FELLED TREES
    Estimate: £1,500,000 — 2,000,000  UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR £3.4 MILLION

    Gerhard Richter A B, BRICK TOWER signed, dated 1987  (£12-16 million)

    Gerhard Richter
    A B, BRICK TOWER
    signed, dated 1987 (£12-16 million) UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR £14,149,000