Yves Klein leads contemporary art auctions in London

Yves Klein: Le Rose du bleu (RE 22)
Sold for £23,561,250 / $36,779,111 at Christie’s

Yves Klein leads contemporary art auctions in London Yves Klein’s ‘Le Rose du bleu (RE 22)’ sold for £23,5 million at Christie’s, setting a new world auction record for the artist. Strong prices for works by Gerhard Richter, Alexander Calder and Jean-Michel Basquiat.]]>

June 28th, 2012, source: Christie’s / Sotheby’s

The Klein -which is now the most expensive work by a French post-war artist ever sold- was the star at Christie’s 132,8 million Post-War and Contemporary Art Evening Auction. Another work by Klein (“Rélief éponge bleu (RE 51)”) sold for £7,657,250 / $11,929,996.

Jean-Michel Basquiat’s “Untitled” (1981) realized £12,921,250 / $20,170,071 setting a world auction record for the artist. Gerhard Richter’s “Struktur (2)” sold for £12,697,250 / $19,782,317, and Alexander Calder’s monumental “Rouge triomphant (Triumphant Red)” realized £6,201,250 / $9,661,548.

On Tuesday, Sotheby’s Contemporary Art Evening Auction realised a total of £69,307,050 / $108,028,899 / €86,675,518, against an estimate of £57-82m / $89-128m / €71-103m. The top lot of the evening was Jean-Michel Basquiat’s masterful “Warrior” of 1982, which was competed for by four bidders and realised £5,585,250 / $8,705,729 / €6,984,923. This work executed in 1982, the year in which Basquiat achieved his full artistic maturity, brings the urgency of his art from the street into the gallery.

Also at Sotheby’s, Glenn Brown’s monumental, three-metre-wide, oil on canvas “The Tragic Conversion of Salvador Dali (after John Martin)” sold for £5,193,250 / $8,094,719 / €6,494,688. Francis Bacon’s intensely dramatic “Study for Self-Portrait” of 1980 realised £5,193,250 / $8,094,719 / €6,494,688.

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