Francis Bacon (1909-1992)
Portrait of George Dyer Talking, 1966
78 x 58in. (198.2 x 147.3cm.)
Sold for £42,2 million ($70 million) at Christie’s
Gerhard Richter (born 1932)
Wand (Wall), 1994
240 x 240 cm
Sold for £17,4 million ($28,7 million) at Sotheby’s
Bacon’s portrait of George Dyer sells for $70 million Francis Bacon’s ‘Portrait of George Dyer Talking’ (1966) sold for £42,2 million ($70 million) at Christie’s London, February 2014. Sotheby’s auction was highlighted by Gerhard Richter’s ‘Wand (Wall)’ (1994), sold for £17.4 million ($28.7 million).]]>
February 15, 2014, source: Christie’s / Sotheby’s
Francis Bacon shines in Christie’s (again)
Three months after his “Three Studies of Lucian Freud” shocked the art world selling for a record $142,4 million, Francis Bacon was again the superstar at Christie’s Contemporary Art Auction, though this time in London. His excellent “Portrait of George Dyer Talking” (1966) sold for £42,194,500 ($70,042,870), the highest price of the week. The painting has been included in many of the most important exhibitions on the artist, and it was last seen at auction at Christie’s New York in 2000 when it sold for $6.6 million – a record price for the artist at the time. According to several sources, it was featured at the Foire Internationale d’Art Contemporain in 2009, with an asking price of “around $40 million”. A smaller painting by Bacon, “Study for a portrait” (1978), was sold for £2,65 million.
A strong and colorful “Abstraktes Bild” (1989) by Gerhard Richter achieved the second highest price of the auction, selling for £19,570,500 ($32,487,030). Another great price for a work by another living artist was the £14,082,500 ($23,376,950) paid for “Cracked Egg (Magenta)”, a stainless steel sculpture by Jeff Koons.
One of the biggest successes of the auction was Domenico Gnoli‘s “Black Hair” (1969), which sold for £7 million against a pre-sale estimate of £1,2-1,8 million.
Gerhard Richter breaks the wall at Sotheby’s
The previous day, Sotheby’s auction of contemporary art was highlighted by Gerhard Richter’s monumental “Wand (Wall)” (1994), which sold for £17.4 million / $28.7 million. Sotheby’s explained that “Wand” was exhibited, at Richter’s behest, in 21 major exhibitions throughout the world ,including the landmark Richter retrospective “Forty Years of Painting” at the Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Cy Twombly‘s powerful “Untitled (Rome)” (1964) set a new world auction record for the artist, selling significantly above estimate for £12.2 million ($20 million) (est. £5-7million). Andy Warhol’s “Mao” (1973) fetched £7.6 million ($12.5 million), almost 20 times the sum it sold for when last at auction (at Sotheby’s London June 2000 £421,500).
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Record-breaking triptych by Francis Bacon at Christie’s record-breaking sale (November 2013)
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