Francis Bacon (1909-1992)
Portrait of George Dyer Talking, 1966
78 x 58in. (198.2 x 147.3cm.)
Gerhard Richter (born 1932)
Wand (Wall), 1994
240 x 240 cm
Bacon, Richter highlight art auctions in London On February 2014, Christie’s will auction ‘Portrait of George Dyer Talking’ (1966), a masterpiece by Francis Bacon estimated in the region of £30 million. Sotheby’s will offer Gerhard Richter’s ‘Wand (Wall)’ (1994), estimated in excess of £15 million.]]>
January 19, 2014, source: Christie’s / Sotheby’s
Francis Bacon: Portrait of George Dyer Talking
Christie’s will offer a celebrated portrait by Francis Bacon at the Post-War and Contemporary Art Evening Auction on 13 February 2014. “Portrait of George Dyer Talking” was executed in 1966, at the artist’s creative peak, and depicts George Dyer, his lover, muse and arguably his greatest influence. A powerful and poignant portrait it has been widely celebrated since it was first shown in Paris in the year of its creation, and was also exhibited at the artist’s legendary first museum Retrospective at the Grand Palais in Paris in 1971. The most significant large-scale portrait of George Dyer to be presented at auction in more than a decade, it is being offered from a private collection and is expected to realize in the region of £30 million.
“Portrait of George Dyer Talking” 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”.
Gerhard Richter: Wand (Wall)
Sotheby’s flagship Contemporary Art Evening Sale in London in February will be led by an exceptional abstract painting by Gerhard Richter. Estimated to realise in excess of £15 million ($25m), “Wand (Wall)” was held by Richter to be a work of such importance that he chose to keep it in his personal collection for over fifteen years, singling it out as a keynote work for many important museum exhibitions. Never before seen at auction, “Wand (Wall)” ranks among the greatest works by Richter ever to come to the market. While echoing the work of the great Abstract Expressionist Rothko, Richter here reinterprets his illustrious predecessor’s broad bands of colour in his own very distinctive visual idiom.
During the sixteen years that the work was in Richter’s collection, the painting was exhibited, at his behest, in 21 major shows throughout the world including the monumental exhibition of his work “Atlas” in Japan in 2001 and the landmark Richter retrospective “Forty Years of Painting” at the Museum of Modern Art, New York.
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