Contemporary art auctions in London – February 2013

Peter Doig
The Architect’s Home in the Ravine
Sold for £7,657,250 ($11,975,939) at Christie’s

Jean-Michel Basquiat
Untitled (Pecho/Oreja)
£6,817,250 / $10,666,951 /€7,913,462 at Sotheby’s

Contemporary art auctions in London – February 2013 Christie’s and Sotheby’s sales of contemporary art in London totalled more than £155 million. Strong prices were achieved for works by Francis Bacon, Gerhard Richter, Jean-Michel Basquiat and Peter Doig.]]>

February 14, 2013, source: Christie’s / Sotheby’s

Sotheby’s auction brought the strong total of £74,364,200/ $116,357,664/ €86,321,943, well within pre-sale expectations (estimate: £61.2-84.5 million). The top lot was Francis Bacon’s 1980 triptych “Three Studies for a Self-Portrait”, which sold for £13,761,250 / $21,532,228 / €15,974,055 against an estimate of £10-15 million (the work sold for £3,6 million in 2006). The work was acquired by a German collector, Jürgen Hall, who will generously loan the work to a major international institution.

Also at Sotheby’s, two works by Gerhard Richter achieved strong prices: “Abstraktes Bild (769-1)”, 1992, sold for £8,161,250/ $12,769,908/ €9,473,577 (est. £7.5-9.5 million) and the photorealist “Wolke (Cloud)”, 1976, sold for £7,601,250/ $11,893,676/ €8,823,529 (est. £7-9 million). “Untitled (Pecho/Oreja)” by Jean-Michel Basquiat brought £6,817,250 / $10,666,951 /€7,913,462 against pre-sale estimates of £7-9 million. The work was previously owned by the band U2.

Christie’s auction totalled £81,668,850, and it was led by Jean-Michel Basquiat‘s “Museum Security (Broadway Meltdown)”, which realized £9,337,250 ($14,603,459). In this work, “Basquiat’s breathless vocabulary is ushered onto the canvas with a force that combines both urgency and political perceptiveness“, according to the catalogue.

Also at Christie’s, Peter Doig‘s masterpiece “The Architect’s Home in the Ravine” sold for £7,657,250 ($11,975,939), a new world record for the artist. Gerhard Richter‘s beautiful “Abstraktes Bild” achieved £8,441,250 ($13,202,115), and David Hockney‘s “Great Pyramid at Giza with Broken Head from Thebes” sold for £3,513,250 ($5,494,723).

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