Jean-Michel Basquiat
Untitled (Pecho/Oreja)
Estimate: £7-9 million
Bacon, Richter, Basquiat to highlight Sotheby’s auction Sotheby’s auction of contemporary art in London comprises 56 lots and is estimated to realise in excess of £63 million. Sotheby’s London – Tuesday, February 12th, 2013.]]>
January 11, 2013, source: Sotheby’s
The sale features a select offering of outstanding masterworks by leading Post-War and Contemporary artists, including Francis Bacon, Gerhard Richter, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Alexander Calder, Mark Rothko and Lucio Fontana, among others.
Headlining this season’s Contemporary Art Auction is “Three Studies for a Self-Portrait” by Francis Bacon (1909–1992), which comes to market from a distinguished European collector. Self-portraiture has played a role of unparalleled importance in the work of Francis Bacon. This oil on canvas triptych, was executed in the artist’s eighth decade at the age of 71 and belongs to a corpus of 11 triptych self-portraits in Bacon’s standard 14 by 12 inch format. Painted in 1980, the work is estimated at £10-15 million.
Following the recent record set by Sotheby’s London for the work of any living artist with the sale of an abstract painting by Gerhard Richter in October last year, Sotheby’s will offer for sale another magnificent work by the artist, “Abstraktes Bild (769-1)”. The painting is one of the most vivid, superlative and optically commanding works from Richter’s astounding opus of abstraction. The exquisite painting is estimated at £7.5-9.5 million. From a distinguished private collection, Gerhard Richter’s oil on canvas “Wolke (Cloud)”, dated 1976 and numbered 413 on the reverse, is a sublime example of the artist’s output of photorealist works. The present work stands among the most beautiful and stunning of Richter’s career and is estimated at £7-9 million.
“Untitled (Pecho/Oreja)” (est. £7-9 million) is one of Jean-Michel Basquiat’s most immediate, arresting and accomplished works. Though executed between 1982 and 1983 when the artist was only 22 years old, it signals the very apex of Basquiat’s powers of artistic expression. The words Pecho (Chest) and Oreja (Ear) directly allude to Basquiat’s fascination with anatomy which was sparked by a gift given to him by his mother following a childhood accident.
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