Andy Warhol: Silver Car Crash [Double Disaster]
105 x 164 1/8 in., 1963
estimate in excess of $60 million
Image Courtesy Thomas Ammann Fine Art AG, Zurich
Andy Warhol: Green Car Crash (Green Burning Car I)
228.6 x 203.2 cm, 1962
Sold for $71.7 million in 2007
Sotheby’s to auction Warhol’s ‘Silver Car Crash’ On 13 November 2013 Sotheby’s will present ‘Silver Car Crash (Double Disaster)’ by Andy Warhol, an important painting estimated to achieve in excess of $60 million.]]>
October 5, 2013, source: Sotheby’s
At over 8 ft. by 13 ft., the monumental painting is one of only four “Car Crash” works of this scale in the pivotal Death and Disaster series andthe only one remaining in private hands. The work, which boasts distinguished provenance including Gunter Sachs, Charles Saatchi, and the legendary Swiss dealer Thomas Ammann, has been in the same collection since 1988 and has been seen in public only once in the past 26 years.
The “Death and Disaster” series stands as arguably Warhol’s most significant artistic achievement.The series explored many of the key themes that defined his entire artistic career – the potential ofmass-media to transform anonymity to celebrity as well as a perceived indifference to death in themodern era – and is considered one of the most provocative, confrontational and brilliant projectsundertaken by any artist in the 1960s.
In this work, Warhol selects a subject matter considered particularlyradical at the time, capturing the immediate aftermath of a car crashing into a tree, with the silkscreenimpression bleakly dramatizing the deformed metal and twisted human body while thereflective silver paint creates a play of light and shadow. The impact of the repeated, cascadingimage on the left is heightened by the juxtaposition of the vast blank sea of silver on the right, addingto the overwhelming power of the work. The finality of the past meets the abstract permanentcontinuity of the present.
Tobias Meyer, Worldwide Head of Contemporary Art at Sotheby’s commented: “With ‘Silver CarCrash (Double Disaster)’ Warhol consciously created work of such scale and ambition that it takesits place alongside paintings such as Pablo Picasso’s ‘Guernica’ and Théodore Géricault’s ‘The Raft ofthe Medusa’ as one of the definitive masterpieces of history painting.”
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