Klimt’s Last Great Portrait Sets New Auction Record
While addressing the demand for emerging artists and the great masters of the 20th century, The Buy Now Auction, showcases the persisting veneration of Portraiture
A head of the evening's star lot going under the hammer and setting a new European record for an artwork, the London summer sales opened with 168开奖官方开奖网站查询:The Now Evening Auction, offering both established collectors and new audiences the opportunity to secure works by the art stars of the present and future. Among them, 168开奖官方开奖网站查询:Adrian Ghenie, 168开奖官方开奖网站查询:Mark Bradford and Caroline Walker, whose evocative and serene 168开奖官方开奖网站查询:Red Sky Morning found a new buyer at £457,200.
Addressing the outstanding demand for young and emerging artists from the figurative to the abstract, the sale saw auction records for 168开奖官方开奖网站查询:Arthur Jafa and 168开奖官方开奖网站查询:Michel Majerus, in an auction that goes from 🍷strength to strength.
Artist
Michel Majerus
Following the Now sale, 168开奖官方开奖网站查询:The Moder⭕n and Contemporary Evening Auction opened to a crowded sale room, abuzz with anticipation and assembled under the watchful eye of Gustav Klimt’s 168开奖官方开奖网站查询:Dame mit Fächer (Lady with a Fan). App�𓆉�earing on the market for the first time in thirty years, the atmosphere reflected the rarity of the occasion.
Watch Gustav Klimt's Dame mit Fächer (Lady with a Fan) set a new auction record of £85.3 million
Found on the easel in his studio at the time of his death, the captivating depiction of a nude figure reveals Klimt exploring a new approach to colour and form, resulting in a masterpiece by an artist at the height of his powers. After a ten-minute bidding battle between four clients on the ꦑp𝓀hones and in the room, the painting soared to £85.3 million, setting a new auction record for a work of art in Europe, and also for Gustav Klimt. The result is also the second highest price for any portrait ever sold at auction.
Against the backdrop of a city-wide celebration of portraiture, heralded by the reopening of the National Portrait Gallery, the sale included a dedicated sequence of works surveying this genre through the ages, and placing the portrait centre stage. 168开奖官方开奖网站查询:Face to Face presented a journey through more than 100 years of art history, celeb🐠rating not only the great masters of the 20th Century, but equally the innovators of the present day.
Tom Eddison, Senior Director of contemporary art, explains: “While the human image has been democratised in our age of iPhones and selfies, the tradition of portraiture runs deep and across many centuries”. Works by Lucian Freud, Kerry James Marshall and 168开奖官方开奖网站查询:Leonor Fini displayed the breadth of creative dynamism in a discipline that has lꩲong captivated artists, from Rembrandt to Banksy.
Freud's quiet and contemplative study of Penny Cuthbertson, 168开奖官方开奖网站查询:Night Interior, sold for £9.6 million in its auction debut, whilst Jenny Saville's 168开奖官方开奖网站查询:Shadow Study reached £3.4 million. Previously held in the collections of two of the great art dealers of the 20th century, Aimé Maeght and Jan Krugier, Alberto Giacometti’s spirited bust of his brother Diego, 168开奖官方开奖网站查询:Buste de Diego au col roulé, sold for £5.5 million, proving sculpture still packs a punch when offe✃red at auction.
Other noteworthy results of the evening included Cy Twombly's 168开奖官方开奖网站查询:Untitled from the artist’s revered Blackboard series. The deeply expressive and energetic 1971 canvas, which marks a departure from the customary black and white – here rendering his iconic loops in umber and ✤grey – hammered down for £8.9 million. Many comparable paintings are housed in renowned museum collections such as The Museum of Contemporꩲary Art in Los Angeles and The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, demonstrating the calibre of works on offer in the sale.
Elsewhere, René Magritte’s Le savoir achieved £4.1 million, and Frank Auerbach's Mornington Crescent, part of Britain's Visionaries: Masterpieces from a Distinguished Pr💃ivate Collection, rose to £5.6 million after a lively bidding battle on the phones. The three works by Auerbach surpassed their pre-sale estimates, with 168开奖官方开奖网站查询:E.O.W. on her Blue Eiderdown VII selling for £4.5m and 168开奖官方开奖网站查询:J.Y.M. Seated II achieving £1.1m.
The London evening sales reached a combined total of £199 million/$252.9 million. The sale series continues on Wednesday 28 June with the 168开奖官方开奖网站查询:Modern and Contemporary Day Auction at 10.30am GMT.
