Picasso, Warhol among the stars of Sotheby’s spring auctions
By Javier Otazu
New York, May 6 (EFE).- Sotheby’s New York presented on Friday an array of artworks that the firms expects to fetch $1 billion in all when they are auctioned later this month, down slightly from last year’s record of $1.3 billion.
Highlights include Picasso’s 1932 portrait of Marie-Therese Walter, Femme nue couchee, which has a sale estimate upwards of $60 million; a larger-than-life Self-Portrait by Andy Warhol (estimate $15 million-$20 million); and works of Monet, Francis Bacon, and Cezanne.
“The market is robust,” Sotheby’s worldwide head of sales for Global Fine Art, Brooke Lampley, tells Efe. “It’s a good time to sell and there are many interested buyers.”
Sotheby’s has structured the May 2022 edition of the New York Sales in three broad categories: Modern, Contemporary, and Now.
The wares include 30 works from the Macklowe Collection, amassed over decades by real estate mogul Harry Macklowe and wife Linda Burg before being put on sale by court order as a consequence of the couple’s acrimonious divorce.
Among the featured pieces from the Macklowe Collection are works by Gerhard Richter, Mark Rothko, and Willem de Kooning.
One of Monet’s paintings of Venice, Le Grand Canal et Santa Maria della Salute, is expected to command up to $50 million, while the Bacon – Study of Red Pope 1962, 2nd Version 1971 – carries an auction estimate in the range of $40 million to $60 million.
Buyers will also have the chance to bid on sculptures by Picasso, Giacometti, Fernando Botero, and Henry Moore.
Besides the Self-Portrait, Andy Warhol will be represented by a 1963 silkscreen of Elvis Pressley, projected to sell for as much as $25 million.
Another ironic reflection on US popular culture comes in the form of Ed Ruscha’s Cold Beer Beautiful Girls, inspired by the words on a billboard he glimpsed while driving. EFE fjo/dr
