MASTERPIECES BY BACON & RICHTER LEAD CHRISTIE'S LONDON SALES OF POST WAR & CONTEMPORARY ART IN FEB Christie’s Post-War & Contemporary Art Evening Sale on Wednesday, 6 February 2008 will offer an unrivalled selection of 55 works of art from both the European and American Post-War era
News-Antique.com - Jan 17,2008 - Post War & Contemporary Art Evening Sale
Christie’s London ~ Wednesday 6 February 2008 at 7:00pm
London – Christie’s Post-War & Contemporary Art Evening Sale on Wednesday, 6
February 2008 will offer an unrivalled selection of 55 works of art from both the European
and American Post-War era, together with major stars of the Contemporary world.
Featuring masterpieces from some of the most renowned names in 20th Century Art
including Francis Bacon, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Gerhard Richter, Lucio Fontana, Andy
Warhol, Cy Twombly and Richard Prince, the sale is estimated in the region of £70 million.
“We are incredibly excited to present an amazing selection of works, led by one of the greatest Bacon triptychs still in private hands. This tightly selected sale consists of works of the highest quality available by a range of
artists from the Post-War years to recent times, including some of the shining lights of the Chinese
contemporary scene. We hope that this sale will build upon our continued dominance of this market,” says
Pilar Ordovas, Head of Post War & Contemporary Art, Christie’s London.
Perhaps the most important triptych by Francis Bacon (1909-1992) ever to appear at
auction leads the sale. Appearing at auction for the first time and offered from a private
collection, Triptych 1974-77 is the last in the great series that Bacon painted in response to
the tragic death of his lover George Dyer in 1971 (estimate on request). One of the finest
and most mysterious of Bacon’s paintings from the 1970s, Triptych 1974-77 was painted
between May and June of 1974 and revisited in 1977. This great, strangely open, Baconian
landscape was the last work the artist made before a major retrospective of his work held at
the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in 1974. As the most recent and also one of
the most elaborate and ambitious of the artist’s paintings to be included in this exhibition, it
formed the culmination of this important survey of Bacon’s career from the late 1960s
onwards and was immediately recognised as both a major landmark and also perhaps a
turning point in Bacon’s career.
Painted in 1966, Zwei Liebespaare, is a
masterpiece by German artist Gerhard
Richter (b. 1932) painted at the height
of his involvement with Pop (estimate
in the region of £6 million / $12
million) (pictured right). Acquired from
the artist by the mother of the present
owner, the work has been on long-term
loan to the Städtische Galerie im
Lenbachhaus in Munich.
At Christie’s
recent auction of Post-War and
Contemporary Art in New York on 13 November 2007, Richter’s Düsenjäger (JetFighter), 1963,
sold for $11,241,000 / £5,430,435, setting a world record price for the artist at auction. Please
see separate press release for further information. Three further works from the artist include
Italienische Landschaft, 1966 (estimate: £1,000,000-1,500,000) and Abstraktes Bild, 1981
(estimate: £1,000,000-1,500,000) both offered from the collection of publisher Bernd F.
Lunkewitz and Abstraktes Bild, 1985 (estimate: £1,500,000-2,000,000).
