Sotheby's London landmark two-day auction of new works by Damien Hirst realizes £111.4 million The historic two-day Beautiful Inside My Head Forever sale concluded in London having realized the remarkable sum of £111,464,800 (US$200,752,179/€140,160,487)
Sales
Over the course of the two-day sale, five works were sold to benefit charities – two of which were offered in
the Evening Sale and the remaining three in the Day Sale.
They realised a combined total of £3,289,450.
• Lot 30, Beautiful Love Demelza Painting with Beautiful Butterflies, sold to benefit Demelza,
Hospice Care for Children realised £769,250 against an estimate of £400,000-600,000.
• Lot 8, Beautiful Love Survival Painting with Beautiful Butterflies, sold in aid of Survival
International, made £713,250 against an estimate of £400,000-600,000.
• Lot 109, Beautiful Love Strummerville Painting with Beautiful Butterflies, sold to benefit
Strummerville, realised £825,250 against an estimate of £400,000-600,000.
• Lot 209, Beautiful Love Kids Co Twenty-Five to Ten Painting with Beautiful Butterflies, sold for
£668,450 to benefit Kids Company (est. £400,000-600,000).
• Lot 203, Bill with Shark (oil painting based on a photograph by Jean Pigozzi, showing Bill Gates
looking at shark-in-formaldehyde sculpture by Hirst) sold for £313,250 (est. £200,000-
300,000) on behalf of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
New benchmarks set
• First ever auction dedicated to the work of a single living artist.
• The most novel and comprehensive marketing campaign ever undertaken by Sotheby’s London.
• The largest exhibition of works by Damien Hirst ever staged.
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• Tonight’s sale eclipsed the total for any previous auction dedicated to a single artist. Previous sales
dedicated to a single artist included:
- The Collection of Stanley J. Seeger at Sotheby’s in 1993: 88 works by Pablo Picasso were offered
and the sale realised $32/£21 million.
- The Man Ray Sale at Sotheby’s in 1995: 599 works were offered and the sale realised £4 million
($6.3 million).
• Record number of visitors to a pre-sale exhibition at Sotheby’s London: more than 21,000 people
attended the 11-day view, which makes it the best-attended pre-sale exhibition ever staged at our
London galleries, with over 4,500 people visiting on one day alone. (This also represents up to
nearly 9 times the average number of visitors to a Contemporary Art auction exhibition at Sotheby’s
London.)
• The pre-sale exhibition lasted 11 days: the longest pre-sale view at Sotheby’s London.
• For the first time at Sotheby’s London, the pre-sale exhibition was open to the public until midnight
on one of the viewing days (on Saturday, September 13th).
• Record number of over-the-counter catalogues sales: almost 1,300 catalogues were purchased by
visitors attending the exhibition (£50 per catalogue).
• All 13 galleries at Sotheby’s New Bond Street premises were given over to the contents of a single
sale and the work of one living artist – a first in Sotheby’s 264 year history.
• The auction salerooms were filled to capacity with every single ticket (almost 700) – seated and
standing – reserved.
• Sotheby’s brought a group of 14 Damien Hirst works in the sale to New Delhi, India, representing
the first-ever exhibition of the artist’s work in India.
Notes to editor
