NEW YORK (Associated Press) — It should all start with the biggest fanfare: At the start of this year’s New York spring auctions on Monday (May 9), the portrait could become the most expensive work of art to be auctioned from the 20th century.
The 1964 painting “Shot Sage Blue Marilyn” — a portrait of actress Marilyn Monroe (1926-1962) by American artist Andy Warhol (1928-1987) — could fetch about $200 million, according to auction house Christie’s.
pop art icon
The work, created on the basis of a portrait, which shows the actress against a blue-turquoise background with yellow hair, red lips and turquoise eye shadow, is no less than “one of the greatest paintings ever” and “says Alex Rutter, responsible for the art of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries at Christie’s: “The Most Important Picture of the Twentieth Century to Be Auctioned in This Generation.” “Andy Warhol’s Marilyn is the ultimate pinnacle of American pop music and the promise of the American Dream, encompassing optimism, fragility, fame and iconography all at once.”
Proceeds will be donated
Warhol’s painting will likely set the record for Leonardo da Vinci’s “Salvator Mundi,” which dates back to the early 16th century and sold at auction in 2017 for $450.3 million, making it the most expensive work of art ever sold at auction. beats. But if it does make around $200 million, it could surpass Pablo Picasso’s The Women of Algiers, which sold for $179.4 million in 2015 and become the most expensive 20th century artwork ever offered at auction. The Thomas and Doris Amann Foundation in Zurich, which presented this and many other works at the spring auction, intends to use all proceeds from the auction for charitable purposes.
The highest possible record should be just the beginning. For about two weeks, the top dogs at Christie’s and Sotheby’s, but also smaller auction houses, wanted to break more records.
Christie’s is already gearing up for “the best season yet” and Sotheby’s is offering, among other things, Part Two of the Macklowe Collection, the first of which set records at auctions last fall – with works by Gerhard Richter, Mark among others Rothko and Sigmar Polk and Willem de Kooning. In addition, Sotheby’s has high hopes for Spanish artist Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) painting Femme nue couchée (1932), which could fetch more than $60 million, and French painter Claude Monet (1840-1926), who is estimated to have 50 million dollars.
The art market continues to boom
“We’re looking forward to another multi-billion dollar sales week,” Brooke Lampley, Principal at Sotheby’s, said in a preview of the show. “It will be one of the largest auction chains in our history.” The demand from sellers and buyers is very high. The average estimate of artwork on display is $6.2 million, with 21 works valued at more than $10 million. In last fall’s auctions, the auction house hit a record $1.3 billion—and they hope they can beat it this time. Preliminary estimates are the highest since 2015. “This is a true sign of the continuing and growing confidence in the art market to emerge from the pandemic.”