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CHRISTIE’S FRIEZE WEEK POST-WAR AND CONTEMPORARY ART EVENING AUCTION 4 OCTOBER 2019

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CHRISTIE’S FRIEZE WEEK POST-WAR AND CONTEMPORARY ART EVENING AUCTION 4 OCTOBER 2019

London – Christie’s Frieze Week Post-War and Contemporary Art Evening Auction will take place on 4 October 2019 and will be followed by our annual sale dedicated to Italian artists, Thinking Italian. The Post-War and Contemporary Art Evening Auction showcases artists who pioneered new directions for the medium of paint ranging from Sigmar Polke’s dotted raster technique to Gerhard Richter’s ‘Abstraktes Bild’ series and from Joan Mitchell to Kazuo Shiraga. The auction will be led by Jean-Michel Basquiat’s vivid Four Big (1982, estimate: £7,500,000-9,500,000, illustrated above, right), a large-scale painting structured like a devotional triptych. Held in the same private collection for the past five decades – and unseen in public since 1983, when it was the poster image for the group show Kunst Nach 45 at the Frankfurter Kunstverein – Alpenveilchen/Flowers (1967, estimate: £5,000,000-7,000,000, illustrated above left) is an exceptional large-scale example of Sigmar Polke’s Rasterbilder. A further highlight is Pierre Soulages’s Peinture 146 x 114 cm, 6 mars 1960 (1960, estimate: £4,000,000-6,000,000), which has also been held in the same collection for 50 years and was last seen in public in 1967. An additional focus of the auction is a group of four works by Gerhard Richter, highlighted by three paintings from ‘Art for Future, Selected Works from the UniCredit Group’.

Coinciding with a major survey exhibition at London’s Royal Academy of Arts, an early sculpture by Antony Gormley, Growth (1987, estimate: £500,000-700,000), will be offered alongside paintings by Thomas Bayrle, Tomoo Gokita, Loie Hollowell, Nathaniel Mary Quinn and Alfredo Volpi, who are all included in a Christie’s Evening Auction for the first time. Assembled during the second half of the 20th century, the Matthys-Colle Collection reveals the passion for international contemporary art shared by Dr Roger Matthys and his wife, Hilda Colle. A total of 41 works will be offered in a series of auctions across three sale rooms: 4 and 5 October in London, followed by Amsterdam on 25 and 26 November, and finally Paris on 4 and 5 December.

The Auction Exhibition will be on view in London from 27 September to 4 October 2019. The Frieze Week programme will be launched by an Evening Auction dedicated to The Jeremy Lancaster Collection on 1 October 2019. A chorus of vivid colour, radical form and brilliant innovation, the collection showcases some of the greatest achievements in post-war British painting, complemented by a stellar selection of European and American works. The Jeremy Lancaster Collectionwill be on view at Christie’s King Street from 25 September to 1 October 2019.

Cristian Albu, Co-Head, Post-War and Contemporary Art, Europe:

“Our Frieze Week marquee sale celebrates the trajectory of paint, as artists pushed the boundaries of what this traditional medium could convey. Kazuo Shiraga translated the violence of war to canvas while Gerhard Richter and Frank Bowling are interested in exploiting the plasticity of paint. Sigmar Polke’s Alpenveilchen/Flowers and Pierre Soulages’s Peinture 146 x 114 cm, 6 mars 1960 have both remained in private collections for 50 years so we are thrilled to offer works with distinguished provenance that is fresh to market. The incredible transformation of painting during the 20th and 21st centuries continues with Four Big, from 1982, a defining moment in the career of Jean-Michel Basquiat, and pieces by contemporary painters including Nicolas Party and Loie Hollowell. Belgium’s esteemed Matthys-Colle Collection and ‘Art for Future, Selected Works from the UniCredit Group’ act as pillars for both the Evening and Day Auctions, underpinning the quality and pedigree of the 48 works we are presenting in the Evening Auction.”

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