Sotheby’s Unveils £200M+ Frieze Week Exhibitions in London

Sotheby’s Frieze Week Auctions are presented by French couture house CELINE. 

A LOOK INSIDE THE EXHIBITION

London: Contemporary Evening Auction Highlights

Francis Bacon, Portrait of a Dwarf, 1975 (right)

Estimate: up to £9 million 

• Portrait of a Dwarf occupies a unique place in Bacon’s body of work: he retained the painting as his own and took the extraordinary step of exhibiting it as property of the artist in a series of exhibitions, most notably in his acclaimed 1977 Galerie Claude Bernard exhibition in Paris.
• Though originally part of a larger canvas, Bacon regarded it as a complete composition in its own right, signing the back twice to emphasise its personal and artistic significance.
• While the head resembles depictions of both Peter Beard and George Dyer, the torso recalls that of Lucian Freud as seen in the artist’s renowned photographic source images taken by John Deakin, and the lower body relates directly to Bacon’s full-body self-portraits. It also reveals a thread of influence running from Diego Velázquez, whom Bacon once described as “the most miraculous of painters”.

Francis Bacon, Study for Self-Portrait, 1980

Estimate: up to £6 million

• One of Bacon’s very final self-portraits, Study for Self-Portrait is a uniquely personal composition of uncharacteristic tenderness.
• Depicting himself in his younger years, he obscures his facial features with a soft, atmospheric blue haze and gives visible form to the memories of emotion from his youth.
• Describing the work, Bacon proclaimed: “This is my Impressionist period” – a nod to his fascination with other great masters who notably lived and worked in Paris, where this work was painted.

Auguste Rodin, Jean de Fiennes, vêtu, Grand Modèle & Pierre de Wiessant, vêtu, Grand Modèle, vêtu, Grand Modèle, both conceived in 1887 (left)

Both estimated at: £600,000-900,000

• Rodin’s Jean de Fiennes, vêtu, Grand Modèle and Pierre de Wiessant, vêtu, Grand Modèle, vêtu, portray in the original, monumental size the two most striking figures of the artist’s seminal, multi-figural composition The Burghers of Calais, a cast of which stands outside the Houses of Parliament, London.
• Rodin’s interpretation represented a daring departure from the mythic idealisation usually deployed for this type of public commission. Choosing to emphasise their humanity and capture their anguish, resig nation and internal conflict, Rodin broke centuries of precedent and paved the way for artists – including Bacon – over the course of the 20th century.

Jean-Michel Basquiat, Untitled (The Arm), 1982

Estimate: £4.5-6.5 million

• Created in 1982, the year Basquiat gained international recognition, during which he produced work for six solo exhibitions and exhibited alongside such heavyweights as Gerhard Richter, Joseph Beuys and Andy Warhol.

• Basquiat’s fixation on anatomy, and particularly on limbs, can be traced to his formative encounter with Gray’s Anatomy, the 19th-century medical compendium given to him by his mother during a childhood convalescence after a car accident.

• Appearing at auction for the first time, Untitled (The Arm) may be read as both an extension of the artist’s body and the literal instrument of his craft.

Andy Warhol, Four Pink Marilyns (Reversal Series), 1986

Estimate: £3-5 million

• In 1962, Warhol cemented Marilyn’s status as a cult icon with his elegiac portraits; executed more than 20 years later in 1986, Warhol’s Four Pink Marilyns (Reversal Series) is a compellingly haunting memorial to the Hollywood legend that underscores both the timeless endurance of Mariyn’s celebrity and the symbolic power of Warhol’s own artistic mythology.
• With Marilyn, Warhol discovered a memento mori to unite the obsessions driving his career: glamour, beauty, fame, and death. Here, Marilyn’s repeated likeness appears as a floodlit negative, saturated by luminous bubble-gum pink; the highlighting of shadows and plunging of mid-tones into darkness imparts a spectre of mortality.

 Lucio Fontana, Concetto spaziale, Attese

Estimate: £2-3 million

• Featuring fourteen rhythmic slashes – an exceptionally rare number and configuration – the work has a unique compositional harmony as the tagli seem to dance between the realms of painting and sculpture.
• The canvas is distinguished by its electric shade of blue, inspired by Yves Klein’s IKB pigment. In 1957, Fontana famously acquired one of Klein’s iconic monochrome paintings after seeing a series of them in an exhibition at the Apollinaire Gallery in Milan.
• Coming to market for the first time in over 20 years, the work was on extended loan to the Philadelphia Museum of Art between 2007 and 2009.

Yves Klein, Untitled Fire Colour Painting (FC 28)

Estimate: £1.8-2.5 million

• A masterpiece from Klein’s final and most experimental phase, created in the final year of his life. The work fuses Klein’s iconic International Klein Blue (IKB) pigment with the destructive and creative force of fire, achieving what he described as spiritual materialism.
• Created during a quasi-ritualistic performance at the Centre d’Essais du Gaz de France in Saint-Denis, where Klein – dressed formally in a waistcoat and bow tie – used an industrial blowtorch while an assistant controlled water jets to produce the organic, dripping effects fixed on the surface.
• Works from this rare series are held in major public collections, including MoMA, the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, and the Fondazione Prada.

New York: November Marquee Auctions

THE JAY AND CINDY PRITZKER COLLECTION

Vincent van Gogh, Romans Parisiens (Les Livres jaunes), 1888

Estimate in the region of $40m

• Romans Parisiens (Les Livres jaunes) is a painting of immense art historical significance. In 1888, it was submitted by Vincent’s brother Theo for inclusion in the seminal Salon des Indépendents exhibition – the very first occasion when his works were included in an official public exhibition, marking a breakthrough and cementing van Gogh’s place within the Parisian avant-garde.
• Today, alongside van Gogh’s Sunflower compositions, this painting is regarded among the artist’s finest still lifes. The largest still life by the artist to appear at auction since 1980, it is also the most important still life painting by the artist to come to auction in over a decade.
• Passed down through three generations of the van Gogh family, it last appeared at auction in 1988 and has since been exhibited at world-renowned institutions including the Musée d’Orsay, van Gogh Museum, and the Royal Academy.

Henri Matisse, Léda et le cygne, 1944-46

Estimate: $7-10 million

• The triptych Léda et le cygne stands as a rare jewel within Matisse’s oeuvre, and is considered one of the most inventive and singular achievements of his career.
• It is one of the last in a rare group of architectural commissions by the artist, alongside La Danse (1932–33) for the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia, and the stained glass and ceramic murals for the Chapelle de la Rosaire in Vence (1949–51).
• The work was commissioned in July 1943 for the Paris home of the Argentine diplomat Marcelo Fernández Anchorena and his wife, Hortensia.
• Soaring above six feet in height, the triptych depicts the ancient myth of Leda and the Swan, weaving themes of seduction, beauty, and violence.

Paul Gauguin, La Maison de Pen du, gardeuse de vache, Executed in summer 1889

Estimate: $60-8 million  

• Painted near Pont-Aven in Brittany, La Maison de Pen du, gardeuse de vache marks a pivotal moment in Gauguin’s artistic evolution, just as his signature style was developing into one of the most recognizable in modern art.
• Of the 22 Pont-Aven landscapes Gauguin painted around 1889, only four – including La Maison de Pen du, gardeuse de vache – remain in private hands. This is the finest to come to auction in four decades.