Sale Totals
Combined Total: £97.1 million / $107.9 million, estimate £80.8-104.5 mil / $89-114.5 million – up 20% on last October (in USD)
- The Now: £11.4m / $12.6m (est. £8.1-10.8m), 100% sold
- Contemporary Evening: £85.7m / $95.2m, 97% sold
Six Records
- Frank Auerbach: £5.6m / $6.3m (est. £3-4m)
- Caroline Walker: £529,200 / $587,677 (est. £60,000-80,000)
- Charline von Heyl: £478,800 / $531,707 (est. £180,000-250,000)
- Julien Nguyen*: £453,600 / $503,723 (est. £40,000-60,000)
- Kiki Kogelnik*: £207,900 / $230,873 (est. £70,000-100,000)
- Louise Giovanelli: £81,900 / $90,950 (est. £30,000-40,000)
*evening auction debuts
Bidding Activity
- Proportion of registrants from the UK, US and EU is identical to this time last year
- Deep bidding on: Julien Nguyen (14 bids); Caroline Walker (13 bids); Flora Yukhnovich (8 bids); Nina Chanel Abney, Lucian Freud & Cecily Brown (6 bids); Louise Giovanelli (5 bids)
Top Prices of the Night
Francis Bacon, Three Studies for Portrait of Henrietta Moraes, 1963
- Price realised (£24.3m / US$27m) represents the highest achieved at auction this Frieze season; also the highest value work sold in a Frieze auction in the last ten years (since the sale of Richter’s Abstraktes Bild for £21.3m / US$34.3m in 2012).
- An early small-format triptych (Bacon’s second); considered among his best: “Bacon’s execution [in this work] has a power, skill and confidence that he scarcely ever surpassed in this format.” (Martin Harrison, editor of the Francis Bacon Catalogue Raisonné).
- Consigned by the William S. Paley Foundation, its sale will support various charitable organizations, including The Paley Museum, the Greenpark Foundation, and a new endowment at MoMA to support its ambitious goals in digital media and technology and to provide for new acquisitions.
Further works will be sold at Sotheby’s to benefit charitable causes tomorrow, see below.
Gerhard Richter, 192 Farben, 1966
- First ever abstract work, sold for £18.3m / $20.3m – an auction record for a Colour Chart painting (est. £13-18m). Works from this series are rare to auction with only four works having ever appeared before.
- Until now, 192 Farben resided in the collection of Elisabeth and Gerhard Sohst who loaned this painting to the Hamburger Kunsthalle in the 1990s.
Classic Post-War British Names
Portraying his most famed sitter, Frank Auerbach’s Head of J.Y.M sold for a record £5.6m / $6.3m (est. £3-4 million), less than six months since the artist’s record was broken in these rooms in June – £4.5m / $5m for Head of Gerda Boehm formerly in the David Bowie Collection
In its auction debut, Bridget Riley’s 1994 Summer Shades was pursued by four bidders taking the final price to £1.1m / $1.2m (est. £600,000-800,000)
Lucian Freud’s And the Bridegroom (1st Version), the first and unfinished version of one of his most celebrated paintings (And the Bridegroom) surpassed its high estimate to bring £1.9m / $2.1m (est. £700,000-1,000,000) after being pursued by seven bidders
Demand for Works by Women Artists Continues:
Almost every female artist across both sales sold above their high estimates (8/10 in Now and 100% of them in CTP evening). Beyond those listed above, further highlights include:
Caroline Walker saw her record broken twice today. Tonight, her 2015 canvas, Indoor Outdoor sold for £529,200 / $587,677 (est. £60,000-80,000) – eclipsing the record set in London just hours earlier. The top five prices for Walker at auction have been achieved in the past year
Flora Yukhnovich’s Nobody Puts Baby in the Corner sold for £1.6m / $1.8m, after being pursued by nine bidders in the saleroom, online and including via a Sotheby’s representative in Hong Kong (est. £500,000-700,000)
Jadé Fadojutimi’s The Misguided Thrill of Frills sold for an above estimate £554,400 / $615,661 (est. £300,000-400,000)
Opening tonight’s Contemporary evening sale, seven bidders vied for Cecily Brown’s Beautiful Not Realistic bringing the final price to an above estimate £1.5m / $1.7m (est. £600,000-800,000)
Pursued by five bidders, Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity-Nets (QOTP) from the collection of Joel and Sherry Mallin achieved £3.4m / $3.8m (est. £1.8-2.5m). The Kusama was one of 10 works sold this evening from the Mallin Collection which together realised an above estimate total of £12.4m
Fusing European abstraction with a Pop Art sensibility (reflecting her relocation from Austria to New York two years prior), Kiki Kogelnik’s Siempre Por Tio achieved £207,900 / $230,873 (est. £70,000-100,000). Tonight marked just the second time a work by Kogelnik has appeared at auction in 15 years, and her debut evening sale appearance.
The action continues tomorrow with Sotheby’s Contemporary Day Sale, which will include 22 works donated by artists sold to benefit the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London. Proceeds will help support the future of the ICA as a space for the next generation of artists. The sale will begin at 1PM.
