Franz Marc's painting The Foxes sells for a record price for the artist and Picasso sets a new record with a print. His previously much-discussed painting La fenêtre ouverte fell somewhat short of expectations at Christie's auctions yesterday.
The star of yesterday's auction day was Franz Marc. His 1913 painting The Foxes sold at Christie's for £42,654,500: more than three times the previous record price for the painter. The year 1913 was crucial for Marc's pictorial language. He began to experiment with futuristic elements, for example, and to work more abstractly. This phase lasted only very briefly, as Marc fell at Verdun in 1916 during the First World War.
Lucian Freud'sGirl with Closed Eyes (1986-87), a portrait of the artist Janey Longman, was offered for the first time at auction and, with the £15,174,500 achieved, is just above the estimate. Picasso's Le repas frugal from 1904 set a new world record for prints, selling for £6,014,500, well above the estimate of £2,500,000.
At the Art of the Surreal Evening Sale, the main player, Picasso's La fenêtre ouvert, was only moderately convincing. At £16,319,500, it just achieved the estimated range, which went up to £24,000,000. This auction also featured René Magritte and Joan Miró, among others.
Earlier, there was heavy buying in Shanghai: Jean-Michel Basquiat's Il Duce (1982), one of his famous faces against a gold-like background, changed hands for CNY 94,160,000 (about £11,000,000). This was the auction debut in China for Basquiat, who died at an early age and is known for his revolutionary approach to portraiture. The second highest price was achieved by Zao Wou-Ki's Palace Hotel by Night from 2004, a painting inspired by the Atlantic coast of France, where Wou-Ki painted it while traveling, reaching CNY 24,360,000 (about £2,800,000).
For the 20th Century Evening Sale on November 9, 2023, Christie's has a real highlight: Le bassin aux nymphéas by Claude Monet is expected to fetch $65 million. It has been in the same collection for over 50 years and has never been shown publicly.
On 9 and 10 November, the auction house Christie's auctioned off the collection of Paul Allen. The Microsoft co-founder passed away in 2018, and most of the proceeds are to go to charity. After the first evening, it was already clear that this auction was breaking records.
For the first time in over 25 years, there is another major exhibition on Jeff Wall in Canada: the Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto is presenting over 50 works by the renowned artist in Jeff Wall Photographs 1984–2023. The exhibition runs until March 22, 2026.
With this exhibition, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art examines how part of its collection developed: Collecting Impressionism at LACMA opens on December 21.
