Record-Setting Burri Comes Off the Museum Wall and Into Sotheby’s London Sale

The Alberto Burri exhibition at the Guggenheim in New York has closed. Now one of the star works is coming down off the walls and going straight to Sotheby’s in London where it will be featured in the Contemporary sale in February. Sotheby’s isn’t holding back in its claims for the work:

The greatest work by Alberto Burri ever to appear at auction – a blood-red masterpiece from his most sought-after Sacchi series, that recalls the horrors of the Second World War – will be offered for sale at Sotheby’s London on 10 February 2016 with an estimate of £9-12 million ($13.6-18.1 million).

Of unrivalled quality, this example from 1959 is one of the very last Sacchi executed by the artist, and the largest of the fifteen Sacco e Rosso he produced. They are prized as much for their scarcity as for their coarse tactile beauty; another version is held in the permanent collection of the Tate Modern.

When Sacco e Rosso last appeared at auction in 2007, the work achieved a then record price of £1.9 million ($3.8 million), and it is now poised to make a new record once again.

Sacco e Rosso arrives at auction with a notable exhibition history, encompassing the Palazzo Grassi in Venice, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, and culminating at the Solomon R. Guggenheim’s landmark Alberto Burri retrospective in the autumn of 2015.