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Bacon, Picasso, Lichtenstein Top 2020 Global Modern & Contemporary Auctions: Analysis

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Francis Bacon, Triptych Inspired by the Oresteia of Aeschylus, oil on canvas, 1981.

This report on the Summer auctions is available to AMMpro subscribers. (The first month of AMMpro is free and subscribers are welcome to sign up for the first month and cancel before they are billed.) 

After a period of uncertainty caused by the coronavirus pandemic — which was only resolved by a wholesale restructuring of the international auction calendar — the top three houses finally presented hybrid live auctions of their most valuable works early this Summer.

Houses merged the modern and contemporary art categories and updated virtual platforms to draw global audience and bidding clients to a week of live-streamed marquee sales held around the world. Sotheby’s offered the first market test on June 29th;  it yielded $363.2 million. Phillips held a modest $41 million sale comprising mostly works by female and non-white artists. Finally, Christie’s staged a complex, four-auctioneer sale spanning their international sales centers that brought in $420.9 million.

The series of sales were successful enough to encourage Sotheby's to quickly turn around a second sale, Rembrandt to Richter, to capitalize on the demand. That auction combined a smattering of Old Master works with modern and contemporary art to make $193 million in sales.

Each session proved global demand undiminished by the economic lag. The leading lots of the auctions staged in June and July were by Francis Bacon, Roy Lichtenstein, Pablo Picasso, Joan Mitchell, Joan Miró and Jean-Michel Basquiat. The results from 2019 to 2020 is not a direct comparison due to the reformatted sales but key trends in artists' markets are still apparent. In Spring 2019, more than $1.2 billion in contemporary art was sold in the New York day and evening sales. That was a rise of 6.7% over the previous year.

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Bacon Triptych Featured in Christie’s London Sale

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Christie’s announces a Bacon triptych for their March 6th Contemporary art sale:

Christie’s will offer The Eye of the Architect, a diverse collection of Modern and Post-War art, during ‘20th Century at Christie’s’, a series of sales that will take place in London from 20 February to 7 March 2018: Impressionist and Modern Art and The Art of the Surreal Evening Sales (both 27 February), Impressionist and Modern Art Day Sale (28 February) and Post-War and Contemporary ArtEvening Sale (6 March). Focusing primarily on figurative compositions, this tightly curated group of works not only reveals the collector’s discerning eye and architectural mind, but also a passion for artists who continuously sought to push the boundaries of tradition in their art. Including works by some of the most celebrated masters of the twentieth century avant-garde, from Pablo Picasso to Francis Bacon, Giorgio de Chirico to Joan Miró, and Fernand Léger to Giorgio Morandi, this varied group is united in their intimate scale and exploration of similar thematic concerns. The group will be led by Francis Bacon’s Three Studies for a Portrait(1976, estimate: £10,000,000-15,000,000), the artist’s penultimate ode to his great muse Henrietta Moraes, whose stark depiction of facial features and realist palette reveal the influence of Picasso on Bacon’s work.

The works will be on view in Hong Kong (5 to 8 February 2018) and New York (8 to 15 February 2018) before being exhibited in London from 20 February to 6 March 2018.

Christie’s Announces $80m Francis Bacon for Frieze

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Christie’s has another “barn find” of a painting that has been in the same family for 45 years and not been shown publicly:

Francis Bacon’s landmark painting Study of Red Pope 1962. 2nd version 1971, unseen in public for 45 years. It stands as the grand finale to his celebrated body of Papal portraits and is the only painting that unites the Pope with his greatest love George Dyer, who is depicted as the Pope’s reflection.  First exhibited on 26 October 1971, in the legendary retrospective of Francis Bacon’s work at the Grand Palais in Paris,Study of Red Pope 1962. 2nd version 1971 was executed six months earlier in April 1971. The painting represents the first and only time in his oeuvre that Bacon united his two greatest obsessions: the Pope and George Dyer – his great muse and lover. The canvas became a tragic premonition of Dyer’s fateful end when, less than thirty-six hours before the opening of the career-defining exhibition, Dyer was found dead. Acquired by the family of the present owner in 1973 this work has appeared in all the major publications dedicated to Bacon’s work but never exhibited publicly. Francis Bacon’sStudy of Red Pope 1962. 2nd version 1971 will come to auction as the centerpiece of Christie’s Post-War and Contemporary Art Evening Auction on 6 October 2017 and will be on view at Christie’s King Street from 30 September.

Christie’s to Offer Bacon Portrait with Estimate Projecting 4x Appreciation Since 2000

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Bacon, George Dyer Talking (30m GBP)

Christie’s follows its record Francis Bacon sale with another important Bacon to be offered in London next month. Portrait of George Dyer Talking returns to the market after 14 years. The last time it was on the block it sold for a then-record price of $6.6m. Since then, the entire art market, but especially the Bacon market (beginning with Henry Kravis’s purchase of a screaming pope and through Damien Hirst’s purchase of an self-portrait,) has accelerated dramatically culminating with last November’s $142m sale.

Now Portrait of George Dyer Talking is on the market with an expected estimate of £30m or more:

Portrait of George Dyer Talking has been included in many of the most important exhibitions on the artist. These include exhibitions at Galerie Maeght, Paris, in 1966-1967; Malborough Fine Art Ltd. in 1967 (the only time it has been seen in public in the United Kingdom); the Retrospective at the Grand Palace in 1971-1972; the Museo de Bellas Artes in Caracas in 1973; the Museo d’Arte Moderna in Lugano in 1993; and the artist’s Retrospective at Yale Center for British Art in New Haven in 1999. It was last seen at auction at Christie’s New York in 2000 when it sold for $6.6 million – a record price for the artist at the time. It is expected to realize in the region of £30 million in February, and could set a record price for a single canvas by the artist.

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