LONDON.- Tonight at
Sotheby’s London, the Evening Auction of The Gunter Sachs Collection realised the outstanding total of £35,628,250 / $56,353,203 /€44,057,951 – almost double the pre-sale low estimate (Est. £18-25million /$28.8-40 million / €22-31 million). In part one of the two-day sale of artworks and objects that span numerous collecting categories, buyers from Asia, Europe, Russia and the US helped drive this evening’s sell-through rates to 90.2% by lot and 97.5 % by value, resulting in 10 lots selling for over £1 million and 16 for over $1 million. Artist records were set for works Allen Jones and Mel Ramos.
The top lot of tonight’s sale was one of Andy Warhol’s last self-portraits, Self Portrait (Fright Wig), from 1986, which sold for £5,361,250 / $8,479,889 / €6,629,730 - more than double its pre-sale estimate of £2-3 million.
Record prices for works by Andy Warhol were achieved for The Kiss (Bela Lugosi), from 1964, which fetched £3,177,250 / $5,025,456 / €3,928992 (est. £700,000-900,000) – a record price at auction for a work on paper by Andy Warhol – in addition to a record price at auction for a print/ set of prints by Andy Warhol with the sale of his 1972 work Mao, which sold for £1,609,250 / $2,545,351 / €1,990,001 (est. £300,000-500,000).
Further outstanding prices for works by Andy Warhol include:
· The 48-inch Flowers painting – one of only six works that the artist produced in this format – which sold for £3,737,250 / $5,911,208 / €4,621,489 against an estimate of £3-4 million.
· An icon of Gunter Sach’s collection, the stunning 1974 Andy Warhol portrait Brigitte Bardot which sold for £3,009,250 / $4,759,731 / €3,721,243, estimated at £3-4 million.
· An acrylic and silkscreen ink on canvas portrait, Gunter Sachs, realised £1,273,250/ $2,013,900 / €1,574,503 (est. £400,000-600,000).
A complete set of Allen Jones’ exceptionally rare, iconic Pop Art mannequin furniture of 1969 achieved record prices following heated bidding, the highest price of which was for the table - £970,850 / $1,535,593 / €1,200,555 - over three times the previous record price at auction for the artist.
