A Mark Rothko painting sold for US$46.5 million on Tuesday at a Sotheby’s auction in New York, an evening in which several records were set, including one for a work by German artist Sigmar Polke.
The Rothko work Untitled, (Yellow and Blue), measuring 2.42m by 1.86m and completed in 1954, had been estimated at between US$40 million and US$60 million.
It was one of the star pieces of the evening of auctions of contemporary works, including one by Roy Lichtenstein titled The Ring. Sotheby’s had expected it would go for US$50 million, but in the end it sold for US$41.69 million.
Photo: AP
Another highlight of the sale, Abstraktes Bild by Germany’s Gerhard Richter, was auctioned for US$28.25 million, just under its presale estimate of US$30 million.
None of the three set a record.
However, several other artists did set records for sales at auction, including Polke. His painting Dschungel (1967) went for US$27.13 million, three times the previous price for one of his works, according to Sotheby’s. Prior to the auction, it had been estimated at about US$20 million — for an artist Sotheby’s said was virtually unknown until 2011.
A huge painting by Christopher Wool, Riot, went for US$29.93 million, compared with a presale estimate ranging from US$12 million to US$18 million — a record for a living US artist.
Mark Grotjahn, 47, also of the US, broke his own record with a work called Untitled (Into and Behind the Green Eyes of the Tiger Monkey Face). It went for US$6.52 million.
Sotheby’s also sold several works by Andy Warhol, including Superman, which went for US$14.36 million (estimated at US$6 million to US$8 million) and Mao for US$14.4 million. It had been estimated at US$13 million to US$16 million. The estimates do not include costs and fees, unlike the final auction prices.
On Monday, a Picasso oil painting, The Women of Algiers (Version 0), smashed records for sales at auction by going for US$179 million.
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