Basquiat valued at $45 million, Kerry James Marshall commissioned by top collector valued at $15 million

With the London auctions wrapping up and Art Basel in Paris kicking off earlier this week, there’s only one major art world event left on the calendar between now and Thanksgiving — and a big one at that: November’s major auctions.

Major auction houses are sparing no effort to build anticipation for this fall, releasing news about important auction items. We already know the title lot of Sotheby’s Contemporary Evening Sale: Crown (Bisonnetto) “1981” by Jean-Michel Basquiat is estimated to be worth an eye-popping $45 million.

Sotheby’s also quietly announced the cover lot of the “Now” sale: an untitled 2008 painting by Kerry James Marshall depicting a couple embracing at sunset. The work is estimated at $10 million to $15 million.

Grégoire Billault, Sotheby’s Chairman of Contemporary Art, said art news Both works hold great significance in the artist’s oeuvre and have impeccable provenance.

Biot explained that Basquiat’s work was created in 1981, a crucial year in the artist’s rise, and was created on Christmas night, with “December 25, 1981” engraved on the back. “It’s basically Basquiat crowning himself a New York major,” he said.

The painting debuted at Basquiat’s landmark solo exhibition at the Annina Nosei Gallery in March 1982, and also debuted at Documenta 7 in Kassel, Germany, in the summer of the same year. A London collector purchased the painting from Nosei and then sold it to Thomas Worrell, whom Billo describes as an important early collector of Basquiat’s work. José Mugrabi was born into a famous art collector family. Crown (Bisonnetto) in 2003 and sold it privately to its current consignor in 2019 for an undisclosed price.

According to sources familiar with the Lombrail collection, the consignor is none other than French actor Francis Lombrail. Lombrel commissioned works from Francis Bacon Three Studies for a Portrait of George Dyer In 2017, it was sold at Christie’s auction house in New York for US$51.8 million.

By comparison, the Marshall’s provenance is much simpler: it was purchased on the primary market by its current owner. Although Sotheby’s, in line with its usual policy, declined to comment, the work was featured in an exhibition at a Sag Harbor church several years ago, and the lender is listed as Neda Young. Young is a Croatian collector of works by female artists, including heavyweights such as Joan Snyder, Agnes Martin, Cecily Brown and Nan Goldin. She was a member of several museum boards and acquisitions committees and was known as Hampton’s major patron of the arts.

“We’ve been pursuing that picture for a long, long time. We’re finally able to put it out, which is very exciting for us,” Bulow said.

The newness of Marshall’s paintings on the market is not unusual for the artist, Billo said, noting that his works rarely come to auction. Even rarer are works of this caliber, he said, referring to the uniqueness and scale of the work.

“There is no other version or anything else [Marshall] Painting with this composition – at sunset, the classic marriage pose, the sweet color palette and this very tender moment between the couple,” he said. “It’s a very special painting. “

Because Marshall’s career trajectory was much slower than Basquiat’s, his works found their way into institutional collections more than private collections, Bulow said.

“If you open an exhibition catalog of Marshall’s work and see where the great paintings are, you’ll find that they are basically in museums,” he added. “It is extremely rare for an important work by Marshall to appear at auction.”

Additional reporting by Sarah Douglas.