9 March 2017: Jean-Michel Basquiat’s bold, skeletal portrait Untitled, 1983, more than tripled pre-sale expectations to sell for £2.2m / $2.6m (est. £600,000-800,000), leading the Contemporary Art Day Auction at Sotheby’s today. Totalling £16.7m / $20.3m, today’s auction rounded-off an exceptional week of sales at Sotheby’s in London which together made £134.7m, a 57% increase in pounds on last year’s equivalent sale season.

The result for Basquiat was one of a string of strong prices for American artists, with works by Keith Haring, Dan Flavin, Andy Warhol, and two large scale canvases by George Condo all selling for above their high estimates. Boomerangs Flight, 1964, an extremely rare work on paper by Alexander Calder from the collection of the Oscar-winning director Lord Attenborough and his wife, Lady Attenborough, more than doubled its estimate to sell for £106,250.

Last night’s evening sale of Contemporary Art was led by Gerhard Richter’s desolately beautiful £17.7m Eisberg, and the outstanding results for German art continued today. Achieving a combined total of £3 million, the 27 German artworks included in today’s auction were led by Vulkan, 2002, a landscape by the Leipzig-born painter Neo Rauch, which sold for £344,750 / $419,182 (est. £200,000-300,000). Following the auction record set for Baselitz in the Evening Auction last night, further interest in the artist was evident today as Sechs schöne, vier hässliche Porträts: Hässliches Porträt sold well above estimate for £248,750/$302,455 (est. £120,000-180,000).

An auction record was also set for the British artist Grayson Perry. The Map of Truths and Beliefs, 2011, a wool and cotton tapestry measuring nearly five metres wide, sold for £118,750 / $144,388 (estimate: £80,000-120,000).

This brings the total value of Impressionist, Surrealist, Modern and Contemporary Art sold at Sotheby’s London in the past eight days to £348.6m / $428.4m – a 64% increase on the equivalent sales last year (in pounds).

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