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Sotheby’s will extend its live-stream auction format to Paris for the first time in October 2020, broadcasting two modern and contemporary art sales from Paris and London on the same day, 21 October.
The evening pairs two consecutive sales dedicated to the major artistic periods of the 20th and 21st centuries. It opens with Modernités, conducted by Helena Newman from a studio in London and taking bids in French and English relayed by Sotheby’s teams in London, Paris, New York and Asia. After a short pause, the annual autumn Contemporary Art Evening Auction follows, conducted by Oliver Barker. Both sales are broadcast live with on-screen information for each work offered.
Among the highlights of the London contemporary evening sale is a black-and-white painting emblematic of Bridget Riley’s work, one of the leading figures of abstract art, estimated at £5.5 million to £7.5 million, or $7 million to $9.6 million. A hypnotic composition from the early 1960s, the work set a record price for the artist when it last sold at Sotheby’s in 2006, and has since been shown in the artist’s retrospective at the Hayward Gallery in London.
In Paris, Modernités surveys artistic creation from 1900 through the post-war period and the birth of the 20th century avant-garde, with artists including Pablo Picasso, Pierre Soulages, Francis Picabia and Wassily Kandinsky.
At the heart of the Paris session, Sotheby’s will offer a private collection of twenty-five works, largely unseen on the market, valued in total at more than 10 million euros, or $12 million, and presented in a separate release. Among the rediscovered works is a Tête d’homme by Pablo Picasso, a rare male portrait from the 1940s, made while the artist was staying in Royan with Dora Maar.
Exhibitions were scheduled to open to the public at Sotheby’s galleries on New Bond Street in London and rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré in Paris. The works in the Modernités sale were to be shown in Paris from 17 to 21 October, and the contemporary session in London from 16 to 21 October. Both sales were streamed online via sothebys.com and the Sotheby’s Facebook page, with auctioneers directing from London and phone bids relayed from salerooms in Paris, New York, Hong Kong and London.
(Press Release)
