Record art sales at Christie’s, US$ 1,1bn in three hours; US expressionist Pollard painting sold for US$ 181 million
Key takeaways
- The record sale made Pollock s canvas the fourth most expensive artwork ever sold at auction and eclipsed his own previous 2021 auction record of US$ 61.2 million.
- For Christie's this week s three hours sale brought in US$ 1.1 billion.
- Salvator Mundi, (Savior of the World), a Renaissance work attributed to Leonardo da Vinci, holds the top spot for the most expensive painting ever sold at auction, demanding US$ 450 million in 2017.
Why this matters: an international story with cross-border implications worth tracking.
A painting by US Abstract Expressionist painter Jackson Pollock sold for a record US$181.2 million ( 156.2 million) with fees, at Christie s auction house in New York this week, alongside other staggering sales on what was a blockbuster event for the institution.
The roughly three-by-one meter (88.9 x 334 centimeters) oil and enamel work on canvas, entitled Number 7A, 1948, was painted at Pollock's Long Island, New York, studio when the artist was 36 years old and is considered was a key early example of his floorbased drip technique.
Christie's described the postwar work, which consists of black drips with a few red accents, as follows, It is with this work that Pollock finally frees himself from the shackles of conventional easel painting and produces one of the first truly abstract paintings in the history of art.