Displaying items by tag: Francis Bacon

Attention all Francis Bacon fans: in April 2016, the artist's estate will publish Francis Bacon: Catalogue Raisonné, the first comprehensive catalog of his oeuvre. The book, which has been in production for a decade, will feature over 100 previously unseen canvases, some of which were recently unearthed from a private Italian collection.

"The stuff that has been written about Bacon, some good and much of it less good, is based on about a third of his work," art historian Martin Harrison, who worked on the catalog, told the Guardian.

Iran is starting to use its soft power, agreeing last month to lend works from the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art’s (TMoCA) collection of international and Iranian art for an exhibition in Berlin next year. The show, a symbol of Iran’s rapprochement with the West, could travel beyond Berlin, a spokeswoman for the Tehran museum tells us. The exhibition will include works by international and Iranian artists.

Other leading museums have expressed an interest in borrowing from the Tehran collection, which includes works by Picasso, Rothko, Pollock and Bacon among others.

Billionaire art patron and philanthropist Elaine Wynn, famous for her record-breaking purchase of a $142 million Francis Bacon triptych at Christie's, has expensive tastes. After all, she can afford it—Forbes estimated her current net worth as $1.52 billion.

In a recent interview with the New York Times, Ms. Wynn discusses her first reaction to seeing the Bacon work as "gobsmacked," and decided to bid well above the $85 million estimate.

Tate Modern will next year present shows devoted to two giants of 20th-century art, the American artists Georgia O’Keeffe and Robert Rauschenberg.

Announcing its 2016 program, Tate also revealed that the works of Francis Bacon will be on display at its outpost in Liverpool, Paul Nash at Tate Britain, and a solo show by the young British artist Jessica Warboys at St Ives.

Elaine Wynn and Antony Ressler have been elected as the new board co-chairs of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, officials announced Thursday. They succeed Andrew Brandon-Gordon and Terry Semel, who will remain on the museum board with the title co-chairs emeriti.

Wynn joined LACMA's board of trustees in 2011 and is an active art collector. She was the reported buyer in 2013 of the $142.4 million Francis Bacon triptych painting of Lucian Freud — then a record sum for a painting sold at auction. 

A work from of Francis Bacon’s most famous series of paintings, of seated and often screaming popes, is to go on sale with an estimated value of £25m to £35m. When the canvas last went under the hammer in 2005, “Study for a Pope I” (1961) fetched £10 million — at the time this was a record for the artist. But even if the work goes under the hammer for the lower end of the latest price estimate, it would still equate to a rise in value of 150 percent.

Two Francis Bacon self-portraits are going on public display for the first time after resurfacing in a private collection.

Descendants of the original collector have decided to sell the paintings, which are expected to fetch £15m each at auction.

Experts knew of the works’ existence, but had no idea who had bought them soon after they were completed about 40 years ago.

The paintings will go on show at Sotheby’s in London and New York before going under the hammer in July.

A bleak self-portrait by the postwar British artist Francis Bacon will lead Sotheby’s upcoming Contemporary Art Evening Sale on February 10, 2015, in London. Two Studies for Self-Portrait (1977) is one of only three diptychs painted by Bacon after the death of his partner, George Dyer. Out of the three, it is the only one ever to be offered at auction. The other double self-portraits remain in private collections.

Another Bacon painting, Portrait of George Dyer Talking (1966), dominated last year’s contemporary art auctions in London. Offered by Christie’s, the painting fetched $70 million -- the highest price ever paid at auction for a single panel by the artist.

Damien Hirst’s forthcoming art complex, The Newport Street Gallery, is slated to open in south London this summer. Located in the up-and-coming Vauxhall district, the gallery will boast over two-thousand modern and contemporary artworks drawn from Hirst’s personal collection. In addition to works by such luminaries as Jeff Koons, Pablo Picasso, and Francis Bacon, the gallery will also display taxidermy, anatomical models, and a selection of historical objects. According to The Art Newspaper, the complex will have a changing program of exhibitions rather than a fixed installation.

Hirst enlisted the Zurich and London-based firm Caruso St John Architects to construct the gallery. The firm, whose past clients include Tate Britain, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Arts Council of England, and the Gagosian Gallery, is celebrated for its contemporary projects in the public realm.

Andy Warhol was the top-selling artist at auction in the past year as increased competition for the most-expensive segment of the market drove global art sales higher.

Collectors bought 1,295 works by the deceased artist totaling $653.2 million, ahead of sales for Pablo Picasso and Francis Bacon, according to preliminary figures by New York-based researcher Artnet. Auctions worldwide rose 10 percent to $16 billion.

Art sales have more than doubled from $6.3 billion in 2009, as surging financial markets lifted the fortunes of the world’s richest.