A s Frieze Week, celebrating its twentieth year, rose to a crescendo on Thursday evening, Sotheby’s welcomed collectors to the New Bond Street galleries for an evening of contemporary sales. Beginning the night as has now become tradition, the Now Evening Auction provided the opportunity for bidders to secure works by the most exciting and cutting edge artists working today. Propelled by the momentum of the fairs, estimates were smashed and works were chased by committed collectors, with a third of bidders coming from America and similarly strong interest and results from clients in Asia.
The sale burst into life with a flurry of spirited bids in the room and on the phones for Mohammed Sami's Poor Folk I. The hotly-contested canvas – which found a buyer for £558,800 against an estimate of £60,000 – proves his star continues to rise.
Born in 2021 as the younger sibling to the long-established Contemporary Evening Sale, The Now Evening Auction saw a new record set for Lynette Yiadom-Boakye’s arresting portrait, Six Birds in the Bush, achieving £2,952,000. It is also highest price ever achieved at auction by a black British woman artist.
Renowned for her depictions of iconic figures from popular culture, Elizabeth Peyton's David, Victoria and Brooklyn sold for £1,681,500. Also leading the charge for women artists, the inimitable Cecily Brown's Tricky doubled its low estimate to achieve £2,589,000, proving she is still an artist that commands attention in the market.
Frieze week remains the art world draw in October and as the week unfolds curators and collectors alike descend on London. Elsewhere in the city, triumphant shows by Philip Guston, Hiroshi Sugimoto and Nicole Eisenman opened to great acclaim, among them El Anatsui’s Turbine Hall commission, reinforcing him as one of the contemporary greats of recent years. Neatly dovetailing his Tate Modern tour de force, El Anatsui’s Dexterity, sold for £1,076,500 in the Contemporary Art Evening Auction – showing him to be a saleroom favourite as well as a museum luminary.
Elsewhere, Francis Bacon's small and intimate depiction of John Edwards executed in 1979, Study for a Portrait, found a buyer at £4,283,000. Also the subject of a major retrospective at Tate Modern, Philip Guston's deeply reflective and inquisitive self portrait, The Canvas, sold for £3,073,000. Other key moments from the sale include Yayoi Kusama's Pumpkin (S), a sophisticated reimagining of the artist’s most beloved motif as a freestanding bronze sculpture, that hammered down for £3,073,000, in a further show of strength for the artist at auction.
Also highlighting the Contemporary Evening Auction, Frank Bowling's Moby Dick, painted in 1981, a significant moment in his career, sold for £762,000. The work represents the artist's conceptual adoption of abstraction after a period of figurative painting that he began in 1973. The large-scale, energetic work is emblematic of Bowling's investigations in to colour and set a new record for the artist.
The sale series continues on Friday 13 October with the Contemporary Day Auction, and in Paris on the 19 October with Modernités, that is highlighted by works by René Magritte, František Kupka and Nicolas de Staël.
