A force of nature, Tony Shafrazi has been a pivotal voice in the art world for over half a century. Known for his groundbreaking partnerships with such renowned artists as Keith Haring, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Kenny Scharf, Andy Warhol, the estate of Francis Bacon, and many others, Tony Shafrazi’s impact on the vanguard of art world trends is unparalleled among his peers. Cultivating very close relationships, these artists were not just his friends or colleagues, but his extended family. Tony Shafrazi’s influence would significantly shape various artist’s careers, and the New York art scene along with them. Sotheby’s is honored to include eight recently consigned pieces by Andy Warhol, Kenny Sharf, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring and Christopher Wool from Shafrazi’s personal collection in the upcoming Contemporary Evening and Day sales on the 16 and 17 of November, 2022.
Born in Abadan, Iran to a Christian Armenian family, Shafrazi was passionate about art from the young age of 10, developing his own painting and sculptural skills throughout his young life and into adulthood. While Shafrazi longed for life in America as a child, his father was intent on educating his son in England, leaving him at an English boarding school when he was 13.
From the mid 50s into the late 60’s England would have an explosion of art, music, theater, and fashion, placing London at the cultural center of the world, and Shafrazi in the middle of it all. The origins of the Pop Art movement in 1957, while in America referred to as ‘Art of the Common Object’, the vastly growing music industry and the Mod fashion trends all influenced everyone in these critical years of development. He attended Hammersmith College in 1960 where he majored in sculpture, graduating with his fully illustrated thesis on African Sculpture in 1964. Immediately accepted to an elite Graduate program within the esteemed Royal College of Art in London from 1964, graduating in 1967. Shafrazi developed close friendships with countless other creatives including Patrick Caulfield, musician Charlie Watts, and David Hockney, Guyana-born artist Frank Bowling, Allen Jones, Joe Tilson and many others. Yet all the while, Shafrazi’s sights were set on America.
Having long dreamt of traveling to New York and Los Angeles to visit various artists as well as his mother, Shafrazi’s initial trip to New York in 1965 proved seminal. Staying by fortuitous chance on the fourth floor at the 47th St. YMCA across the street from Andy Warhol’s Silver Factory. On his first day in New York, Shafrazi recalls dropping his bags at his room on the fourth floor and noticing a group of people on the fire escape of the building across the street. Recognizing this to be Warhol’s Factory, Shafrazi walked across the street and up the elevator where he was greeted warmly by Warhol. Having already begun his graduate thesis on Warhol’s paintings, Shafrazi’s admiration of his work along with their shared artistic passions would spark a friendship that would last for the next two decades. Remarkably, Shafrazi would also meet and befriend Pop Artist Roy Lichtenstein that same evening, having lunch with him the next day at his studio where he would meet renowned gallerist Leo Castelli. These serendipitous encounters would lead to some of the closest and most rewarding friendships of Shafrazi’s career.
Finally moving to New York City in 1969, Shafrazi continued to foster his artistic and creative passions. Like many artists at the time, Shafrazi supported himself by lecturing at the School of Visual Arts, as well as building lofts. Following a period in Iran as an advisor to the newly built Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, Shafrazi returned to America, where he opened his first New York gallery in 1979, transforming his apartment into an exhibition space and showcasing some of the most original voices of the time. During the 1980s, Shafrazi’s Soho gallery heralded the arrival of new and established artists, including Kenny Scharf, Futura 2000, and Jean-Michel Basquiat, Ronnie Cutrone forever cementing his legacy as a tastemaker in the world of art.
Shafrazi’s passion for subversive artwork is apparent in his vast collection but especially in the offerings available in the Evening Sale. His relationship with the artist Keith Haring would prove to be one of the most profound and prolific of Shafrazi’s career. Haring and Shafrazi initially met when the young artist was hired to help paint the walls of Shafrazi’s gallery in 1980. The first to recognize Haring’s unabridged talent, Shafrazi’s solo show for Haring in 1982 legitimized the artist’s reputation, paving the way for one of the art world’s most up-beat, genuine voices. Continuing to exhibit Haring’s work long after his passing in 1990, Shafrazi was a consistent and prominent supporter of the iconic artist.
Haring’s Untitled, 1987 is a vibrant work that utilizes the artist’s distinct graphic force and iconic visual syntax to depict a cascade of interlocking figures. The dynamic blue B-boys, a signature motif in Haring’s work, are boldly conceived on a marigold background in keeping with Haring’s frequent use of contrasting colors, creating an electrical charge felt in the work. The image exemplifies the artist’s commitment to celebrating the human spirit in the face of social concerns felt during his lifetime. Commissioned by gallerist Martin S. Blinder in 1987 for the Martin Lawrence Gallery, this work has been in the private collection of Shafrazi since 1995.
A very close friend of Haring, Jean-Michel Basquiat’s work was also embraced by Shafrazi, who recognized the impact of the artist's graffiti-inspired drawings and paintings long before they were considered popular. Exhibiting some of the most major pieces by Jean-Michel, including the formative exhibition Champion of 1983, he was also the first to exhibit the artistic collaborative body of work between Basquiat and Warhol, painting on the same canvas. Shafrazi was responsible for the organization of and iconic poster for the 1985 exhibition depicting the two artists ready to spar in boxing gloves which has since become ingrained in our collective psyche. Untitled, 1983 is an absorbing work that keenly displays the rapacious point of view present throughout Basquiat’s body of work. Developing a distinctive vocabulary full of open mouths, repetitive images, human heads, and even medical imagery, Basquiat grappled with the stereotypes and discrimination that were insidious to the African American experience in this country.
Christopher Wool’s work encompasses amorphous shapes of color and sometimes language to provoke the viewer and ascribe new meaning to recognizable symbols. In 2008 gallerist Gavin Brown and artist Urs Fischer used Tony Shafrazi’s infamous art protest from 1974 as inspiration for an exhibition at his gallery called “Who’s Afraid of Jasper Johns?”. A group show that featured artists Christopher Wool, Robert Ryman, Richard Prince, Jeff Koons, Malcolm Morely, among many others, artworks were hung overtop a wallpapered replica of the previous exhibition “Four Friends” from earlier that year. Invoking a dialogue between works of art of the previous and present exhibition, Wool’s work was included along with co-contemporaries and best artists of the 1980s and 90s.
Wool’s Untitled, 2000, is a modern evocation of the downtown spirit set forth by Haring and Basquiat two decades earlier. The work has been described as “aesthetically elusive” but forceful nonetheless. The stark white canvas is littered with black stamped patterns overlayed with spray-painted gray forms. The painting is a meditation on opposing forces: black and white, checkered patterns and spray paint, and the methodical versus the chaotic. Wool’s improvisational style was inspired by Jazz and Hip-Hop music in his use of sporadic phrasing and black-and-white imagery. Wool is noted for continuing the elevation of subversive protest art and graphic iconography in expressionist form.
Sotheby’s Day Sale includes its own list of visually arresting works. Works include Kenny Scharf’s Op Bop,1985, an important early work of Sharf’s with a distinct, psychedelic display of character faces and space-age imagery that nods to Southern California entertainment and cartoon culture. Also included are two exceptional examples of Andy Warhol’s portrait paintings, Dr. Erich Marx, 1977 and Portrait of Mrs. Zoppas-Sachs, 1973, which are prime examples of Warhol’s lifelong fascination with portraiture and celebrity in different mediums. Lastly, exhibiting Keith Haring’s distinct artistic hand, two outstanding early works by the artist Untitled (Elvis Presley) and Untitled (Marilyn Monroe) of 1981 are also being offered in Sotheby’s Contemporary Day Sale, employing his signature bold lines and dashes over photographs of these iconic celebrities in telegraphic form.
Tony Shafrazi's Collection in Sotheby's Contemporary Day Sale
In a conversation with Owen Wilson, a close friend of Tony’s for Interview Magazine published in 2008, Shafrazi explains his philosophy on art and, by extension, his role as a gallerist, “I believe that the whole experience of living, breathing, thinking and being lost in wonderment is, for me, that of being an artist.” He goes on to say that he believes the responsibilities of a gallery owner are to “make significant, meaningful exhibitions.” While he fostered prolific professional relationships with artists such as Haring, Scharf, Basquiat, Warhol, and many others, he maintained close and lasting friendships with them as well. A legend in the art world, Shafrazi will offer exemplars of his prominent collection at Sotheby's this November, each of which represents the visionary taste and fearless intellectual interests of one of the most pivotal gallerists of our time.
