-Christie’s conducted a recent sale of prints and multiples totaling nearly $5 million with 90 percent sold by dollar. The sale added one more result to a year that had already been flamboyant on the print front.
The $6.2 million achieved by the memorable sale “Picasso: Themes and Variations” organized in April, and the results of three other prints sales held in spring and fall, bring the 2003 total of the print department to $17,348,317.
The recent sale offered 379 lots, of which 323 sold for $4,843,287. Prices quoted include the buyer’s premium.
Immediately after the sale, Kelly Troester, head of the print department stated, “A packed salesroom and active phone bidders contributed to a great result today.”
Max Beckmann’s “Group Portrait, Eden Bar,” was a woodcut executed in 1923. It sold to an American dealer for $141,900 ($150/250,000). A private collector purchased “Target,” a 1974 screen print in colors by Jasper Johns, for $119,500 ($100/150,000).
An Andy Warhol screen print in colors of Marilyn Monroe from 1967 sold far above estimate for $95,600 ($28/32,000) to an American private buyer. Barnett Newman’s untitled lithograph of 1961 brought $83,650 on an estimate of $40/50,000.
David Hockney’s lithograph and screen print in colors with collage of “An Image of Celia” also sold within its $70/90,000 estimate at $71,700. Marc Chagall’s “Bible,” a complete set of 105 etchings from 1956, brought $71,700 ($30/40,000).
A German dealer purchased David Hockney’s 16 signed and numbered etchings “A Rake’s Progress” of 1961 $65,000 ($40/50,000).