2023-05-16 08:08:04
Time.news – A painting by painter Jean Michel Basquiat, “The Big Show (The Nile)”, was sold for 67.1 million dollars (61.7 million euros) at an auction organized by Christie’s in New York.
Basquiat’s painting has exceeded the initial estimate of 45 million dollars and is on course to become one of the best sales of the spring season, which began last week at major New York houses.
Painted in 1983, The Big Show (English title) features the artist’s signature skullswith clear African undertones and what appears to be an Egyptian ship piloted by the god Osiris passing through Memphis and Thebes, cities in Tennessee with Egyptian names.
The work was part of the collection of the designer Valentino Garavani, who bought it for 5.2 million in 2005, according to Artnews, and since then it has been one of the masterpieces of what he himself called the “Museo Garavani”.
“The Big Show” goes like this the artist’s fourth most expensive canvas of Haitian and Puerto Rican origin, still far from the 110.5 million paid by Sotheby’s for the 1982 work “Untitled”, sold in 2017 by Sotheby’s.
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