Shot Sage Blue Marilyn, from 1964, will be released at Christie’s in May. It could become the most expensive 20th century artwork sold at auction
Christie’s has announced that Andy Warhol’s ‘Shot Sage Blue Marilyn’ will be auctioned in May. The value of the portrait of Marilyn Monroe, “one of the rarest and most iconic images in existence” has been estimated at around $ 200 million, a figure that would make it the most expensive twentieth-century work of art among those sold at auction. . Obviously not the most expensive of all, because this will probably remain the “Salvator Mundi” attributed to Leonardo da Vinci (450 million dollars to Mohammed Bin Salman). All proceeds will go to the Thomas and Doris Ammann Foundation in Zurich, which is dedicated to improving the lives of children around the world through health and education programs.
«The Shot Marilyns» are four canvases from 1964, each one square meter, composed of a painting of Marilyn Monroe hit in the forehead by a single bullet. Warhol actually painted five Marilyns with different colored backgrounds: red, orange, light blue, sage blue and turquoise. The one up for auction is sage blue.
Warhol had kept the paintings at The Factory, his studio on East 47th Street in Manhattan. Dorothy Podber (1932–2008), a friend of Warhol’s photographer Billy Name, saw the recently completed paintings stacked against each other in the studio and asked Warhol if she could “shoot them”. Believing he wanted to take a picture, Warhol agreed. Podber took off her pair of black gloves, pulled a small revolver from her bag and fired a shot at the stack of four Marilyn paintings, which became known as “The Shot Marilyns”. The fifth painting, with the turquoise background, was not in the pile and the only unpainted portrait remains. The bullet escaped and the canvases were repaired. They were then also remade and reproduced serially, so much so that the image of Marilyn painted by Warhol is one of the most iconic motifs of pop art.
The original one with an orange background is said to have been sold to the American financier Kennet C. Griffin in 1998 for about 200 million. The others cost less: the Greek-born shipowner Philip Niarcos secured the red Marilyn for only 4 million euros. The one with a turquoise background was bought by the Jewish-American financier Steve Cohen for 80 million dollars.
March 27, 2022 (change March 27, 2022 | 15:41)
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