As spring fever expectations heat up for the big May auctions, ARTINFO has learned that Sotheby’s New York will be offering Andy Warhol’s large-scaled and wildly colored “Big Electric Chair” from 1967-68 at an estimate of $18-25 million.
Measuring 54 by 74 inches, only 14 canvases of the fatal image depicting an empty electric chair centered in a minimally appointed chamber and appropriated from a black and white newspaper photograph of the deadly contraption at Sing Sing Prison in Ossining, New York, were created in the large format.
Of those, at least half reside in major museums and private collections, including the Menil Collection in Houston, the Eli Broad Art Foundation in Los Angeles, the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, and the Stefan Edlis collection in Chicago.
Perhaps more strikingly, this example is the only one in which Warhol radically divided the canvas in three distinct fields of uniform color and silkscreened the surface twice in jarring shades of purple and forest green. It appears as a kind of oscillating flag, creating an all-over Technicolor field, and a grim one at that.
Earlier iterations of the electric chair from his stellar “Death and Disaster” series of 1963 were executed in black-ink silkscreens on monochrome grounds. It is one of the few subjects Warhol returned to in later years, with this group created between December 1967 and January 1968.
“It makes it more of a still life,” said Alex Rotter, Sotheby’s co-world-wide head of contemporary art, “than an action based painting.”
Although the painting lacks Warhol’s direct signature, it bears the stamp of both the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and the Estate of Andy Warhol and is also listed in the second volume of “The Andy Warhol Catalogue Raisonne: Paintings and Sculptures 1964-1969” as number 2044.
The most expensive electric chair painting to sell at auction was back in November 2007 at Christie’s New York when “Little Electric Chair” from 1964-65, measuring 22 by 28 inches and set against a garish pink background, sold for $5,641,000.
Large version works from the series of 14 are quite rare at auction — “Big Electric Chair” from 1967, searing in shades of burnt orange and green, sold for £1,653,500 ($2,339,417) back at Christie’s London in June 1999, and “Big Electric Chair” in a pale pink shade brought in $4,959,500 at Christie’s New York in November 2002.
The priciest Warhol from his “Death and Disaster” series, “Silver Car Crash (Double Disaster) in Two Parts,” from 1963, also represents the record price for his work at auction, making $105,445,000 at Sotheby’s New York last November.
The current example goes on view at Sotheby’s London New Bond Street headquarters on April 11 for a five-day preview.
Though Sotheby’s is not identifying the seller or any other details about the deal, it is understood to be the property of former hedge fund manager David Ganek. The seller acquired the work from Pace Gallery in 2010, according to the provenance prepared by Sotheby’s.
