Warhol WAG auction nets $780K

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This article was published 10/06/2023 (1208 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The combination of Andy Warhol and Queen Elizabeth is worth $780,000 to the Winnipeg Art Gallery.

That’s what four silkscreen prints of the recently deceased British monarch, which the famed pop artist created in 1985, sold for at a Toronto auction Thursday.

Funds from the sale are earmarked for purchases of contemporary Indigenous art, which represent only one per cent of the gallery’s permanent collection, says Stephen Borys, WAG-Qaumajuq’s director and chief executive officer.

The sale took place during Cowley Abbott’s spring live auction.

The Warhol silkscreens were donated to WAG-Qaumajuq in 1999. Earlier this year, appraisers with Cowley Abbott met with WAG-Qaumajuq officials to determine if there were works that would be suitable for auction to build up the gallery’s acquisitions fund.

The Warhol silkscreens, which depict the Queen in four different and vivid colours, were selected. They represent the first of several sales of artworks in the WAG-Qaumajuq collection over the next two years, Borys says.

The auction, which was livestreamed around the world, attracted bidders from Canada, the United Kingdom and throughout the United States.

Bidding for the Warhol prints began at $600,000 and rose in $20,000 increments until an unnamed buyer from California made the winning bid, said Rob Cowley, a partner with Cowley Abbott.

More than $16 million of art was sold in Thursday’s sale, which Cowley said was a record for the auction house.

The auction house collects a commission with each artwork sold, but it has donated its proceeds from the sale of the Warhol prints to the WAG-Qaumajuq acquisitions fund.

Two other paintings by Manitoba artists, which were owned by private collectors, were also auctioned Thursday. Siblings, by Daphne Odjig, and Man on the Bridge, by Ivan Eyre, sold for $14,400 each.

Alan.Small@freepress.com

Twitter: @AlanDSmall