Sotheby's is exhibiting in New York its most iconic works sold throughout its history, created by great art masters such as Basquiat, Dalí, Warhol, or Kahlo, which stand out for their execution, their story, or the price at which they were sold. Mercedes Lámbarri, Director of Mid-Range Private Sales at Sotheby's and specialist in contemporary and post-war art, is one of the masterminds behind the exhibition, which can be seen inside the Breuer building in Manhattan until this Sunday. The idea for 'Icons: Back to Madison' arose after Sotheby's purchased this renowned brutalist building on the Upper East Side: 'We don't often have the opportunity to present works solely for the love of art,' Lámbarri explains to EFE from the house's New York headquarters. In front of one of Andy Warhol's famous Marilyns—one of the stars of the exhibition—Lámbarri highlights that the project has been in the making for a year and a half, and that of all the works requested, 25 buyers said 'yes.' One of the selected works stands out: one of Andy Warhol's Marilyns, a painting in which the artist portrays the actress's face on an orange background, with her eyes half-open and made up with blue shadows. The name, 'Shot Orange Marilyn,' emerged after a friend of Warhol, a performance artist and photographer, shot with her revolver at the pieces that are part of this series, something that instead of devaluing them added more cachet. Although the painting was sold in 1998 for $17.3 million, its current value is estimated to already exceed $300 million. In an adjacent room, a piece that appears broken, where a girl lets a balloon escape, catches the public's attention: it is Banksy's 'Girl without Balloon,' which decided to shred the work at the moment of its auction in 2018. When that day the auctioneer dropped the hammer to sell the piece for $1.5 million, someone in the room—sent by the artist—pressed a button and the work began to disintegrate. 'Panic ensued, the mechanism failed and stopped here,' Lámbarri explains, pointing to the lower part of the piece, disintegrated, in contrast to the only thing that 'survived': the red heart-shaped balloon. On the walls of Sotheby's, a Frida Kahlo painting tells its own story: the artist portrays herself with a parrot on her shoulders and accompanied by a small black monkey, believed to be a gift from her husband, painter Diego Rivera. This work is the only one in the exhibition that comes from a museum rather than a private collector, and it was first sold in 1998 to Eduardo Constantini, founder of the MALBA Museum in Argentina. Meanwhile, at the entrance, American Jean-Michel Basquiat greets the public with 'Untitled,' a massive 1982 painting that sold in 2017 for $110.5 million, setting an auction record for the artist and for any American painting. Like the rest of his works, the painting is loaded with symbolism and has 'an incredible power,' Lámbarri points out, and has been loaned for this show by investor Kenneth Griffin, current CEO of the Citadel fund. 'Icons' also features other prominent names such as Piet Mondrian with his 'Composition No. II'; Clyfford Still with his '1949-A-No.1'; Salvador Dalí with a small painting called 'Gradiva'; or one of the popular Hermès 'Birkin' bags, sold this past July for $8.5 million.
