NEW YORK, 27 September 2017 – Sotheby’s fall season of Contemporary Art auctions commenced today in New York with Contemporary Curated, which achieved $25.7 million –outstripping its high estimate, with a very strong 83.4% of lots sold. The sale, which featured over 70 lots from the Collection of Santiago Barberi Gonzalez, was led by Joan Mitchell’s Parasol, which fetched $3.3 million, well exceeding its high estimate. Works by female artists commanded a number of top prices throughout the day, including Helen Frankenthaler’s Haze and Yayoi Kusama’s Beyond My Illusion/ Imaginary Flowers of Shangri-La that sold for $972,500 and $912,500 respectively.

Emily Kaplan, Head of Sotheby’s Contemporary Curated in New York, said: “We’re thrilled with the exceptional results of today’s sale, which saw outstanding prices for female artists Joan Mitchell, Helen Frankenthaler and Yayoi Kusama, whose works achieved four of the day’s top five prices. Property from the Collection of Santiago Barberi Gonzalez also performed incredibly well, with all but two of the 70+ works finding buyers. We look forward to the remaining 48 hours of our Contemporary Art Online sale, as well as our London auctions next week during Frieze.”

A breathtaking reflection of Joan Mitchell’s awe for landscape and nature, Parasol is an exceptional embodiment of the dense surface textures and impassioned brushwork that defined the artist’s glorious output in the last decades of her career. Executed in a three-panel format, the work illustrates Mitchell’s transition beginning in the early seventies towards larger canvases and multi-paneled compositions; the larger scale allowed Mitchell to exercise a liberated painterly abandon characterized by fervent gesture and emboldened color.

On Kawara’s June 10, 2004 (from the Today series, 1963-2013) opened the single-owner sequence, Neither Appearance Nor Illusion: Property from the Collection of Santiago Barberi Gonzalez, when it achieved $540,000 after a flurry of bids between more than four collectors. Other highlights from the trailblazing designer’s collection of Contemporary art included Wolfgang Tillmans’s enrapturing Iguazu, which more than tripled its high estimate to achieve $324,000, after over six bidders vyed for the work, and Butt by Antony Gormley - an early example of the artist’s Extended Blocker series - bringing $312,500. Rounding out the extraordinary collection, Ugo Rondinone’s The Adored and Jenny Holzer’s Selection From Survival: Protect Me... both more than doubled their high estimates to achieve $275,000 and $168,750 respectively.

Along with his mother, Mr. Barberi Gonzalez, who passed away earlier this year, founded the luxury handbag line Nancy Gonzalez, serving as President and Creative Director of the firm that became one of the world’s leading luxury accessories brands, best-known for their use of precious and exotic skins. A portion of the proceeds from the sale of works in his collection will be donated to a charity honoring the late designer’s fervent support of the arts.

Sotheby’s fall auctions of Contemporary art continue this week with Contemporary Art Online, open now through 29 September at 12pm, and offered without Buyer’s Premium.

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