$14 Million Francis Bacon Stars in Sotheby's Sale

by Jared Paul Stern (RSS feed)
Jan 7th 2011 at 7:02PM

A triptych portrait of artist Lucian Freud by Francis Bacon is the starring attraction at Sotheby's' Looking Closely sale of 20th century works in London on February 10. Three Studies for a Portrait of Lucian Freud (above) is estimated at up to $14 million. However, now that Bacon enthusiast Roman Abramovich has a new $230 million mega-mansion to decorate, we bet it could go much higher. Other top lots in the sale, said to have belonged to the low-profile Geneva collector George Kostalitz, who died last year, include works by Freud himself, Salvador Dali and Marc Chagall. "The works were bought between the 1960s and the 1990s," Helena Newman, Sotheby's European chairman of Impressionist and Modern Art, tells Bloomberg. "It's a personal collection of pieces that can be lived with on a domestic scale." The total high estimate for the works on offer is $85 million.

Tags: art, auction, contemporary art, Francis Bacon, London, Lucian Freud, Roman Abramovich, Salvador Dali, Sothebys