Amid a drop in high-end artwork gross sales, Christie’s plans to public sale Andy Warhol’s Huge Electrical Chair (1967–68) throughout its Might night sale in New York from the the gathering of Belgian patrons Roger Matthys and Hilda Colle.
The portray, measuring six ft in width and that includes as its central topic a midcentury executioner’s chair, is estimated round $30 million. Matthys and Colle, each deceased, have been identified figures within the modern artwork scene in Ghent as benefactors to the SMAK modern artwork museum.
This sale comes amid a slowdown in artwork gross sales internationally. In keeping with the 2025 Artwork Basel and UBS International Artwork Market Report, world artwork gross sales declined by 12 percent in 2024, falling to $57.5 billion. The downturn is attributed to a lower in transactions on the excessive finish, with gross sales of artworks priced above $10 million dropping by 45 %.
Regardless of these difficulties, Christie’s is selling the provenance of Huge Electrical Chair to draw bidders. If the portray achieves its estimate, it may set a brand new public sale document for the collection, surpassing the $20.4 million achieved by the same work in 2014.
Alex Rotter, the public sale home’s chairman of twentieth and twenty first century artwork, instructed ARTnews in an e mail that he has lengthy thought of the portray “one of many final Warhols.”
“It’s the prime instance of an necessary collection, and a subject that he continued to return to over the course of time,” he stated.
