LONDON.- A vibrant work by the 105-year-old artist Carmen Herrera, Untitled, completed in 2013, was one of the highlights of Bonhams’ Contemporary Art sale today (Tuesday 27 April) in London. The work achieved £187,750.

The 28-lot sale made a total of £1,610,793, with 93% sold by lot, and 99% sold by value.

Head of Sale, Cassi Young, commented: “Carmen Herrera is probably the world’s oldest working artist, and yet it has taken an unforgivably long time for her to finally receive the recognition she deserves – having only garnered the attention of a male-dominated artworld in her late nineties. I’m absolutely delighted that her work Untitled achieved such an impressive result, especially alongside a number of other wonderful works by top female contemporary artists, including Rebecca Horn, Tschabalala Self, and Genieve Figgis – and record-breaking results for Suzanne McClelland and Flora Yukhnovich.”

Born in Cuba in 1915, to journalist parents, Herrera trained in Havana in the 1930s as an architect when, as she herself says, she first appreciated the boundless possibilities of the straight line. She had spells in Paris, where she spent time in the company of Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir and Matisse, to name but a few, before moving to New York in the 1940s, where she has lived ever since. Under the radar for many years, Herrera finally won international recognition in the early 2000s when she finally received her first solo show – and later sold her first painting, at the age of 89.

Other highlights of the sale include:




• Two works by the emerging young artist Flora Yukhnovich (Born 1990), both referred to as Untitled, 2018, far exceeded their individual presale estimates of £2,000 - 3,000, achieving £16,500, and £21,500 respectively – the latter being a new world auction record for a work on paper by the artist.

• Suzanne McClelland, "The Chemist", 2013. Sold for £34,000 (estimate: £3,000 - 5,000). A new world record for the artist.

• Rebecca Horn, Turm der Fliehenden Bücher, 1994. Sold for £55,250 (estimate: £30,000 - 50,000).

• Tschabalala Self, Wash N' Set (Yellow), 2019. Sold for £50,250 (estimate: £40,000 – 60,000). Tschabalala Self was born in Harlem, New York, in 1990 and studied fine art at Bard College. Her mother ran a trade programme at the Bronx Community College and was a talented seamstress. Following her mother’s death, Self began to work with textiles – using her mother’s old sewing machine, she layered different fabrics onto the canvas, creating mix-media collages that explore cultural attitudes toward race and gender. She has said that her aim is to create a ‘new rhetoric’ for Black people and people of colour. Self was one of the stars of Art Basel Miami in 2016, and her work features in Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, Astrup Fearnley, Oslo, and Yuz Museum, Shanghai, amongst others.

• Genieve Figgis, Family Portrait, 2015. Sold for £60,250. (estimate: £55,000-75,000). Born in Ireland in 1972, Figgis first gained recognition through social media. In 2014 she made her American debut exhibition at Harpers Books in East Hampton, New York and published her first book, Making Love with the Devil. Her work combines Rococo influences with a playful take on upper-class luxury culture.

• UNTITLED (US),1997, an early work by KAWS. Sold for £375,250. (estimate: £60,000 - 80,000).

• The top lot of the sale was Untitled (Baum 18) by Albert Oehlen, 2014. Sold for £610,750 (estimate: £380,000-580,000). Albert Oehlen has been at the forefront of artistic innovation since the late 1970s. Combining influences from Surrealism to Abstraction, Oehlen’s often witty, sometimes provocative, works feature in important galleries and collections around the world. One of Oehlen’s Baumbilder (Tree Paintings), Untitled (Baum 18) was included in the exhibition Albert Oehlen: Woods near Oehle at the Cleveland Museum of Art in 2016-2017, and in Albert Oehlen – An Old Painting In Spirit, at Kunsthalle Zurich in 2015.