LONDON.- Phillips announced highlights from the London Frieze week sales of 20th Century & Contemporary Art this October. Building on Phillips’ record-breaking prices achieved for emerging contemporary artists, the Evening Sale proudly presents a selection of works by ultra-contemporary women artists including Austyn Weiner, Rebecca Ness, Michaela Yearwood-Dan, and Anna Weyant. Post-war Italian masterworks from Alberto Burri and Salvatore Scarpitta also feature, alongside highlights from Mark Bradford, Cecily Brown, Elizabeth Peyton, Yayoi Kusama, and Mickalene Thomas. Comprised of 37 lots, the Evening Sale will take place on 14 October at 4pm BST, after the Day Sale on 13 October at 12pm BST.
Olivia Thornton, Head of 20th Century & Contemporary Art, Europe, said “We are very excited to present our London Frieze week auctions. It is always a celebratory moment in the global art calendar, where London is abuzz with collectors and the very best 20th century and contemporary art. We look forward to welcoming our international collectors both in person and online when Phillips’ Berkeley Square galleries open for the view on 5 October.”
Leading the Evening Sale is Alberto Burri’s 1956 painting, Sacco e Rosso. A defining example of Burri’s iconoclastic practice and the radical experimentation of European post-war art, Sacco e Rosso is a work of exceptional harmony and poignancy, its textures and chromatic variances deeply evocative of the traumas of the 20th century. Undoubtably Burri’s most prized works, the burlap paintings are exceptionally rare. Held in the same collection for over 30 years, Sacco e Rosso is one of only 15 such works in existence, one of which is held in the permanent collection of the Tate Gallery in London. Emphasising its status as a defining piece of Italian post-war art, the work was once held in the personal collection of renowned art historian and Burri expert Cesare Brandi and comes to auction with an extensive exhibition history.
Salvatore Scarpitta’s Red Freight is a rare and arresting example of the Italian American artist’s iconic three-dimensional wrapped paintings that brought him international renown. Executed in 1961, it is composed of wide, sculptural bands of wine-red strips of canvas, wound in a sequence of alternating horizontal and diagonal directions like bandages across a body. The work captures the balance between tension, depth, and plasticity that characterises Scarpitta’s most powerful work. This painting achieved a world record for Scarpitta at the time in which it was last offered at auction.
