HONG KONG.- On 28 May, Christie’s will present the auction debut of Andy Warhol’s rare masterpiece Flowers, the largest of the artist’s famed Flowers series to appear at auction in Asia, as a leading highlight of the 20th and 21st Century Art Evening Sales in Hong Kong. The work is one of only twelve 82 inch Flowers paintings recorded and its composition, featuring one whole and one cropped flower, is one-of-a-kind for this scale. Painted in 1965, a pivotal time in Warhol’s career, as ‘Warhol Mania’ defined America’s cultural zeitgeist, this seminal work is offered with an estimate of HK$62,800,000 – 92,800,000 / US$8,000,000 – 12,000,000.

Cristian Albu, Head of 20th and 21st Century Art, Christie’s Asia Pacific commented: “It is an honour to present this unique and truly iconic masterpiece by one of the most sought-after artists of all time – Andy Warhol. Created during the dizzying heights of Warhol’s legendary career, Flowers will forever be integral to art history and part of a cultural phenomenon that continues to fascinate the world to this day. Its magnificent size and joyous composition of magnified yellow hibiscus in bloom is unlike any other from this defining series. There continues to be a passionate demand in Asia for outstanding works by Western artists and we look forward to the response from collectors and art lovers to this masterpiece’s auction debut.”

A singular work from Warhol’s Flowers series, this is the only 82 inch example to depict one magnified hibiscus flower with another partially visible – the other eleven works of the scale feature four flowers. Further defining the piece’s uniqueness, Warhol’s hand painting is present across both the flowers and the green background, imbuing the surface with nuanced texture and impasto which works in tension with the mechanically reproductive nature of the silkscreen.

Of the mere twelve 82 inch Flowers recorded, two reside in prominent institutions – one in the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh and one in the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington – and the remaining nine are held in private collections with one unlocated, making this work a true market rarity. Before Christie’s in New York sold the Flowers from the Thomas and Doris Amann collection in 2022, the preceding time an 82 inch Flowers was offered at auction was 17 years earlier, in 2005.

The Flowers series was painted at a pivotal point in Warhol’s career. Fresh from his celebrated Death and Disaster series, Warhol joined the art dealer Leo Castelli following the summer of 1964, whose gallery was the nucleus of the New York art scene. The idea for the Flowers series came from Henry Geldzahler, the then-curator at the Met, who during a visit to the Factory – Warhol’s legendary studio – nudged the artist to try his hand at something less dire. The source material comes from an article about a new Kodak colour processing, demonstrated using an image of hibiscus flowers, in the June 1964 issue of Modern Photography. Warhol manipulated this very image and established the Flowers series for the inaugural show with Castelli at the end of 1964 – a landmark, sell-out exhibition that would go on to immortalise Warhol at the forefront of American Pop Art.

In 1965, the year this work was created, Warhol was at the apogee of his creative powers having already revolutionised the art world with his serial depictions of Campbell Soup Cans and Marilyn Monroe. The same year, he started managing the Velvet Underground and had his first ever solo museum show, held at the ICA Philadelphia. This show was a turning point in Warhol’s career – the opening night was attended by thousands and propelled ‘Warhol Mania’ to new heights. Two years after Warhol’s passing, the work was included in Andy Warhol: A Retrospective (1989-1990), the seminal exhibition organised by the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, which then travelled to The Art Institute of Chicago and a number of cities in Europe, before ending at the Centre Pompidou in Paris.