NEW YORK.- On November 15, Christie’s New York will offer Andy Warhol’s Mao, the most important and iconic painting by the artist to come to auction for over a decade, and recognized as one of the finest examples of Warhol’s greatest and most sensational series of the 1970’s. This extremely rare masterpiece is being sold by the Swiss-based Daros Collection and is expected to realize in excess of $12 million.

“This is one of the most exciting and spectacular landmark events for the red hot Warhol market,” said Brett Gorvy, Deputy Chairman and International Co-Head of Post-War and Contemporary Art. “This work has the most prestigious provenance, staggering wall-power and is literally an icon of the 20th century. Warhol wryly marries the omnipotent image of a Communist God with the decadence of the mass-consumer culture that Warhol epitomized and glorified. What better symbol for this moment in our time when China is becoming one of the major super-powers in the Capitalist arena.”

During 1971, the year of renewed relations between China and the United States, Warhol displayed an unusual interest in the People’s Republic and especially in its, Mao Tse-Tung. He was particularly fascinated by the image of Mao which had become one of the most recognizable faces in the world alongside famous Western idols such as Marilyn Monroe and Elvis Presley. In a typically visionary way, Warhol sensed that this alien face of Communism would have an inevitable, perverse appeal to the capitalist collector. Unabashedly the artist proclaimed, “Since fashion is art now and Chinese is in fashion, I could make a lot of money.” In 1972, Warhol produced a series of images of Mao, the present work being only one of ten large scale portraits of this subject and considered by most experts as the best. Its appearance on the market is remarkably timely due to the current surge of Asian activity in the art market, as well as being a time when the world’s top collectors will compete intensely and beyond all expectation to acquire universally acclaimed masterpieces by the leading Post-War and Contemporary artists.

The Mao series was radical as it also introduced Warhol’s sudden and complete return to painting after having been mainly preoccupied with film making for the most of the late 1960’s. The most striking characteristic of the present painting is the broad, loose and gestural brushworks and rainbow colors that ignite the surface of the portrait. When the Mao series was famously exhibited at the Musée Gallièra in Paris in 1974, Gregory Battock wrote in his review for Arts Magazine, “The new portraits and Mao paintings emphasize the coupling of technique and subject matter. Characteristically, Warhol continues to reverse what appears mainstream. We find indication of a return to aesthetics and to formal pictorial principles.”

Kynaston Mcshine of the Museum of Modern Art in New York notes that Warhol adds “a touch of subversion in a collective regime that proscribed individual artistic activity.” The genius of Warhol was to have found at the exact right moment a way to tap into public consciousness with Mao’s image being omni-present in the East and, as a result of easing international relations, an image immediately recognizable in the West. He succeeded in suggesting the deification of Mao in China as well as catching the Western perception of Mao as an ominous threat to democratic ideals. However, by subjecting the official image of the Chairman to his own inimitable signature style, Warhol ultimately transformed Mao into an innocuous Pop star – a genuine ‘Warhol.’

Andy Warhol’s Mao is being offered by the Daros Collection, based in Zurich, Switzerland, which is renowned for owning one of the greatest holdings of Warhol paintings in private hands. The collection was originally assembled by Alexander Schmidheiny, son of the highly prominent Swiss industrial family, in collaboration with art dealer Thomas Ammann, whose eye for pictures was legendary as was his captivating charisma and blond chiseled features. When both died prematurely in the early 1990’s, the collection came under the responsibility of Alexander Schmidheiny’s brother Stephan, and in May 2001, a museum-quality exhibition space was opened to the public in Zurich to showcase highlights of the collection in annual artists’ surveys and thematic shows. The mission of the Daros Collection has been historically to focus on a small grouping of artists and to acquire them in depth. Acclaimed exhibitions have been dedicated to artists such as Cy Twombly, Brice Marden, Agnes Martin, Robert Ryman, Sigmar Polke, Louise Bourgeois and Andy Warhol. More recently the Collection has acquired major holdings of Latin American Art.

The Daros Collection’s holdings of works by Andy Warhol from the 1960’s are unparalleled. Paintings include such famous works as 210 Coke Bottles, 1962, Blue Liz as Cleopatra, 1963, and Atomic Bomb, 1964. It is the wish of the board of the Daros Collection to focus on this strength and to continue acquiring works of similar pre-eminent quality from this period. Dated 1972, and symbolizing a very different moment in the career of Andy Warhol, the Mao is to be sold in order to raise proceeds for future acquisitions of prime works from the 1960’s. Auction: Post-War and Contemporary Art Evening Sale November 15 at 7 p.m. Viewing: Christie’s Galleries at Rockefeller Plaza November 10 – 15.