Christie’s will bring together a selection of international names in the Post-War and Contemporary Art Auctions on 29 and 30 June at London’s King Street. This season’s auctions are complemented by a strong core of Post-War and Contemporary art in Christie’s 250th anniversary sale Defining British Art , including Francis Bacon’s landmark canvas Version No. 2 of Lying Figure with Hypodermic Syringe  (1968) and Lucian Freud’s Ib and her husband, (1992).

Early works by Pop icons Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein lead the evening auction and are joined by a central group of the next-generation of American artists including Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Mike Kelley, Glenn Ligon, and Kelley Walker. A major highlight of the sale will be a capsule selection of works by Jean-Michel Basquiat from the collection of celebrated actor Johnny Depp. Giants of European painting feature firmly with Gerhard Richter’s Abstraktes Bild (811-2) leading the line-up of modern masters. This season Post-War and Contemporary Art, across all auctions, is estimated to total over £90,000,000.* Featuring 45 lots, the Post-War and Contemporary Evening Auction will be a centrepiece of 20th Century at Christie’s, a series of auctions that take place from 17 to 30 June.

Another highlight of the auction, Christie’s will present a time-capsule group of nine works by Jean-Michel Basquiat from the collection of the celebrated actor, producer and musician Johnny Depp. This carefully curated selection of Basquiat paintings and drawings attests to Depp’s understanding and engagement with one of the most acclaimed icons of 20th-century painting.

Having been in dialogue with Johnny Depp since the start of the year, and following momentum in the Basquiat market since the auction record-breaking success of Untitled (1982) in May, this group of works from the early 1980s are set to be a focal point of both the Post-War and Contemporary Art Evening and Day Auctions. Depp has described his relationship with Basquiat’s work: "Nothing can replace the warmth and immediacy of Basquiat's poetry, or the absolute questions and truths that he delivered. The beautiful and disturbing music of his paintings, the cacophony of his silence that attacks our senses, will live far beyond our breath." Published in E. Navarra, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Paris 2000, pp. 16-17.

Assembled over the course of more than 25 years, the works date, almost exclusively, from 1981: the year that saw Basquiat’s transformation from clandestine street artist to global superstar. Channelling the creative energy that fuelled the musical and artistic underbelly of post-punk New York, the works give a glimpse into this meteoric period in Basquiat’s career. Together, they bear witness to the birth of a revolutionary visual language – gestures, words and symbols – that characterised Basquiat’s work at the height of his career in 1981 and 1982. Widely exhibited in many of the artist’s most important retrospectives, they stand together as a survey of the moment that launched Basquiat’s stratospheric career. Since the 1990s, Depp has cultivated a detailed appreciation of Basquiat’s works, seeking out pieces that resonate with his understanding of the artist.