Sale of $70.5M Cy Twombly Wraps Sotheby's $1 Billion Series
- November 12, 2015 12:38
One of Cy Twombly's scribbled "blackboard" works was sold in New York on Wednesday by the Los Angeles attorney Sydney Irmas and his wife, Audrey, and proceeds will help fund a new events center in the collectors' city. It led a solid sale totaling $295 million for 54 lots and ended Sotheby's fall auction series of Impressionist, modern, contemporary and post-war art that hit the $1-billion mark total.
Twombly's 1968 oil and crayon canvas "Untitled (New York City)" fetched an artist auction record of $70.5 million in Sotheby's Contemporary Art sale.
The canvas was sold to benefit the Audrey Irmas Foundation for Social Justice, stated Sotheby's. The foundation is expected to set aside $30 million from the sale to help fund the 55,000-square-foot Audrey Irmas Pavilion at the Wilshire Boulevard Temple, which will be designed by Rem Koolhaas's Office for Metropolitan Architecture, reports the LA Times.
![Peter Paul Rubens (Flemish, 1577–1640), After Titian (Tiziano Vecelli) (Italian [Venetian], c. 1488–1576), Rape of Europa, 1628–29. Oil on canvas, 71 7/8 x 79 3/8 in.](/images/c/e2/2e/Jan20_Rape_of_Europa100x100_c.jpg "Peter Paul Rubens (Flemish, 1577–1640), After Titian (Tiziano Vecelli) (Italian [Venetian], c. 1488–1576), Rape of Europa, 1628–29. Oil on canvas, 71 7/8 x 79 3/8 in.")
100x100_c.jpg "Boba Fett L-slot rocket-firing prototype action figure, predecessor to the Boba Fett figure in Kenner’s popular 1979 Star Wars toy line, 3.75in tall, AFA-graded 80+ NM (archival case). Encapsulated with notarized CIB COA. Sold for a world-record price of $236,000 against an estimate of $100,000-$200,000")
