"Angel of the North" to Appear at Sotheby’s

LONDON—A smaller-scale maquette of Antony Gormley’s Angel of the North will be a headline lot in Sotheby’s London’s Summer Contemporary Art sale July 1.

The cast-iron model, at 6 feet, 5 inches tall and 7½ feet wide, is the only work relating to Gormley’s iconic public sculpture in the north of England to be put up for auction, and it bears a pre-sale estimate of £600–800,000, a range that would double the artist’s current auction record.

As previously reported by ARTINFO, Jean-Michel Basquiat’s painting Untitled (Pecho / Orejaby) (1982-83), owned by the rock band U2, will also feature in the sale.

Joining the two high-profile lots are two paintings by Francis Bacon, Figure Turning (1982) and Study for Head of George Dyer (1967), estimated at £10–15 million and £8 million respectively. The latter, a portrait of Bacon’s long-term lover, has been in a private collection since it was bought two months after its creation from the Marlborough Gallery (long before the gallery and artist’s historic relationship devolved into a series of allegations and court actions). Figure Turning is a powerful abstract study of the body turning in perhaps uncomfortable motion.

Other notable lots at the Sotheby’s sale include Bridget Riley’s Chant 2, which was a part of the artist’s 1969 British pavilion exhibition at the Venice Biennale and carries a pre-sale estimate of £2–3 million; Warhol’s Large Campbell’s Soup Can (1964), predicted to earn £2.5–3.5 million; and Gerhard Richter’s bright, painterly, abstract work Untitled (1987), estimated at £1.5–2 million.