Basquiat at Christie’s “El Gran Espectaculo” sold for 67 million dollars

A large canvas by Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-1988), from the collection of the designer Valentino Garavani, was auctioned at Christie’s in New York, on the night of Monday May 15, for 67,110,000 dollars (61,680,000 EUR). The work, entitled “El Gran Espectaculo (The Nile),” painted when the African-American artist was just 22 years old and is one of three large-scale canvases he made that year, started at an estimated $45 million : the triptych depicts skulls and floating figures with scrawled phrases referring to ancient mythological texts.

Three bidders (including famed gallery owner Larry Gagosian, but he’s not the buyer) progressively upped the stakes for the work, which eventually fetched $58 million and was sold to a telephone bidder with Vanessa Fusco, specialist of Christie’s of New York, for a final price of just over 67 million dollars with commissions. The result was the fourth highest price paid for a work by the father of American graffiti who died of an overdose at the age of just 27: the artist’s record is 110.5 million dollars, set in May 2017 with «Untitled» ( 1982). The proceeds from the sale of the Basquiat, a Christie’s spokesperson explained, will go in part to the benefit of the Valentino Academy, founded in 2013 to promote excellence, strengthen corporate culture and give support and inspiration to young talents in their growth paths and development within the Maison.

The designer’s collection
The large canvas «El Gran Espectaculo (The Nile)» remained in Valentino Garavani’s personal collection for 18 years and appeared in an issue of «Vanity Fair» magazine in 2010 in which the iconic Italian fashion designer was photographed seated in front to the large painting of over 3.6 meters. Four years earlier, Valentino had paid homage to the artist with a collection of graffiti-printed dresses that used images licensed from the archive of Basquiat’s heirs. In May 2021, the co-founder of the Maison Valentino, Giancarlo Giammetti, sold a 1983 Basquiat painting for $93.1 million. «El Gran Espectaculo (The Nile)» was exhibited in a 2005 Basquiat traveling exhibition that started at the Brooklyn Museum in New York: it was loaned by Garavani after he bought it in the same year at a Sotheby’s auction in New York , where it sold for $5.2 million.

Also during the New York spring auctions on Thursday 18 May, Sotheby’s will propose the monumental tribute to Basquiat’s jazz entitled “Now’s the Time” (1985), which was part of the Peter Brant collection, with an estimate of around 30 million dollars. It is one of Basquiat’s most unusual stylistically works: it depicts an opaque black disc with only a few white writings. While the African-American artist has never lacked a following in the marketplace, in recent years his works have fetched some of the highest sums at auctions and his name has become a trademark in mainstream contemporary art.