Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Crowns (Peso Neto) (1981) will lead Sotheby’s contemporary evening sale in New York in November. The painting, which is making its auction debut, was notably featured in Basquiat’s breakthrough eponymous solo presentation at Annina Nosei Gallery in March 1982, when the artist was just 21. It carries an estimate of $35 million–$45 million, the highest for a Basquiat work from 1981.
Crowns (Peso Neto) features familiar elements of the artist’s visual lexicon: crowned figures, halos, and tally marks. The work was also shown in 1983 at documenta 7 in Kassel, Germany, where Basquiat was one of the youngest artists to present at the exhibition. The last time this work was seen by the public was at the artist’s retrospective at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in 2018.
“The canvas not only centers the emblem that has since become one of the most recognizable symbols in contemporary art but also marks the moment Basquiat announced himself to the world, setting the stage for one of the most important careers of the 20th century,” Grégoire Billault, chairman of contemporary art at Sotheby’s New York, said in a statement.
The painting will go on view in London from October 9th to 16th, before moving to Paris from October 20th to 24th. It will then be presented at Sotheby’s new New York headquarters, the historic Breuer building at 945 Madison Avenue, which opens on November 8th.
“To present it at our new headquarters in the Breuer building, the site of Basquiat’s first major 1992 retrospective, in which it was prominently featured, is both fitting and historic,” Lucius Elliott, head of contemporary art marquee sales at Sotheby’s New York, said in a statement.
Crowns (Peso Neto) is not the only Basquiat work set to appear at auction this fall: His Untitled (Pestus) (1982), which carries a high estimate of £3 million ($3.98 million), will headline Phillips’s modern and contemporary evening auction on October 16th. The artist’s auction record is currently held by one of his largest skull paintings Untitled (1982), which sold for $110.5 million to Japanese collector Yusaku Maezawa at Sotheby’s in 2017.
