This week, Christie’s will open Wolfgang Tillmans: The Way We Look, an exhibition of 15 works by the photographer, all coming to market for the first time since they were acquired by an anonymous collector.
The group focuses on the German artist’s pivotal work from the 1990s, including his portraits of friends and cultural figures such as Kate Moss, still life compositions and large-scale camera-less abstract works.
The exhibition runs from 12 to 21 February (closed 15 and 16 February) at Christie’s King Street saleroom in London. The photographs will then be offered for sale in the post-war and contemporary art day sale in London on 6 March and online (26 February-12 March). Estimates range broadly, from around £3,000 to £120,000.
Urgency XIX (2006), estimate: £120,000 to £180,0000
Courtesy Christie’s
“What’s really exciting about this collection is that most of the works are from the 1990s, a really iconic period for Tillmans,” says Isabel Bardawil, the co-head of Christie’s post-war and contemporary art day sale. “It shows the range of what Tillmans was doing in the 90s, in the lead up to his Turner Prize win in 2000. So, there are his still lifes, some of his fashion work—like an amazing image of Kate Moss, which was commissioned for American Vogue in 1997—and his big abstract works.”
The highest value work is Urgency XIX (2006), one of his large-scale, unique camera-less photography pieces made using controlled light exposure on photosensitive paper—the only work not from the 90s in this collection, made at a time when Tillmans was exploring the possibilities of his medium.
“Tillmans’s work has been included in both contemporary art sales and photography sales, and the highest prices are achieved for his large abstracts, like Urgency XIX,” Bardawil says. Tillmans’s record at auction was set by Freischwimmer #84 (2004), which made £500,000 (£605,000 with fees) at Phillips in 2017.
“The abstracts are very painterly, and I think that’s the thing about Tillmans—he’s an artist who uses photography as his medium, rather than just a photographer,” Bardawil says, adding: “He’s had regular international exhibitions but I think the exhibition at MoMA in New York last year was particularly successful, and we’ve seen good sales in the US since then.”
