New York— Christie’s is honored to announce highlights from Un Folle Amore - The Agrati Collection will be offered during the Fall Marquee Week of sales taking place Thursday, 17 November 2022 at Christie’s New York headquarters at 20 Rockefeller Plaza. The group is comprised of works by Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Lucio Fontana, Piero Manzoni, and Minjung Kim. Additional artworks from The Agrati Collection will be sold at Christie’s Paris and Milan. The collection is comprised of nearly one hundred artworks with wonderful examples by friends and contemporaries, including Minjung Kim, close family friend and executor of Luigi Agrati’s estate.

Luigi and Peppino Agrati first began assembling their storied collection of contemporary art in the 1970s. Over the last 50 years, the collection has developed into one of the world’s premier private collections of artworks by Italian and international contemporary artists from the latter half of the 20^th century.

The majority of the works in the collection were generously donated by the Agrati family to Gallerie d’Italia, the Milanese museum of the Intesa Sanpaolo , an Italian banking group with a major public art collection as well as a network of museums across Italy. From May – August of 2018, the museum held a major retrospective of the collection: Art as a Revelation: from the Luigi and Peppino Agrati Collection.

The group is led by Untitled by Jean-Michel Basquiat ($4,000,000-7,000,000), which will be sold in the New York 21^st Century Evening Sale. Brimming with some of the artist’s most personal imagery, the painting is autobiographical in its reference to a car accident that Basquiat was involved in when he was 8 years old. Painted in 1981 when Basquiat was only 22 years old, this work is exemplary of Basquiat’s early style.

Another collection highlight and a second autobiographical artwork by a leading icon is Andy Warhol’s Self-Portrait ($2,500,000-4,000,000), offered in the New York 20^th Century Evening Sale. This 1978 example is extremely rare; one of only eight portraits in this format that Warhol produced in early 1978, and the only one remaining in private hands to feature a gold palette. This exceptional self-portrait, displaying three views of the artist superimposed one over another, has been in numerous international exhibitions, and also graced the cover of the 1979 book, Andy Warhol: Portraits of the ‘70s. It is one of the most psychologically charged and formally complex of all the series, demonstrative of Warhol’s ceaseless quest for innovation, and helped to kickstart a bold new era of experimentation and creativity.

Also highlighting the 20^th Century Evening Sale is Concetto Spaziale by Lucio Fontana ($1,800,000-3,000,000). This 1953 painting is a particularly energetic example of Fontana’s oeuvre, employing thick, repeating applications of white paint, in a series of marks and broken glass that extends outward from the center of the canvas. Defying the constraints of two dimensionality, the progression of linear bands create an impression of expansiveness and movement in space. Actively contrasting notions of volume and surface, the work is a superb example of the artist’s celebrated practice from the 1950s.