Painting by Romanian Adrian Ghenie sells for GBP 2.9 mln at Sotheby's auction

Adrian Ghenie's Pie Fight Interior sold for GBP 2.85 million at a Sotheby's Contemporary Art Evening Auction on October 21.

The work is part of the Pie Fight series, which the artist started in 2008 and returned to again in 2012.

"The works in the series negotiate the atrocities central to twentieth-century European history, and through a sublime fusion of abstraction and figuration, Ghenie confronts the issues of collective memory," according to a Sotheby's catalog note.

At the same auction, Banksy's Show me the Monet, an entirely hand-painted work from early in his career, sold for GBP 7.5 million. It is the second-highest price for a Banksy work at an auction.

At the same time, Jean Michel Basquiat's Justcome Suit sold for GBP 5.1 million, while Piero Manzoni's Achrome sold for GBP 1.7 million. Two works by Gerhard Richter were also sold at the auction: Abstraktes Bild for GBP 5.1 million, and Arnold, which sold for GBP 1.2 million.

(Photo: J P | Dreamstime.com)