Two works of Romanian painter Adrian Ghenie will go on sale this May at Sotheby’s and Christie’s auction houses in New York.

The painting auctioned at Sotheby’s is called The Second Presentation Room and goes on sale with an estimated price of USD 1 – 1.5 million. This 2011 painting is inspired by El Lissitzky’s Kabinett der Abstrakten, the installation room conceived in 1928 for the Landesmuseum in Hannover, according to a Sotheby’s presentation of the work.

“A bold testament to Ghenie’s celebrated mastery of spatial composition, seductive textural quality, and compelling visual appropriation of allegorical historical references, The Second Presentation Room exposes the apotheosis of the artist’s creative genius,” the presentation reads.

The work will go on sale at Sotheby’s Contemporary Art Evening Auction, set for May 18. Works by Cy Twombly, Roy Lichtenstein, Jean-Michel Basquiat, David Hockney or Andy Warhol, among others, will be auctioned at the same event.

The second Ghenie work to go on sale this May will be auctioned at Christie’s and it is called Nevada Landscape. The work is auctioned with an estimated price of USD 500,000 – 7000,000. It is part of the Post-War and Contemporary Art Afternoon Session auction, on May 18.

“Marrying evocative atmospherics with the gestural scrape of a palette knife, Nevada Landscape captures the dramatically expressive nature of Adrian Ghenie’s signature style,” according to a Christie’s presentation. The piece was painted in 2009, the year Ghenie had his first museum exhibition at the National Museum of Contemporary Art MNAC in Bucharest.

Earlier this year, Ghenie’s Self-Portrait as Charles Darwin, a painting created in 2011, was auctioned for GBP 3.25 million (some EUR 3.75 million) at a Sotheby’s auction in London. Also in March, two of other Ghenie paintings, sold at Christie’s Post War & Contemporary Art Evening Auction in London for a total of USD 2.7 million.  They were The Hunter (Study for Kaiser Wilhelm Institute), a 2011 painting which sold for USD 2.2 million (GBP 1.8 million), and Pie Fight Study, auctioned for almost USD 520,000 (GBP 425,000).

Last year, Ghenie’s Nickelodeon painting sold for a record USD 9 million (GBP 7.1 million) at the Post-War & Contemporary Art Evening Auction organized by Christie’s in London.

Brancusi masterpiece auctioned at Christie’s New York this May

editor@romania-insider.com