TRACEY EMIN ON HER MAN MUNCH

Join Tracey Emin in her London home to discuss all things Edvard Munch with Sotheby’s Chairmen Oliver Barker and Simon Shaw. The trio team up ahead of a landmark sale the Norwegian Expressionist’s works at Sotheby’s London (25 March) and the reopening of Emin and Munch’s joint exhibition at London’s Royal Academy this summer. Hear how Tracey Emin was first introduced to the art of Edvard Munch via David Bowie, how Munch’s radical art compares to punk rock, and has now become a metaphor for the times we live in.

Sotheby’s is poised to offer two works by Edvard Munch as star lots of its first major auction of 2021 on 25 March. Both come from the collection of the artist’s friend and neighbour, and together they are expected to make over £13.5 million. The first work, Self-Portrait with Palette from 1926 (est. £4.5-6.5 million), is the first self-portrait of the artist to come to auction in 15 years. The second work Embrace on the Beach from 1904 (est. £9-12 million) set the auction record for the artist when it last came to sale in 2006. It once briefly hung in the study of Hermann Goering, who was a secret fan of Munch’s worth, despite the artist being banned by the Nazi regime.

The works will be offered in Sotheby’s “Modern Renaissance” sale at Sotheby’s in London, alongside Pablo Picasso’s wartime portrait of his lover Dora Maar, a David Hockney Painting inspired by one of his favourite Old Master paintings in the National Gallery, and a rare 15^thcentury Renaissance portrait by the Italian Pollauiolo, once owned by the first scientist ever employed by the British Secret Service.

Visit www.Sothebys.com/ModernRenaissance for more.

Video clips:

• Tracey Emin in Conversation with Sotheby’s Chairmen Oliver Barker and Simon Shaw
• Footage of Edvard Munch’s Self-Portrait with Palette from 1926 (est. £4.5-6.5 million)
• Footage of Edvard Munch’s Embrace on the Beach from 1904 (est. £9-12 million)
• Footage of other highlights from Sotheby’s 25 March “Modern Renaissance” Sale:

• David Hockney’s Tall Dutch Trees After Hobbema (Useful Knowledge), 2017, est. £6.5-8.5 million.  This is the first work to come to auction from a series of 20 late paintings by Hockney, and appeared on the front cover of The New Yorker magazine in 2017. The painting was inspired by one of Hockney’s favourite Old Masters in the National Gallery in London, Meindert Hobbema’s The Avenue at Middelharnis (1689), which he first saw aged 18.
• Arshile Gorky’s, Garden in Sochi (est. £2.2-2.8 million), is inspired by the artist’s childhood memories of his father’s garden in his native Armenia. He only created a small handful of works on this theme, with two others now in the collection of New York’s Museum of Modern Art.

• The Exterior of Sotheby’s on New Bond Street, London, where the Modern Renaissance Auction will take place on March 25 2021.