Famous Adrian Ghenie sells painting in NY for USD 2.59 M

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Self-Portrait as Vincent Van Gogh” painting by famous Romanian painter Adrian Ghenie was sold within a Sotheby’s auction in New York on Wednesday for USD 2.59 million, compared to an initial estimation of USD 200,000-300,000.Adrian-Ghenie-Self-Portrait-as-Vincent-Van-Gogh-200-300k-2.59m-USD

From the influential (Charles Darwin, Vincent van Gogh and Marcel Duchamp) through to the notorious (Hitler, Lenin and Stalin), and the popular (Elvis, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy), Adrian Ghenie has painted both the famous and infamous. Among these however, there are only two with whom he personally identifies: of Ghenie’s titled self-portraits, the most remarkable are those belonging to a small group of recent self-images centered on the effigies of Darwin and Van Gogh. Indeed, in many ways these two historical figures form the structural pillars of Ghenie’s recent work. Based on one of the very last self-portraits by the Dutch Post-Impressionist (Musée d’Orsay, Paris), Self Portrait as Vincent van Gogh is an extraordinary composite of the historical and the personal. In layers that are pastose and wonderfully variegated, this painting embodies a painterly palimpsest of masked and spliced identity and identification. Into this work Ghenie poured his childhood adulation for the post-impressionist master and, through it, he has addressed the nefarious implications of Charles Darwin’s theory of biological evolutionism,” reads Sotheby’s catalogue note.

The 38-year-old Romanian artist registered another sale success this year in February, when The Sunflowers in 1937‘ was sold for GBP 3,117,000 (about EUR 4 M) in a Sotheby’s auction in London. The work was inspired by Van Gogh’s famous “Sunflower”. It was a record price for the Romanian painter, more than double compared to his previous price record.

On the same month of February, a portrait of Elena Ceaușescu, wife of former communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, painted by Adrian Ghenie, was also sold in London for GBP 197,000 (EUR 250,190).

Adrian Ghenie, born in 1977 in Baia Mare (northwestern Romania), has his exquisite works on display in several museums throughout the world, including the Centre Pompidou of Paris, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Hammer Museum and the Museum of Contemporary Art of Los Angeles, and the SMAK (Municipal Museum of Modern Art) of Ghent, Belgium. He represented Romania in the 2015 Biennale of Venice, Italy with the  ‘Darwin’s Room‘ project.

In 2015, Ghenie presented his acclaimed exhibition at the 56th Venice Biennale. Entitled Darwin’s Room and shown in the Romanian Pavilion as it would have appeared in 1938, this show explored the repercussions of Darwin’s revolutionary discoveries, following the darker implications of ‘survival of the fittest’ through to some troubling conclusions. “Among the paintings of Darwin, Hitler, and images invoking the infamous Nazi book burnings and Degenerate Art Exhibition of 1937, Self Portrait as Vincent van Gogh formed a crucial part of this landmark show. Furthermore, acting as a pendent piece to Ghenie’s extraordinary The Sunflowers in 1937, and as the first from a series of three works after Van Gogh’s own painted likeness, the present work is truly emblematic of Ghenie’s challenging revival of both history painting and self-portraiture,” further reads the auction house’s catalogue.

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