A Signature Ed Ruscha Text Painting Could Fetch $40 Million at Christie’s Next Month and Shatter the Artist’s Auction Record

A famed Ed Ruscha painting from
the early 1960s will headline Christie’s post-war and contemporary
art evening sale next month, the auction house announced
today. 

The work, a cornflower blue
canvas that depicts the word “Radio” being pulled apart by metal
clamps, is expected to fetch between $30 million and $40 million at
the sale on November 13, giving it a good chance of breaking the
81-year-old artist’s auction record. 

“This consummate work by Ruscha
is an early example of his revolutionary Text paintings, a body of
work that established him as one of the most innovative and
influential painters of his generation,” said Alex Rotter,
Christie’s chairman of post-war and contemporary art, in a
statement. The painting has for years been on his list of the “most
desirable works in private hands,” he added.

Wryly titled
Hurting the Word Radio
#2, the painting was
made in 1964 and acquired directly from the artist by collectors
Joan and Jack Quinn in the early 1970s. Based in Beverly Hills,
Joan and Jack Quinn have been collecting for more than 50 years,
amassing during that time a particularly strong assortment of
postwar southern California art. 

The couple has owned it ever
since, making this the first time the painting will have appeared
at auction. There’s a good chance the painting will smash Ruscha’s
current auction record, which was set in 2014 when his 1963
painting—titled Smash, as it happens—went for $30.4 million at Christie’s New
York.

Hurting the Word Radio
#2 is a prominent
example of Ruscha’s early text paintings, a body of work that, in
the 1960s, positioned him next to pop progenitors like Andy Warhol
and Roy Lichtenstein in the vanguard of contemporary artists. Other
Ruscha paintings to featuretrompe l’oeil text
distorted by c-clamps are included in institutional collections,
such as Hurting the Word
Radio #1, which is owned
by the Menil Collection in Houston, and Securing The Last Letter
(Boss), which belongs to
the Museum Brandhorst in Munich.

Ruscha’s painting is on view
now through October 4 at Christie’s London. After that, it will
travel to New York for Christie’s post-war and
contemporary art evening sale on November 13.

The post A Signature Ed Ruscha Text Painting Could Fetch $40
Million at Christie’s Next Month and Shatter the Artist’s Auction
Record appeared first on artnet News.