Wayne Thiebaud’s Painting of Pinball Machines Could Fetch $25 Million at Christie’s, Shattering the Artist’s Auction Record

Conventional wisdom has it that collectors tend to hold on to
trophies during moments of uncertainty. But Christie’s has managed
to secure another high-value lot for its upcoming “One” sale,
the relay-style auction that
will be streamed online and held in different salesrooms around the
world in July.

Today, the auction house announced it would offer Wayne
Thiebaud’s Four Pinball Machines (1962), which it
touts (in bold in the press release, no less) as “the most
important work by the artist in private hands.” The painting of a
row of pinball machines carries an estimate of $18 million to $25
million and is expected to more than double the artist’s previous
auction record of $8.5 million, set by Encased
Cakes (2011) in November 2019. The pinball painting
carries a guarantee, so is certain to sell.

“Four Pinball Machines is a painting that combines all
of the qualities that people treasure about Thiebaud’s work: an
iconic subject imbued with American nostalgia, the joyful palette
and the masterly quality of the expressionistic brushstrokes,” said
Alex Rotter, Christie’s chairman of postwar and contemporary art,
in a statement.

The painting was last offered at auction almost 40 years ago, in
1981, when it fetched $143,000—a record for the artist at the time.
It was purchased by real-estate developer Donald Bren, according to
the published provenance. The following year, Bren sold the
painting to San Francisco investment manager Ken Siebel and
his wife Judy, Bloomberg reports.
Seibel—who is the father-in-law of California governor Gavin
Newsom—said he was selling for estate-planning reasons.

“It’s certainly one of the very best investments,” Seibel told
Bloomberg.

Thiebaud, who turns 100 in November, is known for his
sugar-tinged take on the Pop movement, creating heavily impastoed
images of cakes, gumball machines, and ties that evoke nostalgia
and desire.

Four Pinball Machines was created during a pivotal
year for the artist, when he opened his first solo show at the
Allan Stone Gallery in New York (where this work was first sold)
and was the subject of a solo show at the de Young Museum in San
Francisco. The picture was last seen publicly more than 20 years
ago, when it was included in the artist’s retrospective at the
Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.

Notably, a study for Four Pinball Machines, also
from 1962, fetched $3.6 million at Sotheby’s last spring, exceeding
its $3 million estimate and coming in at number 13 on the artist’s
list of top auction results, according to the Artnet Price
Database.

The final version of Four Pinball Machines will be
offered in the New York leg of the July 10 round-robin auction,
which will also take place in Hong Kong, London, and Paris. The
sale is a substitute for the marquee Impressionist, Modern,
postwar, and contemporary sales, which are normally held in New
York in May and in London in June.

The post Wayne Thiebaud’s Painting of Pinball Machines Could
Fetch $25 Million at Christie’s, Shattering the Artist’s Auction
Record appeared first on artnet News.