An Andy Warhol portrait of Marilyn Monroe is expected to become the most expensive artwork of the 20th century to sell at auction when it is offered at Christie’s this year for an expected $200 million.
The silkscreen painting from 1964, titled Shot Sage Blue Marilyn and showing the actress with bright blue eye-shadow against a blue backdrop, was billed by Christie’s as one of the greatest paintings in history, in the company of Boticelli’s Birth of Venus or Leonardo’s Mona Lisa.
Warhol began making silkscreen paintings in August 1962, turning out versions of Monroe, who had just died, Elvis Presley, Elizabeth Taylor, Marlon Brando and the Mona Lisa.
The Monroe portrait was based on a promotional image from the film Niagara, taken by Henry Hathaway in 1953. Warhol created several versions in brilliant colours, sometimes with her features slightly askew. He adopted a fast, cheap, commercial printing technique to render his own versions of other people’s pictures, using the fame of his subjects “to make himself famous”, Bob Colacello, who worked with Warhol in the Seventies and Eighties, said..
According to Christie’s, the blue Monroe used a more refined printing technique that was so time consuming that Warhol abandoned it after making a few portraits of Monroe.
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The blue silkscreen, described as a “shot Marilyn” because a woman wielding a pistol walked into Warhol’s Factory studio and shot a hole through a stack of four Monroe portraits, was acquired by Thomas and Doris Ammann, a brother and sister whose gallery in Zurich showcased 20th-century artists.
Thomas died in 1993 and Doris continued to run the gallery until her death last year. It is being offered for sale for the benefit of their foundation, which is dedicated to improving education and healthcare for children.
