Warhol’s ‘Double Elvis’ expected to fetch $50 million at Sotheby’s
In London, Tate Modern director Nicholas Serota stands in February 2002 in front of an Andy Warhol work featuring Elvis Presley.
New York – Adding to a month of big-ticket pop-art auctions here, Sotheby’s has announced that a 1963 Andy Warhol portrait of Elvis Presley will be auctioned in May and is expected to sell for $50 million, according to The Associated Press.
According to Businessweek, the print — which shows a double monochrome image of the singer pointing a revolver at an unseen adversary — is one of 22 silkscreens that were produced by the artist and exhibited in Los Angeles in 1963.
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Citing the auction house, the AP said this was the first “Double Elvis” to go up for sale in 17 years.
The seller is identified only as a private collector. Nine of the 22 prints are in museum collections.
Perhaps driving up the bidding well in advance, Alberto Mugrabi, whose family has a large Warhol collection, was quoted as telling Businessweek that the image was “very desirable.”
“I’d love to have it,” he was quoted as saying.
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Also in May, Sotheby’s will auction “Sleeping Girl,” a 1964 Roy Lichtenstein which is expected to sell for $40 million. The auction house that month will also put Edvard Munch’s famed 1893 painting “The Scream” on the block for an anticipated $80 million.
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