Shot Sage Blue Marilyn is one of Andy Warhol’s most iconic portraits that is currently owned by Thomas and Doris Ammann Foundation in Zürich. The Ammann siblings founded their eponymous gallery, which displayed a vast collection of blue-chip art since 1977, but after both siblings died (Thomas in 1993, and Doris in 2021), the gallery has since been transformed into a philanthropic foundation.
Now, the foundation has decided to offer the portrait for auction through Christie’s Spring Marquee Week, in May 2022. The starting price is set at $200 million, and it could make it the most expensive work of art sold at auction.
“This painting is the absolute pinnacle of Pop. Not only is it definitive within Warhol’s oeuvre, but within contemporary art and the entire art historical canon,” explains Johanna Flaum, Christie’s international director, head of post-war and contemporary art. “This May, Christie’s Spring Marquee Week will be the first time in a quarter-century that a 40-inch Marilyn canvas by Warhol has come to auction, presenting collectors with a rare opportunity.”
As Architectural Digest notes, this image is “one in a limited series of just five Marilyn portraits that Warhol painted throughout the summer of 1964, is a masterpiece, to say the least.”
Currently, the most expensive art piece sold at an auction is Leonardo Da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi, which sold in 2017 for $450.3 million. Da Vinci’s painting was expected to sell, however, for $100 million.
