Wed, Mar 11, 2015
A work by an Italian artist charting every England footballing defeat since 1874, sold for £425,000 ($638,116) at a Sotheby’s auction in London, UK, yesterday.
The sculpture was sold to an anonymous collector bidding over the telephone via a French-speaking member of Sotheby’s staff.
This was one of 50 works offered in the hotly anticipated ‘Bear Witness’ sale, which together brought a total of £26.5 million, well in excess of pre-sale expectations.
Stretching from Scotland’s 2-1 defeat of England in Glasgow in 1874 to Romania’s 2-1 victory at the 1998 World Cup, this monumental work lists all the ignominious moments the national team has suffered over the years etched on black granite, like an epitaph on a memorial.
The monument was created by the Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan, enfant terrible of the art world, known for his satirical and humorous sculptures.
Cattelan’s other well-known works include La Nona Ora (The Ninth Hour) which depicts Pope John Paul II being struck down by a meteorite.
The Italian artist first exhibited the football monument at an exhibition in London in 1999 and its sale at Sotheby’s follows England’s worst ever performance at a football World Cup in 2014, including losses to Italy and Uruguay.
The Bear Witness sale features an extraordinary single-owner collection of nearly 550 paintings, sculpture and works of art.
The remainder of the collection will be sold today and tomorrow in London.
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