Andy Warhol’s Big Electric Chair will Highlight Christie’s 20th Century Evening Sale

Big Electric Chair was first shown in Warhol’s first major European retrospective at Stockholm’s Moderna Museet in 1968 and the following year was acquired by legendary Belgian collectors Roger Matthys and Hilda Colle. The work has been the crown jewel of the prestigious Matthys-Colle Collection for more than half a century. This May, it will be presented at auction for the first time.

Alex Rotter, Chairman of 20^th and 21^st Century Art, Christie’s, remarks, “Big Electric Chair is the ultimate still life. It is singular within Warhol’s oeuvre—a solitary object in a quiet moment, reflecting the fragility of the human condition. The work is a tribute to the great still lifes that come before it, from Dutch Masters to Cezanne. The Matthys-Colle Collection Big Electric Chair is powerful and defiant, and we are honored to have been entrusted by the family to steward this masterpiece at Christie’s.”

Standing alongside the most significant works in his career, Big Electric Chair is seminal within Warhol’s oeuvre and has played a central role in establishing Warhol as the 20^th century’s most celebrated artist. The painting is a tightly cropped version of an infamous Warholian image which dates to the early 1960s, the basis of what is now widely recognized as the highly coveted Death and Disaster series. This example is a standout. While other versions include surroundings— including doors, pipes and signage—this work is distilled down to the electric chair alone, the silhouette creating an aura that encourages contemplation on the binary nature of life and death, in the same vein as memento mori paintings from the Renaissance. Warhol’s Big Electric Chair paintings from 1967 and 1968 have been described by legendary Metropolitan Museum of Art curator Henry Geldzahler as the most powerful paintings in Pop Art. Of the 12 that debuted in the Modern Museet in 1968, eight are now in major institutional collections and of the 14 total that comprise the series, this is the sole example in which Warhol screens the image with black silkscreen against a single-color ground.

Peter van der Graaf, International Specialist, Post-War and Contemporary Art, Christie’s, remarks, “Roger Matthys and Hilda Colle count among the most influential personalities in the Belgian Contemporary art world. With a personal collection reflecting important art movements of the contemporary era for the past 50 years, they have left their mark by lending many of their works to artist’s retrospectives and exhibitions as well as a long-term loan to the S.M.A.K. including works by other icons of the 21st century. We are grateful to have the opportunity to present this Warhol masterpiece, the cornerstone of the Matthys-Colle Collection, to the next generation of great collectors.”

The Matthys-Colle Collection is among the most esteemed contemporary art collections worldwide and has been instrumental in the development of Belgium’s cultural landscape over the latter half of the twentieth century, with Roger notably co-founding leading institution Vereniging voor het Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst or V.M.H.K. (now the Friends of S.M.A.K.) in the city of Ghent. Roger Matthys and Hilda Colle first began collecting in the late 1950s. Roger was a psychiatrist by trade and his interest in the human psyche came across in his collecting. He was drawn to complex, thought-provoking art, favoring works that presented their viewer with a challenge. Roger and Hilda’s passion for contemporary art brought them to Paris, all throughout Europe, and eventually to the United States at a time when other European collectors were reticent to travel overseas or learn about American artists. The couple pioneered, immersing themselves in the most innovative art practices evolving during the second half of the twentieth century. Championing artists like Andy Warhol and nascent art movements of the time, like Pop Art, the couple and their collection have since revolutionized the art world across the globe.

Main Image: ANDY WARHOL (1928-1987) Big Electric Chair, acrylic and silkscreen ink on canvas, 54 x 74 in. (137.2 x 188 cm.) Executed in 1967-1968. Estimate on Request; with low estimate in the region of $30 million