Auction of the Week: Rising Star Artist Emma McIntyre Sells for Five Times Estimate
The New Zealand artist’s painting fetched more than $129,000 at the Christie’s Post-War and Contemporary Art Day Sale
New Zealand–born artist Emma McIntyre became the youngest artist on the roster at David Zwirner gallery when she signed with them last fall. Coveted by collectors for the last few years, her work reached a milestone on March 9, when her 2021 painting If there is light that has weight soared past its £15,000 ($19,100) low estimate at Christie’s Post-War and Contemporary Art Day Sale and fetched £100,800 ($129,612). It marked the first time the Los Angeles–based artist’s work has appeared in a live auction.
Born in 1991, McIntyre creates dazzling abstractions that mix chance-based processes and motifs inspired by art history, including everything from the Renaissance to Helen Frankenthaler and Cy Twombly. In September, the artist hosted her first exhibition at the gallery’s East 69th Street space. An exhibition of the artist’s work is planned for David Zwirner’s Hong Kong gallery.
“I saw Emma’s work for the first time in the spring of 2022 at Frieze New York in Château Shatto’s presentation. It may sound a bit corny, but for me it was love at first sight,” David Zwirner said in a statement announcing representation. “Emma’s practice manages to fuse the new and the familiar in spectacular fashion. Her mark making and the pictorial intelligence of her compositions are rooted in the history of gestural abstraction, yet she manages to cover, with confidence, entirely new territory. I’m thankful to Liv Barrett for introducing this wonderful young artist to the gallery, and I am excited for our forthcoming solo exhibition with Emma in Hong Kong.”
In Women’s History Month, the appeal of female artists was evidenced throughout the sale. Everlyn Nicodemus’ Kvinnan (Woman) set a new world auction record for the artist (£44,100) and above estimate prices were set for Etel Adnan’s Untitled (£157,500, estimate: £60,000-80,000), Ewa Juszkiewicz’s Untitled (after Elisabeth-Louise Vigée-Le Brun) (£378,000, estimate: £180,000-250,000), Yayoi Kusama’s Butterflies (£516,600, estimate: £250,000-350,000) and Elizabeth Peyton’s Marcello (£176,400, estimate: £50,000-70,000).
