On 12 May, Andy Warhol’s canonical canvas Big Electric Chair (1967-8) from the Matthys-Colle collection, will feature as a leading highlight in Christie’s 20th-century evening sale.
The deeply moving rose-hued painting was first shown in Stockholm’s Moderna Museet in 1968, which was Warhol’s first major European retrospective. The following year it was acquired by the significant Belgian collectors Roger Matthys (1920-2016) and Hilda Colle (1919-2004). It will now be presented at Rockefeller Center where it will be auctioned for the first time with an estimate of $30 million USD.
The acrylic and silkscreen Big Electric Chair has played a central role in establishing Warhol as one of the 20th century’s most celebrated artists. The painting is a tightly cropped version of a 1964 work, part of his provocative and confronting Death and Disaster series. He poignantly said in an ARTNews interview in 1993 that “The more you look at the same exact thing, the more the meaning goes away.” The work creates a haunting intensity by its sole focus on the menacing mid-century executioner’s chair, a wire loosely laid on the floor, almost reminiscent of a severed umbilical chord, a stark musing on mortality. The pared back activity of this version – devoid of any surroundings, such as doors, pipes and signage seen in other versions – creates a hauntingly reflective, still and silent scene.
Of the 14 that comprise the series, notably, this is the only example where Warhol screens the image with black silkscreen against a single-colour ground. Of the 12 that debuted in the Modern Museet exhibition in 1968, eight are now in major institutional collections.
Roger Matthys and Hilda Colle first began collecting in the late 1950s and went on to create and curate one of the most admired contemporary art collections in the world, proving vital in the development of Belgium’s cultural landscape over the latter half of the twentieth century. Interestingly, Roger, a psychiatrist, was drawn to thought-provoking, challenging art that contemplated the human psyche and condition, evident in his choices throughout his collecting. The couple immersed themselves in the most innovative art practices emerging and evolving during the second half of the twentieth century, championing artists such as Andy Warhol and budding art movements of the time, like Pop Art. Later, he notably co-founded the leading institution Vereniging voor het Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst or V.M.H.K. (now the Friends of S.M.A.K.) in Ghent, Belgium.
Warhol’s Big Electric Chair is one of the works from the couple’s collection that had been on long-term loan to SMAK. If the painting achieves its estimate, it could set a new auction record for the series, surpassing the $20.4 million achieved by a similar work in 2014: Big Electric Chair (1967-68) executed on a trichromatic blue, green and pink ground.
For further reading, please see the below information and articles:
https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2025/04/11/christies-warhol-big-electric-chair-new-york-sales
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