HONG KONG.- Christie’s will present Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Sabado por la Noche (Saturday Night) (estimate: HK$95,000,000 – 125,000,000 / US$13,000,000 – 16,000,000) as the leading highlight of the 20th/21st Century Evening Sale in Hong Kong on 28 March, coinciding with Art Basel for the very first time. This immersive masterpiece sits amongst the most iconic in Basquiat’s oeuvre, capturing his signature style of masterfully interweaving text, iconography, and human figures. The work marks a defining moment in Basquiat’s career, executed in 1984, the same year as his first solo museum show which travelled to the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London and Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam after its debut at Edinburgh's Fruitmarket Gallery, affirming his ascent to global fame. Its multi-layered composition, comprising at once material richness and thematic complexity, epitomises the unique creative vocabulary that marked Basquiat as one of the most important artists of the last century.


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Ada Tsui, Head of Evening Sale, 20th/21st Century Art, Christie’s Asia Pacific commented: “It is a privilege to present Sabado por la Noche (Saturday Night), an iconic masterpiece that reverberates with Basquiat’s inimitable visual language. From the record-breaking sale of Warrior in 2021, to major exhibitions in Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Seoul, Christie's has been cultivating the Asian market for Basquiat for many years. His powerful work transcends borders and speaks to collectors all over the world, and this sale in Hong Kong is a testament to the demand we see in the region for Western masterpieces of this calibre. We encourage our clients and audiences to come and experience the passionate pulse of Basquiat’s Saturday Night in person.”

In Sabado por la Noche (Saturday Night), Basquiat fuses a bounty of cultural sources and ideas, including two ‘Griot’ figures - a key motif for the artist, inspired by West African storytellers or poets - alongside street art, and human anatomy. Interwoven throughout the nuanced composition are traces of the artist's intellectual lexicon: embedded sheets of paper are scrawled with symbols relating to the solar system, Fibonacci’s golden ratio, ‘knowledge’, ‘truth’, and ‘birth’, and doubled gyres and spirals.

Christie’s has presented multiple successful Basquiat sales in Hong Kong, including Warrior (1982) – sold in March 2021 for HK$323,600,000 / US$41,857,351, which is the most valuable Western artwork ever sold in the region and the artist’s Asian auction record. Sabado por la Noche (Saturday Night) was previously included in the acclaimed exhibition ‘Heads On: Basquiat & Warhol’, co-hosted by Christie’s during Seoul Art Week in September 2023.


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