Achievements: These days, prices for Ghenie’s work, such as his abstract paintings of faces, have skyrocketed, and he has a long waiting list of private buyers. In October 2016, Christie's auction house sold the painting Nickelodeon for $7.1 million. Ghenie’s Sunflowers of 1937, a reinterpretation of Van Gogh’s work, sold at Sotheby’s for $4.5 million. The record price for this artist at auction is $9,286,700 USD for Degenerate Art, sold at Sotheby's New York in 2022. | About the Artist: Ghenie graduated in 2001 from the University of Art and Design in Romania. His works are filled with rich textures and colors, the expressive images balancing in between clarity and decay. Ghenie paints with a palette knife and stencils, and often chooses to depict important figures from history. Ghenie’s paintings include themes of history, memory, and the legacy of villainous historical figures, particularly of his native Romania. He paints portraits of figures particularly associated with genocide and mass suffering, that appear in his work gnawed and slashed, blurred and speckled. Ghenie’s interest in historical trauma is deeply tied to his experience growing up in Romania. He was twelve in December 1989, when dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu and his wife, Elena, were tried and executed, ending a long and brutal regime. |
Sources:
https://www.pacegallery.com/artists/adrian-ghenie/
http://www.artnet.com/artists/adrian-ghenie/
https://www.pacegallery.com/artists/adrian-ghenie/
http://www.artnet.com/artists/adrian-ghenie/