Sotheby’s to offer Jeff Koon's most accomplished art work

KOLKATA: Sotheby’s New York Evening Auction of Contemporary Art will offer Jeff Koons’s most accomplished and major work of recent years: an immaculate, gleaming, seven-foot tall statue of the cartoon character and American pop culture icon Popeye. The sculpture is one of an edition of three, from which no example has appeared at auction until now. The present Popeye has never been exhibited publicly, and will make its debut in Sotheby’s York Avenue galleries on 2 May 2014. The work will carry an estimate in the region of $25 million at auction on 14 May.

Alex Rotter, co-head of Sotheby’s Worldwide Contemporary Art Department, commented in an email statement: "The history of Pop Art begins and ends with Popeye. From his first representations by Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol in the 1960s, to the present three-dimensional crescendo by Jeff Koons a half century later, this ultimate American hero and self-made man has remained a true icon of both art history and popular culture."