Significant Art Sale Next Week

A highly sought after art work by one of the country’s most acclaimed painters of New Zealand bird life, is predicted to bring up to $750,000 when it is offered for sale for the first time in many years in Auckland next week.

Don Binney, who died in 2012 aged 72, was an avid bird lover and his oil painting, Fatbird II, will be offered at an auction of Important and Rare Art at the International Art Centre in Parnell, Auckland, next week (subs: Tuesday, July 29). The sale also features numerous other works by renowned artists including New Zealand’s Charles Frederick Goldie, Frances Hodgkins, Peter Siddell, and the world-acclaimed British street artist known only as Banksy.

The signed and dated oil painting, Fatbird II was painted by Binney in 1964 and features a New Zealand native wood pigeon (kereru) swooping over two New Zealand tom tits, affectionately known at the time as fatbirds.

International Art Centre director Richard Thomson, who will conduct the sale, said the Binney work had not been offered for sale for many years.

He said Binney was known as a great innovator in the art world and Fatbird II, is considered to be an exemplary work from the greatest period of his art. He said like numerous Binney bird life paintings, in Fatbird II he has brought together stylised birds of two different species.

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The sale also included three works by Goldie, one of which has been described as an exceptional portrait of a 90-year-old kaumatua (respected Maori elder) and another of a respected 102-year-old Maori woman, said to be an exquisitely rendered image painted with an academic precision and deep reverence.

Three works by the British street artist known only as Banksy include a screen print, estimated to bring up to $150,000. Mr Thomson said Banksy has a world-wide reputation for challenging social norms in his art work which often expose uncomfortable truths through his sharp and visually arresting style.

City with Towered Houses, a 1974 painting and one of the two works by Peter Siddell, the New Zealand artist who died in 20111 aged 76, was expected to bring up to $200,000.

“Even in tight economic times art works of the style and quality we have listed in this sale, have always attracted a lot interest and we have been fielding calls from throughout New Zealand and other parts of the world, particularly for the Banksy and Goldie works,” Mr Thomson said.

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