Christopher Wool, regarded by many as one of America’s foremost contemporary artists.
Christopher Wool is an American abstract artist interested in postmodern and post-conceptual ideas. He’s a fairly divisive figure in the art world, with some viewing his work as groundbreaking and innovative, and others condemning him as superficial and lacking real talent.
Nevertheless, his art is hugely popular, and since 2010, it has regularly commanded astronomical prices. Wool’s prints, for instance, account for 45% of his work sold at auction, and they tend to sell for between £1,000 and £5,000, though it’s not uncommon for them to reach up to £50,000.
Listed below are Christopher Wool’s six most expensive prints sold at auction. If you own a Christopher Wool print and would like to find out more about how to sell it, or how much it might be worth, contact Mark Littler today.
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Untitled
Though Christopher Wool is probably best-known for his word paintings and prints (which began in the 1980s), in the 1990s, the artist started to experiment with more abstract concepts. This silkscreen on linen from 2011 is an example of such abstraction, and it was sold by Christie’s in May 2024 for a staggering £770,771, almost £100,000 more than its estimate.
2011 was the year Wool took part in the 54th Venice Biennale, exhibiting eight of these inkblot-style silkscreens. The shapes and colours of the images are reminiscent of Rorschach tests (whether this was Wool’s intention or not is uncertain), though upon closer inspection, the silkscreens have none of the psychological tests’ symmetry.
Untitled sold by Christie’s in 2024
Untitled (D387)
This silkscreen from 2008 was sold by Sotheby’s in February 2015 for £450,000, far surpassing its estimated £200,000 to £300,000. The blue palette employed in this print is decidedly unusual for Christopher Wool, who usually confines himself to greys and blacks, only sometimes overlaying bursts of colour on monochrome backgrounds. The fluid, scrawling lines of the piece, however, are typical of the artist, who often opts for instinctive, gestural mark-making in the style of Cy Twombly or Jean-Michel Basquiat.
Untitled (D387) sold by Sotheby’s in 2015
One Year No Halloween (P464)
Christopher Wool is an intensely private man and rarely gives interviews. In the past, however, he has stated that his experience of New York in the ‘80s and ‘90s had a profound impact on his creations. In his own words, “New York was, especially back then, just a gritty, gritty place, and I was interested visually in all of it.”
His interest in the urban environment is reflected in his work; this print, for instance, contains the hasty, rough elements of street art and graffiti, and its colour palette exudes the grey grittiness that permeates cities. Fittingly, it was sold in New York by Phillips de Pury & Company in November 2010 for £309,050.
One Year No Halloween (P464) sold by Phillips de Pury & Company in 2010
Three Women I/Three Women II/Three Women III
In 2007, the Friedrich Petzel Gallery collaborated with Edition Schellmann Contemporary Art production to create the Door Cycle group exhibition. Several well-known artists (including Wool and Anish Kapoor) were invited to create and present works on prefabricated hollow-core doors; the idea was inspired by Willem de Kooning’s 1964-66 Door Cycle paintings of female figures on hollow-core wood doors.
Wool’s contribution to the exhibition was the Three Women triptych. The artist also created a small edition of triptych screenprints in different shades, which remain among his most popular work to date. Even one of the three prints from the triptych can fetch significant prices at auction, and this complete set of three was sold by Sotheby’s in March 2018 for £290,000.
Three Women I/Three Women II/Three Women III sold by Sotheby’s in 2018
Untitled (P489)
This screenprint contains many similarities to One Year No Halloween (P464); it was made just one year later, in 2005, and it reflects the usual gritty, grey urban intensity that permeates much of Wool’s work.
This is hardly surprising, since Wool has spent most of his life in New York. His interest in the city is clear to see in his art, but it’s also reflected in his passion for photographing it; Wool has amassed an extensive collection of night-time black-and-white shots of the streets of New York, sometimes using them as inspiration for his paintings and prints. Untitled (P489) was sold by Phillips de Pury & Company in October 2010 for £275,000, far exceeding its estimated £150,000 to £200,000.
Untitled (P489) sold by Phillip’s in 2010
Untitled
This 2006 silkscreen was sold by Christie’s in February 2014 for £160,000, and it contains many of Christopher Wool’s trademark abstract prints. It is also an example of Wool’s practice of digitally manipulating his prints; around this time, the artist began taking photographs of his abstract paintings, then isolating the sections he liked most. His next step was to use a computer to reassemble these sections in different ways, and add various other marks and streaks to create a sort of collage-effect.
For Christopher Wool fans, this technique represents a new way of looking at art, painting, and printmaking in the modern age, though to his critics, images such as Untitled reflect an inherent lack of artistic skill and imagination.
Untitled sold by Christies’s in 2014
