Andy Warhol's Portrait of Muhammad Ali Sold for $18 Million

This weekend, one of the art world’s biggest events returned to Florida. Art Basel Miami Beach featured a microcosm of the contemporary art world’s current trends, while also attracting protestors outside of the event who took issue with one of the art fair’s sponsors.

Contemporary art wasn’t the only high-profile attraction this year, however: Lévy Gorvy Dayan‘s booth featured a painting from one of the 20th century’s most prominent artists depicting one of the 20th century’s most promiment athletes. That painting was Andy Warhol’s Muhammad Ali, which sold at a VIP preview of the event for $18 million.

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As Daniel Cassaday pointed out in an article for ARTnews, there was also something serendipitous about a portrait of Ali returning to the Miami Beach Convention Center. That’s because that building also hosted Ali’s first landmark fight against Sonny Liston, in which Ali defeated Liston to become world heavyweight champion. More recently, the events surrounding the bout were depicted on film in the acclaimed One Night In Miami…

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The portrait of Ali was part of Warhol’s Athletes series, which the artist worked on in the the late 1970s at the suggestion of collector Richard L. Weisman. ARTnews reports that this particular painting of Ali was once part of Weisman’s personal collection. In 2019, several of the Athletes portraits were sold at auction via Christie’s.

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Tobias Carroll

Tobias Carroll lives and writes in New York City, and has been covering a wide variety of subjects — including (but not limited to) books, soccer and drinks — for many years. His writing has been published by the likes of the Los Angeles Times, Pitchfork, Literary Hub, Vulture, Punch, the New York Times and Men’s Journal. At InsideHook, he has…