Maurizio Cattelan - Contemporary Art London Thursday, June 21, 2007 | Phillips

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  • Provenance

    Private collection, Europe

  • Catalogue Essay

    For a 1992 exhibition at the Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea in Bergamo, Maurizio Cattelan displayed several actual safes which had been picked open by thieves. The present lot, whose title, 76,000,000, refers to the amount of Italian Lire stolen from the safe, belongs to this uniquely clever body of work. Cattelan’s pastiche of combining humor with the everyday is palpably clever and bold.
    “The piece with the safes was really about my love for certain cops and robbers movies, and besides, I needed an object for an exhibition. Inside of everyone there is a little thief. So it was a romantic, sentimental piece. The safe is really a magic object. It is really a projection of our inner selves. It was certainly not a comment on the art world.” (Maurizio Cattelan interviewed by Nancy Spector, Maurizio Cattelan, NewYork, 2000, p. 32.)

58

-76.000.000

1992
Steel safe.
59 3/4 x 24 5/8 x 25 in. (151.8 x 62.5 x 63.5 cm).

Estimate
£80,000 - 120,000 ≠♠†

Sold for £168,000

Contemporary Art

22 June 2007, 4pm & 5pm
London