Eric Clapton to Auction Painting Worth Up to $19 Million

Eric Clapton is expected to earn $14-19 million when he puts an abstract piece by the German artist Gerhard Richter up for auction at Sotheby's next month, Reuters reports. Clapton bought the paining, titled "Abstraktes Bild (809-4)," back in 2001 for $3.4 million.

Richter – whose work includes the cover of Sonic Youth's 1988 LP, Daydream Nation – has become one of the most coveted living artists, with one of his paintings fetching $21.8 million at an auction in New York in May. "Abstraktes Bild (809-4)" is one of a series of four paintings the artist made in the mid-1990s. Three of them were sold to Clapton in 2001, while the fourth is owned by the joint collection of the Tate and the National Galleries of Scotland.

Clapton will put the piece up at London's contemporary art evening auction on October 12th, which coincides with the Frieze Art Fair, one of the more significant weeks for the global art market.

Clapton has had plenty of experience on the auction floor at this point, on both the buying and selling ends. Last year, he sold more than 70 of his instruments, amplifiers, and memorabilia and raised $2.15 million for the Crossroads Center, a drug and alcohol rehab facility in Antigua he co-founded in 1998.

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