Sotheby’s has put up for auction a painting by Ivan Marchuk from his American period
Sotheby’s has listed Ivan Marchuk’s still life *The Generous Planet*, painted in 1994 during the artist’s American period, for online auction. The work will be one of the key lots in the *Modern & Contemporary Discoveries* auction, with an estimated value of €40,000–60,000.
Marbeks reported this on May 17.
“Generous Planet” vividly demonstrates the distinctive features of Marchuk’s work from the 1990s—a period when the artist actively experimented with color, multi-layered textures, and complex symbolic imagery.
Today, Ivan Marchuk confidently holds the title of Ukraine’s most expensive contemporary artist. His paintings regularly appear at leading international and domestic venues. The artist’s absolute auction record was set in 2024 at a sale by the Goldens auction house in Kyiv: his iconic landscape “The Moon Has Risen Over the Dnipro” (1980) went under the hammer for $300,000, marking the highest public sale price in the history of contemporary Ukrainian art.
The latest appearance of Marchuk’s iconic work at Sotheby’s underscores the sustained interest of international collectors in his legacy. Today, the Ukrainian artist’s paintings grace museum and private collections from Europe to the United States and Australia.
As a reminder, artist Ivan Marchuk saved his father from the NKVD during World War II. The Marchuk Museum still lacks independent funding.
It is also known that a court seized Marchuk’s paintings, which had been confiscated from the son of a former MP in a fraud case.
