Felix Gonzalez-Torres valuation
Made art from stacks of paper, spills of sweets and strings of lights that visitors may take from.
Felix Gonzalez-Torres was born in Guáimaro, Cuba, in 1957 and died in Miami in 1996.
What a work by Felix Gonzalez-Torres is worth
Send photographs and whatever paperwork came with it. The first question is what the work actually is — edition or unique, when, and in what condition — because everything else follows from the answer. A valuation is free, made online from the photographs you send, and it commits you to nothing. We act for sellers across the United Kingdom, Europe and the United States.
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Bio
Felix Gonzalez-Torres was born in Guáimaro, Cuba, in 1957 and died in Miami in 1996. Working in New York, he made some of the most influential conceptual art of his generation: stacks of printed paper and spills of wrapped sweets that visitors may take from and that are replenished, strings of light bulbs, billboards and photographic jigsaw puzzles. Much of the work is quietly concerned with love and loss in the years of the AIDS crisis, including the illness and death of his partner, Ross Laycock.
With much of this work the object is not what is being sold. A candy spill or a paper stack exists through a certificate of authenticity and ownership together with the artist's instructions for how it may be shown; the sweets and the paper are replaceable, and the certificate is what carries the work. Without it there is nothing to sell. Editions and multiples — prints, posters, puzzles, publications — are a separate and more accessible category, identified by their edition information, and the Felix Gonzalez-Torres Foundation is the reference for both.
At a glance
- Born
- 26 November 1957, Guáimaro
- Died
- 9 January 1996, Miami
- Movements
- Minimalism, Conceptual art
More on Wikipedia.
The billboards, the titles and the multiples
Gonzalez-Torres studied in Puerto Rico before settling in New York in 1979. The billboard works date from 1989 to 1995, and most of them must be shown in several public sites at once. Almost every work is titled "Untitled", in quotation marks, sometimes with a further title in brackets, as in "Untitled" (Perfect Lovers), two identical clocks hung side by side.
In the framed photographs, of 1986 to 1995, the frame is part of the work. There are 18 multiples, made between 1987 and 1995 in editions from six to unlimited, and several were designed to look like unique works, so their edition details are the first thing to check.
Whitebank Fine Art is an art advisory and gallery, not an auction house, and is not affiliated with any auction house or with the artist, their estate or their representatives. This page describes the range we advise on. Nothing here is investment advice.
