FLOAT 100 · Art · No. 27
Green and Purple Head Composition
Dated to a single day in April 2018, this lime-and-lilac head by George Condo, the painter who calls his method 'psychological cubism,' topped a London evening sale in 2024 at just over $1.28 million.
- Year
- 2018
- Maker
- George Condo
- By price in art
- 26 of 100
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Create a free account- Artist
- George Condo (born 1957, Concord, New Hampshire)
- Dated
- Signed and dated 'George Condo 4/22/18' upper left
- Medium
- Acrylic, charcoal, pastel and pigment stick on linen, in the artist's frame
- Size
- 142.7 x 132.6 cm (56 1/8 x 52 1/4 in)
- Series
- Condo's Drawing Paintings, begun in 2008
- Exhibition link
- Illustrated in the announcement for Condo's 2021 Berlin gallery exhibition Linear Expression (April 28 to July 3, 2021)
- Sale
- £1,016,000, reported as $1.28 million, at auction in London, June 27, 2024
- Estimate
- £700,000 to £900,000; the work carried a guarantee
- Owner
- Consigned in 2024 by a private European collector; buyer not public
A head drawn in paint
Green and Purple Head Composition is a large square-ish canvas, 142.7 by 132.6 centimeters, signed and dated 'George Condo 4/22/18' in the upper left. It belongs to the series Condo calls his Drawing Paintings, which he began in 2008: works that combine paint with the speed and directness of drawing.
The materials say as much. Condo built the picture in acrylic, charcoal, pastel and pigment stick on linen, and it is presented in a frame of the artist's choosing. Staccato strokes of charcoal and pastel outline the bust of a figure, while flashes of lilac and lime green radiate from a blue and white ground.
Out of the tangle of lines a face emerges: flared teeth, exaggerated ears and prominent eyes. Those features belong to what Condo has called his 'antipodal beings,' invented characters who recur across his work as stand-ins for states of mind rather than portraits of real people.
From Warhol's Factory to psychological cubism
George Condo was born in 1957 in Concord, New Hampshire, and studied art history and music theory at the University of Massachusetts Lowell; he studied guitar and composition throughout his early life. In the early 1980s he worked in Andy Warhol's Factory, in the silkscreen studio, applying diamond dust to Warhol's Myths series, and emerged in the East Village art scene, where his first exhibitions took place between 1981 and 1983. His first solo show was in Los Angeles in 1983.
In those years he coined the term Artificial Realism, 'the realistic representation of that which is artificial,' for paintings that crossed Old Master technique with an American pop sensibility. He was close to Jean-Michel Basquiat and a lifelong friend of Keith Haring, in whose East Village studio he painted works such as Dancing to Miles (1985), later shown in the 1987 Whitney Biennial. From 1985 to 1995 he lived mostly in hotels and rented studios between Paris and New York, where he befriended the philosopher Félix Guattari and worked with the writer William S. Burroughs.
By the 2000s his archetypal figures, in paintings such as The Orgy (2004) and Batman and Bunny (2005), had settled into a style he calls psychological cubism. 'Picasso painted a violin from four different perspectives at one moment,' he has said. 'I do the same with psychological states.' In 2010 he painted a series of images for Kanye West's album My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, and in 2011 the New Museum in New York opened a mid-career retrospective, Mental States, that a New York Times critic called 'sensational.'
How to read it, and how to know it
The painting borrows the vocabulary of Cubism, its broken planes and multiple viewpoints, and turns it on the inside of a person. A 2024 catalog describes beauty, horror, ecstasy and despair revealed at once in the one fractured head, and compares the surface both to the geometric constructions of Analytical Cubism and to the thick paint of the Abstract Expressionists.
To identify it: acrylic, charcoal, pastel and pigment stick on linen; 142.7 x 132.6 cm (56 1/8 x 52 1/4 inches); signed and dated 'George Condo 4/22/18' upper left; in the artist's frame. The palette is lime green and lilac against blue and white. The sources reviewed give no catalogue raisonné number.
Watch the title. The same 2024 catalog that lists it as Green and Purple Head Composition calls it Purple and Green Head Composition in its essay. Condo has made many head compositions with similar titles, so the date on the canvas and the measurements are the surest checks.
From Berlin to the top of a London sale
The painting was illustrated in an announcement for Linear Expression, Condo's first solo exhibition at his Berlin gallery in more than eight years, which ran from April 28 to July 3, 2021. The show presented new works on canvas and paper in which, as its organizers put it, abstracted characters 'hold space together but rarely connect through eye contact or touch,' 'a reflection, perhaps, of the past year of uncertainty and distance.'
On June 27, 2024, it was offered in London by a private European collector, estimated at £700,000 to £900,000 (the low estimate reported as about $889,000), with a guarantee in place. It sold for £1,016,000, reported as $1.28 million, and was the top lot of an evening-and-day sale that totaled about £13 million ($16.5 million).
Market reporters placed the result in a moderate London summer season, with results generally within estimates and many top lots leaning toward the low end; this one finished above its high estimate. For scale, Condo's auction record at the time was $6.85 million, set by Force Field (2010) in Hong Kong in July 2020.
Condo's standing has continued to grow since. The Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris held a retrospective of his work from October 10, 2025, to February 8, 2026, and his paintings are in collections including the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, Tate Modern in London and the Centre Pompidou in Paris.
The numbers
- Medium
- Acrylic, charcoal, pastel and pigment stick on linen, in artist's frame
- Dimensions
- 142.7 x 132.6 cm (56 1/8 x 52 1/4 in)
- Inscription
- Signed and dated 'George Condo 4/22/18' upper left
- Catalogue raisonné
- No number stated in the sources reviewed
- Current owner
- Not public; sold in 2024 by a private European collector
Timeline
George Condo is born in Concord, New Hampshire.
Condo has his first solo exhibition, in Los Angeles, after working in Andy Warhol's Factory.
Condo moves to Paris, beginning a decade split between Paris and New York.
Condo begins the Drawing Paintings series.
Condo paints images for Kanye West's My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy.
The New Museum in New York opens Condo's mid-career retrospective, Mental States.
The date Condo writes on Green and Purple Head Composition.
Condo's Force Field (2010) sets his auction record, $6.85 million, in Hong Kong.
Condo's Berlin exhibition Linear Expression opens; its announcement illustrates the painting. The show runs to July 3.
The painting sells at auction in London for £1,016,000, reported as $1.28 million, the top lot of the sale.
A Condo retrospective opens at the Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris, running to February 8, 2026.
The world in 2018
SpaceX flies its Falcon Heavy rocket for the first time, with a Tesla Roadster as a dummy payload.
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle marry at St George's Chapel, Windsor.
The European Union's General Data Protection Regulation takes effect.
The North Korea-United States summit between Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un is held in Singapore.
Twelve boys and their soccer coach are rescued from the flooded Tham Luang cave in Thailand.
France wins the FIFA World Cup in Russia.
Price record
| Date | Price | Kind |
|---|---|---|
| Jun 27, 2024 | $1,280,000 | Sold at auctionSold at auction in London for £1,016,000 against an estimate of £700,000 to £900,000; reported as $1.28 million. The lot carried a guarantee. |
A realized auction price is what a buyer actually paid on the date shown, including the buyer's premium where the sale reported it. It is the strongest kind of reference price, and it is a record of one sale of one object on one day, not a promise of what the next example will bring.
By reference price, Green and Purple Head Composition is number 26 of 100 in the art entries of the FLOAT 100. 88 of those 100 rest on a realized sale; the rest carry an asking price or a guide value, and each page says which. Rank within the FLOAT 100 itself (27 here) is editorial: how much an object defines its field, not price alone.
Did you know
- Condo worked in Andy Warhol's Factory applying diamond dust to Warhol's Myths prints.
- He coined the term Artificial Realism in the early 1980s for 'the realistic representation of that which is artificial.'
- Condo compares his method to Picasso painting a violin from four viewpoints at once, except that he does it with states of mind.
- The painting is dated to a single day: April 22, 2018.
- The catalog for its 2024 sale calls it both Green and Purple Head Composition and Purple and Green Head Composition.
- Salman Rushdie's 2001 novel Fury includes a chapter inspired by a 1994 Condo painting.
How this page is made
- The figure
- One reference price, shown with its own kind. FLOAT does not average it with anything or adjust it for time.
- Realized or not
- A realized price is a completed sale. An asking price, an estimate and a price-guide value are not sales, and are labeled as such wherever they appear.
- The story
- Researched from published records and checked fact by fact. Updated Oct 1, 2026.
- Archive
- Oct 5, 2026