Sygnum Bank and Artemundi tokenize Warhol’s Marilyn Monroe artwork

Sygnum, the world’s first digital asset bank, and Artemundi, an art investment pioneer, have partnered to tokenize the Andy Warhol artwork Four Marilyns (Reversal).

• The artwork has been tokenized using Sygnum’s Desygnate solution, with 5,000 Art Security Tokens (ASTs) exclusively available to Sygnum clients
• Prices for Warhol artworks sold between 2003 and 2017 increased by an annual average of 14.2 percent
• Token holders will have their ownership fully recognised under the Swiss DLT legal framework

Warhol – a leading figure in Pop Art history

Andy Warhol is the creator of some of the most iconic artworks of the 20th century and has been a top-ten selling artist for over two decades. His works are held in numerous prestigious collections worldwide, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Art Institute of Chicago.

Based on a publicity photograph from her film ‘Niagara’, Warhol’s iconic Marilyn Monroe series has enjoyed long-term price appreciation. Since 2000, this series has generated 17 percent of all Warhol auction sales, despite being only 3 percent of volume, and has consistently outperformed both the Warhol and Artprice Global Indices.

Issuance of 5,000 Art Security Tokens (ASTs) through Swiss-regulated Sygnum bank

Sygnum’s Desygnate platform tokenized Andy Warhol’s Four Marilyns (Reversal), currently priced at CHF 5.7 million. The 5,000 WHL1 tokens issued are available for subscription exclusively to Sygnum professional and institutional clients via the Sygnum e-banking portal, and trading via Sygnum’s SygnEX secondary market. All transactions will be settled in Swiss francs using Sygnum’s Digital CHF stablecoin (DCHF), underpinned with the legal certainty of direct physical artwork ownership under the Swiss DLT (Distributed Ledger Technology) framework.

Fatmire Bekiri, Sygnum Bank’s Head of Tokenization, says: “Warhol’s iconic Four Marilyns truly immortalises one of the Golden Age of cinema’s most illustrious stars. By leveraging blockchain technology, we’re building a future where owning such world-renowned paintings could one day be as simple as buying a can of tomato soup – like those also made famous by Warhol.”

The art market is complex and often requires deep technical knowledge, personal connections and millions of dollars to enter. Sygnum’s tokenization solution, partnered with Artemundi’s art investment experience, lowers financial barriers by enabling fractional ownership and democratises access to pieces of art history by masters like Warhol and Picasso.

Javier Lumbreras, CEO of Artemundi, says: “Artemundi’s strategic portfolio is made of artists’ masterpieces so unique they can be considered ‘monopolies’ of universal recognition. They have a track record of growth that continues for generations”

About Warhol’s Four Marilyns

Four Marilyns (Reversal), 1979-1986, shows the iconic image of Marilyn Monroe repeated four times in black and white. Andy Warhol famously returned to this image of the actress in his works, using different colour palettes and varying the number of repetitions across one canvas. In this artwork, the artist used his signature silkscreen technique and reversed the original colour palette to show Marilyn’s likeness in negative.

About Sygnum

Sygnum is the world’s first digital asset bank, and a digital asset specialist with global reach. With Sygnum Bank AG’s Swiss banking licence, as well as Sygnum Pte Ltd’s capital markets services (CMS) licence in Singapore, Sygnum empowers professional and institutional clients or qualified investors (e.g., corporates, banks, and other financial institutions) to invest in the digital asset economy with complete trust. Sygnum operates an independently controlled, scalable, and future-proof regulated banking platform. Our interdisciplinary team of banking, investment, and Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) experts is shaping the development of a trusted digital asset ecosystem. The company is founded on Swiss and Singapore heritage and operates globally. To learn more about Sygnum, please visit www.sygnum.com.

About Artemundi

Artemundi is an industry-leading art investment company with decades of experience, thousands of successful transactions, and over a billion dollars managed in art. Many people know about art, but our unique expertise is based upon a deep understanding of the financial behavior of the underlying asset. Artemundi has taken traditional art collecting and investing to an entirely new level without the excessive fees associated with conventional brick-and-mortar dealers and auctions while paving the way for transparent business practices. The company has a successful track record of providing expert art fund management and other services, as well as pioneering technology adoption to create new investment opportunities through blockchain and art securitization.

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

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