27 June 2013
Last night in London, Sotheby’s Contemporary Art evening sale realised £75.8 million. Leading the auction were two works by Francis Bacon. The 1966 triptych portrait of his friend, muse and lover Isabel Rawsthorne which sold for £11,282,500, while the first work the artist ever sold, his historic Head III was battled for by six collectors, […]
26 June 2013
Christie’s London evening auction of Post-War & Contemporary Art held on 25 June has realised a total of £70,253,225 / $108,470,979 / €82,477,286, selling 90% by value and 80% by lot. The most expensive lot in the sale was Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Untitled (1982) which sold for £18,765,875 / $28,974,511 / €22,031,137. Peter Doig’s Jetty (1994) […]
20 June 2013
Christies sale of Impressionist & Modern Art, held at their King Street London rooms, which took place on Tuesday 18 June, attracted bidders from around the world and realised a total of £64,076,575 / $100,407,993. The auction was a runaway success, selling 87% by value and 84% by lot. It didn’t quite match Sotheby’s outstanding […]
20 June 2013
Sotheby’s London Evening Sale held on 19 JUNE 2013 of Impressionist & Modern Art totalled £105,939,000, exceeding its pre-sale high estimate of £74-104 million. The average lot value: was £1,826,534, driven largely by the strength of the diverse offerings – fresh-to-the-market estate property, sculpture, and classic Impressionist works – the sale attracted global competition. In […]
16 June 2013
Art Basel’s 44th edition closed this evening, (Sunday, June 16, 2013), with galleries reporting exceptionally buoyant sales across the board. The fair has once again proven itself, the leading meeting place for both the international contemporary and modern art world. The event attracted a record of 70,000 visitors, generating an attendance of 86,000 over the six […]
16 June 2013
The eager visitors to Dreispitzhalle, VOLTA’s ninth Basel edition were not dissapppointed. The bright color of the carpet, ‘hot pink’, overshadowed the earlier inclement weather that has been soaking Central Europe for weeks, and the peeks of blue sky echoed in satisfactory sales throughout a steadily flowing opening day. For those less familiar with the […]
12 June 2013
Christie’s is selling the collection of Tony Reichardt, a pioneering British art dealer in the 1960s and 1970s. Reichardt was an innovative independent Director of Marlborough Fine Art in London from 1961-1985. He was responsible for the Contemporary space they opened on Bond Street and for the development of their print gallery. In conjunction with […]
8 June 2013
An important large solid gold plate by Pablo Picasso, Visage Tourmenté comes to the market for the first time, having been unseen in public for over 40 years. Weighing over 2.5kg, it is made from 22 carat gold. It is extremely rare to see gold pieces by Picasso at auction as the artist only created […]
6 June 2013
Sotheby’s Paris Contemporary Art sale which took place on 5th June has broken the record for the Highest Contemporary Art Evening Sale Total of the 2013 Paris Summer Auction Season. The Highest Priced Contemporary Work of Art was Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Crown Hotel which sold for €5.7/ $7.4m / £4.8m In a packed sale room, Sotheby’s […]
27 May 2013
Art Basel has announced that UBS will replace Deutsche Bank as its key global partner. UBS will support Art Basel on a global level and across its shows in Basel, Miami Beach and Hong Kong. The multi-year agreement commences on May 28, 2013, and is a testament to both organisations’ shared aspiration of creating a […]
26 May 2013
The first edition of Art Basel Hong Kong, closed today with galleries reporting strong sales across all five days. The show drew high praise for its quality and innovativeness. The fair was attended by over 60,000 people,and visited by directors, curators, trustees and patrons from museums and institutions including: Asian Art Museum of San Francisco; […]
16 May 2013
Christie’s Post-War and Contemporary Art evening sale in New York achieved the highest total for such a sale, in auction history, a staggering $495,021,500 (£326,714,190/ €386,116,770) on 15 May. A remarkably strong sell-through rate of 94% by value and by lot helped to propel the sales success. Bidders from around the world competed for an […]
14 May 2013
One of the highest grossing charity auctions in history took place last night at Christie’s New York. The Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation, in partnership with the auction house presented The 11th Hour charity auction, to benefit environmental and wildlife conservation efforts supported by the Foundation. By the end of the evening, sales totalled a staggering $33.3 […]
14 May 2013
If there is anything close to an international currency- it’s art- and ‘art’ is at Frieze in abundance. There were so many occasions where I passed a booth and said – “Oh, that must be such and such a gallery,” only to notice that the booth in fact belonged to a dealer from a far […]
10 May 2013
More than 1,200 art enthusiasts passed through the doors of PULSE New York 2013 before noon on opening day, yesterday, Thursday, May 9. Sales started at 9am and quickly spread throughout the main section and the solo artist exhibitions in IMPULSE. Exhibitors were impressed with the high level of international collectors and curators and commented on […]
9 May 2013
Bidders representing more than 30 countries have contributed to the success of the New York Evening Sale of Impressionist and Modern Art at Christie’s on May 8. $158,505,000 was realised and top results for blue-chip artists including Picasso, Miró, Modigliani and Schiele were achieved. With all but three works sold, the evening’s strong sell-through rates […]
18 April 2013
Strong results by the Grosvenor school have helped Bonhams realise £1.4 million, in their spring prints sale, on the 16th April in London. Amongst the top sellers were images of the underground. There were two Prints of subterranean London by Cyril Edward Power of the Grosvenor school – Whence and Whither? which made £97,250 and […]
10 April 2013
Christie’s Auctioneers has announced that it will be holding sales in Shanghai beginning autumn 2013. These will be independently operated having become the first international fine art auction company to be granted an auctioneer’s license for mainland China. As the global leader in the art market, this development represents an important milestone in Christie’s 247 […]
2 April 2013
Sotheby’s will auction a 20th century masterwork by Gerhard Richter on 14 May 2013 as one of the highlights of the spring Contemporary Art Evening Auction. The painting titled, “Domplatz, Mailand” which carries an estimate of $30/40 million was a commission work executed for the electronics giant Siemens Elettra. The Brief was to produce a […]
2 April 2013
China Guardian Auctions , the oldest auction house in Mainland China, specialising in Chinese artwork of all varieties, will build on the huge success of its first auction in Hong Kong last year with its inaugural Spring Auctions in the city on 4-5 April 2013. The lots are unveiled today at the Island Shangri-La, Hong […]
27 March 2013
Steven Cohen the 56-year old founder of SAC Capital, has purchased the damaged painting “Le Reve” by Pablo Picasso for a record $155m ( £102.5m) The portrait is a depiction of the Cubist master’s mistress Marie-Therese Walter.The painting sets a record for the highest price paid by a U.S. collector for any artwork. It was […]
20 March 2013
The Green Lady a painting considered a masterpiece of Kitsch by the Siberian/ South African artist Vladimir Tretchikoff was sold yesterday at Bonham’s for £982,050. This was nearly twice the estimate. It is thought that it was purchased by the billionaire jeweller Laurence Graff . Said to be the most widely reproduced and recognizable picture […]
14 March 2013
The TEFAF Art Market Report 2013 which is considered to be one of the benchmarks for analysing the global art market was released today as part of TEFAF Maastricht, the worlds most prestigious art and antique fair. The Global Art Market which has focused on China and Brazil shows that growth has slowed with the […]
12 March 2013
Kiša Lala Reports From Delhi on the rise of women collectors Arriving on New Year’s Eve in the aftermath of a brutal rape of a female commuter in New Delhi, I encountered the Indian media alternately effervescing in Bollywood-style jubilation or convulsing with grief and mortification. The subsequent student outrage had ignited dialogue and indicated […]
24 February 2013
Christie’s quietly announced last week that it will be increasing its buyer’s premium by 5% on the first £75,000. This raises the threshold on the middle market which was previously charging this figure on the first £50,000. They have also tweaked the premium on other bands. According to ACN (Auction Central Weekly ) in collecting […]
17 February 2013
Peter Bainbridge director of the Ruislip auctioneers of the same name, has confirmed that the payment dispute centring around the ‘Pinner Vase’, an 18th century Qianlong-dynasty ceramic sold in 2010 has been settled. The terms of the sale have not been released, but a private treaty brokered by Bonham’s Auctioneers has been successful in bringing […]
13 February 2013
Sotheby’s London Contemporary Art Evening Auction has achieved a total of £74,364,200/ $116,357,664/ €86,321,943, within pre-sale expectations (estimate: £61.2-84.5 million), representing Sotheby’s second-highest total for a February Sale of Contemporary Art in London. The top lot of the evening’s sale was Francis Bacon’s 1980 oil on canvas triptych masterwork Three Studies for a Self-Portrait, which […]
13 February 2013
We reported a year ago that the global art market had recovered from the financial crisis with both confidence and prices continuing to rise. The main growth centres were the Asian market, particularly Beijing and Hong Kong. As we come up to the release of figures in March for the 2012 period, we have to […]
7 February 2013
Amedeo Modigliani’s portrait of his lover Jeanne Hebuterne was the top selling lot at Christie’s evening Impressionist and Modern sale in London on Wednesday reaching a staggering £26.9 million ($42.3 million, 31.2 million euros), Christie’s said. The final price for the 1919 portrait, “Jeanne Hebuterne wearing a hat” was above the pre-sale estimate of between […]
6 February 2013
A portrait by Picasso’s of Marie-Therese Walter, has been sold at Sotheby’s London for £28.6m. Painted in 1932 the work titled, “Femme Assise Pres d’une Fenetre” (Woman Sitting Near a Window), was considered by Sotheby’s to be a highlight in Tuesday night’s auction.Picasso was 45 years old when he met his young mistress by chance […]