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 […]
3 February 2013
Over half a billion in Art goes under the hammer in London this month with the launch of Christies, Sothebys and Phillips February Impressionist/Modern and Contemporary Art Evening Sales. Christies features exceptional works by artists such as Amedeo Modigliani, Pablo Picasso, Wassily Kandinsky, Henri Matisse, Maurice de Vlaminck and Pierre-Auguste Renoir to name just a […]
13 January 2013
Christie’s London, Winter Impressionist & Modern Evening Sale titled, ‘FROM FIGURATION TO ABSTRACTION’, set to fall under the hammer at King Street in February, is expected to top 100m in sales. The auction marks the start of the first major series of sales of the year, meeting current market demands with a particularly strong offering […]
12 January 2013
Christie’s London are offering David Hockney’s ‘Great Pyramid at Giza with Broken Head from Thebes’ (1963) in their February Post-War & Contemporary Art sale. This is an early landmark painting by the British artist known for his painterly Pop realism. The work stands as the only canvas to commemorate David Hockney’s first trip to Egypt […]
10 January 2013
Sotheby’s, the international auction house have reported their third most successful year ever for global auctions and a new record for Contemporary Art (2012), which totalled $1.25 billion and saw a new record set for the work of any living artist. The company is now preparing for its February Evening Auction of Contemporary Art. The […]
8 January 2013
Tate Modern one of London’s most popular cultural attractions has seen a record 5.3 million visitors in 2012. This is the highest ever recorded figure for a calendar year in its history. The figure was up 9.5% on the previous year. Tate Britain has also had a good year with 1.53 million visitors coming through […]
2 January 2013
International Art sales realised more than $64bn (£40bn; 49bn euros) last year with analysts predicting that this area of the market will continue to grow. The art market has again consistently outperformed the equities market this year with a trend of stable growth in the years between 2001 and 2011. Fine Art Fund Groups are […]
27 December 2012
2012 was a year of surprises in the London auction rooms. It wasn’t only Munch, Picasso and Warhol that made the headlines. South African artist, Vladimir Tretchikoff’s ‘Portrait of Lenka (Red Jacket)’ his muse and one time lover in Java, smashed its pre-sale estimate of £50,000- £80,000 to achieve an artist’s record of £337,250 at […]
22 December 2012
Kent County Council has cut £200,000 for sports development, £200,000 for Kent Music and £100,000 to Turner Contemporary art gallery in Margate. Paul Carter KCC leader said the council had already explored every area of efficiency but must find £15m in excess of £60m it had already planned. “We really have explored every area of […]
15 December 2012
The piano played by the character Sam in one of the film Casablanca’s iconic scenes has sold for $600,000 (£370,000) at a Sotheby’s auction in New York. It was used for the song “As Times Goes By” in the classic 1942 film . It’s was offered by a Japanese collector who purchased it in the […]
3 December 2012
A previously unknown 1928 Mickey Mouse cartoon poster topped Heritage Auction’s Nov. 29-30 ‘Vintage Movie Poster Signature Auction’ by fetching $101,575 (£63,291) in Dallas. The poster shows a grinning Mickey – dubbed ‘The World’s Funniest Cartoon Character’ – waving his gloved hand. Auction house director Grey Smith called the poster “an important piece of pop […]
23 November 2012
Last week, the auction houses threw open their New York bidding rooms and captured the attention of the art world – and it was a rollercoaster couple of weeks, providing a great deal of conflicting material for market analysts to try and sew together. Both Sotheby’s and Christie’s Impressionist and Modern auctions concluded well below estimate, […]