15 February 2014
Christie’s Post-War & Contemporary Art London evening auction has realised a total of £124,192,000/ $206,158,720/ €151,017,472 selling 83% by lot and 95% by value and achieving the 2nd highest ever total for a European Auction of Post-War & Contemporary Art*. The top price of the evening was paid for Francis Bacon’s Portrait of George Dyer […]
13 February 2014
Sotheby’s major sale of Contemporary art in London this evening opened with frenzied bidding when as many as eight participants competed for the first lot in the sale. Most of the works offered tonight – two thirds in total – have never been seen at auction before and have attracted more participants than ever before […]
11 February 2014
According to ArtForum there will be nearly sixty international art fairs taking place in 2014. And there must be hundreds of other fairs around the world too. They are everywhere, and whilst not a new phenomenon their numbers have increased inexorably since the end of the 1990s. The art world has become increasingly globalised during […]
9 February 2014
All eyes were on London last week as the city witnessed an unprecedented series of auctions led by Sotheby’s and Christie’s. Sotheby’s two-days of Impressionist, Modern & Surrealist Art sales, brought a total of £215.8 million, the highest achieved for any sale series ever held anywhere in London. This record total represents an almost five-fold […]
6 February 2014
Sotheby’s has reported a 100% sales result for the collection of the art dealer Jan Krugier. The Combined Total of £74.8 million – More than Doubles the High Estimate of lots offered in the auction. In the course of the last two days, 119 works from the Private Collection of Mr Krugier have met with […]
5 February 2014
Christie’s Impressionist and Modern Art Evening Sale and the auction of The Art of the Surreal which took place on the evening of 4 February in London, has realised a combined total of £176,986,000/ $288,133,208/ €212,737,172 and selling 86% by lot and 95% by value. The auctions had a combined pre-sale estimate of £113.3 million […]
3 February 2014
Sotheby’s has surprized the art market by reporting record prices in their annual Old Masters Week sales. The auctioneers have achieved an impressive total of $71,768,126* as of 30 January 2014. Important Old Master Paintings & Sculpture totaled $51,361,251 (est. $42/60 million) with works from the Dutch Golden Age performing particularly well. Multiple bidders entered […]
31 January 2014
Sotheby’s, today announced the appointment of Alexander Rotter and Cheyenne Westphal as Worldwide Heads of Sotheby’s Contemporary Art Department. The announcement was made by Bill Ruprecht, Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer of the global auctioneers. “Over the past several years, Sotheby’s global Contemporary team, under the leadership of Alex and Cheyenne and spanning from […]
30 January 2014
Sotheby’s has announced that it will exhibit works by Andy Warhol, Gerhard Richter and David Hockney in India for the first time. The artworks will be open to the public on the 31st January 2014, the exhibition at the Imperial Hotel, New Delhi has been designed to allow Indian collectors to view selected highlights from […]
28 January 2014
A personal collection belonging to the family of one of the most important couturiers of the 20th century, Madame Elsa Schiaparelli, has achieved €1,686,250/£1,385,254/$2,298,359 selling 75% by lot and 94% by value. The top lot of the sale was an Italian pair of carved marble models of leopards which sold for €385,000/£316,278/$524,755. The fabulous Man […]
24 January 2014
One of the most important Collection of Works by L.S. Lowry is to be auctioned by Sotheby’s. A stand-alone evening sale of 15 paintings by the artists will take place at 6pm on 25th March 2014. The A.J. Thompson Collection, estimated to fetch in excess of £15 million, includes well-known masterpieces that have previously been […]
22 January 2014
Christie’s has released their sales figures for 2013 revealing a record year of £4.54 billion, up 16% ($7.13 billion, up 14%), for the year ending December 2013. This figure is the highest sales total for Christie’s or any auction house in the history of the art market. Christie’s sales figures were driven by an increase […]
18 January 2014
Christie’s highly anticipated annual evening sale ‘The Art of The Surreal’ will take place on 4 February, presenting some of the most remarkable works to be offered in the category to date. The auction is led by the most important early Magritte to come to auction in a generation, Les chasseurs au bord de la […]
16 January 2014
Sotheby’s Contemporary Art Evening Sale in London in February will be led by an exceptional abstract painting by Gerhard Richter. Estimated to realise in excess of £15 million ($25m), Wand (Wall) was held by Richter to be a work of such importance that he chose to keep it in his personal collection for over fifteen […]
15 January 2014
A major portrait by Francis Bacon will be offered at Christie’s in their upcoming Post-War and Contemporary Art Evening Auction on 13 February 2014. The painting depicts George Dyer and was executed in 1966, at the artist’s creative peak. George Dyer was Bacon’s lover, muse and arguably his greatest influence. A powerful and poignant portrait […]
14 January 2014
Arte Povera artists filled galleries with animals and decaying matter decades before Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin. With its idea that humble ‘poor’ everyday materials – both natural and man-made – can be transformed into powerful, evocative works of art, Arte Povera transformed the landscape and language of contemporary art in the late 1960s and […]
13 January 2014
Nye and Company a small New Jersey auctioneers has announced the sale of an extraordinary and historic work by the renowned American portraitist John Singer Sargent. The oil-on-canvas depicts Lady Randolph Churchill. Born Jeanette “Jennie” Jerome in the Cobble Hill section of Brooklyn in 1854. Jennie Churchill was considered one of the greatest beauties of […]
8 January 2014
Christie’s London has just announced the sale of an exceptional and historic group of Modern Masters: Works from an Important Private Swiss Collection which will be offered at auction in February 2014. Collections often reflect their collectors‟ tastes and histories, but seldom do they also reflect their friendships and relationships as much as the 22 […]
16 December 2013
A fascinating group of jewels and precious objects celebrating the lives and tastes of the Duke and the Duchess of Windsor soared above estimate, selling for £620,125 ($1,016,137) at Sotheby’s London (est. £351,500 – 506,700/ $575,968 – 830,279). The majority of the pieces were presented some 26 years after they were last auctioned in the […]
14 December 2013
Christie’s Auctioneers has announced the departure of a key member of its team. Amy Cappellazzo will leave the company, after the London auctions in February, to pursue her career outside the company. Ms. Cappellazzo, Co-Head along with Brett Gorvy were responsible for developing Christie’s Post-War & Contemporary Art department between 2001 to 2011. She was named […]
12 December 2013
A number of record breaking prices were achieved last night as Sotheby’s Abstraction and Modern Post-War British Art Evening Sales fetched a total of £6,113,350, making the combined total, with the Day Sale results, to top £7,927,725 (est. £5,838,000-8,911,000). The top lot of last night’s sale was a supreme work by Patrick Heron, Atmospheric Strata […]
7 December 2013
It has been a record breaking week for two icons of American realism. A Depression era view of New Jersey by Edward Hopper has sold for $40m (£24.4m), setting an auction record for the US artist, at Christie’s sale of American art. While Rockwell’s “Saying Grace” has fetched a record price of $46 million at […]
3 December 2013
Sotheby’s announced that it has firmly established Sotheby’s Beijing as a marketplace for selling contemporary art. The auction house, the first international fine art auction house able to conduct business in mainland China, Sunday marked the successful conclusion of Sotheby’s Beijing Art Week, a landmark series of sales and events designed to cater to the […]
28 November 2013
A group of 20 works from the renowned collection of David Thomson goes under the hammer at Sotheby’s 10th December 2013. ‘Abstraction’ brings to the market major works by Alan Davie, Patrick Heron, Peter Lanyon, Roger Hilton and William Scott. Together they represent one of the best groups of post-war British Abstract Art to come […]
28 November 2013
The iconic lead statuette of the Maltese Falcon from the classic 1941 Bogart film noir of the same name has sold for a record $4,085,000 at Bonhams. The statuette now holds the record for the highest price achieved for a film prop. It was the top lot in a special sale held on November 25 […]
23 November 2013
Tobias Meyer, the Worldwide Head of the Contemporary Art at Sotheby’s has announced that he is to end his association with the auction house. “Tobias Meyer is an important figure and has been at the central to a number of high profile sales for more than 20 years and we are grateful for all of […]
20 November 2013
Sotheby’s in London, has auctioned a defining image of the Pre-Raphaelite art movement and one of the most iconic images of nineteenth century British art. Proserpine by Dante Gabriel Rossetti sold for £3,274,500 ($5,274,892), yesterday establishing a new record for the artist at auction. Bidding for this important work was intense, with five international bidders […]
18 November 2013
Sotheby’s is presenting Sotheby’s Beijing Art Week to be held from 28 November to 1 December at China World Summit, Wing Beijing. Beijing Art Week is an ambitious series of arts events to be held by Sotheby’s in China, encompassing fine and decorative art, historic jewellery with a total value of over RMB 1.3 billion […]
16 November 2013
Oh what a crazy week for contemporary and modern art at auction: Despite a lot of hot air in the art press over the last few days, with speculation of whether the art market bubble (or balloon in some cases) was about to burst, the climate has again proven the sceptics to be wrong, with […]
9 November 2013
PARTE Contemporary Art Fair takes place in São Paulo between 6th and 10th November. It is the third edition of the fair. The event brings together 34 prestigious Brazilian galleries and three international art galleries. PART is an initiative of members Lina Wurzmann and Tamara Perlman working together since the preparation of the first edition […]
7 November 2013
An Impressionist and Modern art sale at Sotheby’s in New York has raised more than $290m (£180m) This is the second highest result for the auction house, following the sale last year (2012) of Munch’s ‘The Scream’ which set a world auction record for any work of art, realising $119.9 million. The highest prices achieved […]
6 November 2013
Christies’ has set a world record with a portrait of Alberto Giacometti’s brother Diego, achieving $33m, a record for one of the artist’s paintings. This week’s auctions of Impressionist and Modern Art have realised a running tally of $258 million, with the Works on Paper and Day Sales completing the series today. Bidders from more […]