Records for Henry Moore and Surrealism at Christie's

The more than three-hour evening 'marathon' for nearly one hundred lots in three catalogues held at Christie's on the evening of 5 March in London brought respectable overall results, with a total realisation of £197.5 million, a significant increase over last year's similar catalogues, and a sell-through rate of more than 95% thanks also to a few lots withdrawn before the start of the auctions. The general catalogue of 20th and 21st century art brought in £114.2 million,the Surrealist art catalogue entirely sold 43 million and, finally, the Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Vanthourout added £40.3 million to the total. The room remained crowded until late in the evening and there was no shortage of long sequences of raises with several gallerists participating, most notably the Nahmad family, very active on Mirò and Surrealist works. Third-party guarantees also made their essential contribution, protecting (in our view) at least five multi-million dollar lots from going unsold, especially in the first general catalogue.

“King and Queen” di Henry Moore, ideato nel 1952-53 e fuso nel 1952-53 dalla Galizia Foundry, Londra, in un’edizione di quattro più una fusione dell’artista

As much as a quarter of the realisation of the general catalogue is due to the record price for a sculpture by Henry Moore, the monumental bronze pair 'King and Queen' from 1952-53, which was fought over for a long time by several telephones until it reached £26.3 million, from an estimate of £10-15 million. It is the only copy to remain in private hands for 70 years, as the others are all in major museums from the Hirshhorn in Washington DC to California's Norton Simon, including the two later castings at the Tate and the Henry Moore Foundation in Britain. The popular subject matter, large size, rarity and unique provenance for decades were decisive factors in setting the new record for the great British artist. In the last catalogue, another bronze statue of his confirmed expectations.
Of the 40 lots initially in the catalogue, four were withdrawn before the auction: works with millionaire estimates by British artists such as Bridget Riley (£3.5-5.5 million), Cecily Brown (£ 3-5 million), Lucian Freud and Frank Auerbach (estimated at £ 2-3 million). Three works of lesser value remained unsold, while no less than 19 lots were protected by third-party guarantees, which probably saved the respective works from remaining unsold in 11 cases, including in all likelihood three realisations over £5m. These included Kandinsky's large canvas of abstract geometries from 1939 featuring 'Le rond rouge', a red circle characteristic of Bauhaus research into shapes, colours and music, which sold after a single bid at a low estimate of £10.5m, rising to £12.5m with commissions. The work was returning to the market after seven and a half years, and realised a loss of over $8m for the seller who had bought it in New York in November 2018 for $20.6m. The late Picasso composition of Painter with his Nude Model from 1964 also stopped at the guaranteed low estimate of £7m, or £8.5m with commission, with a loss of $1m for the seller who bought it at auction in November 2022 in New York for $10.3m. A comparison of two similarly sized works by the master painter Gerhard Richter, one photorealistic and one abstract, brings a total of £16m: the 1984 bucolic vision of meadows and barns 'Schober' surpassed its guaranteed low estimate of $6m to stop at $8.4m with commissions, $2m above the 2017 realisation for the same work, while the 1991 abstract canvas in bright red tones surpassed its high estimate with commissions at £7.6m. Even Michelangelo Pistoletto's historic 1968 'mirror', a self-portrait painting with his wife Maria, was probably saved by the auctioneer at the low estimate of £1m, or £1,270,000 with commissions. Aside from the 90-year-old Richter and Pistoletto, the other five living artists in the catalogue struggled to find even a single raise, with the exception of the 'phenomenon' of the moment, the 92-year-old British Rose Wylie pushed by the David Zwirner gallery and an ongoing exhibition at the Royal Academy, whose canvas 'Tube Girl', an ungainly large-scale composition, fetched over estimate at £152,400. The overall result at the end of the day was £114,175,900 worth of works sold.

“Le devenir de la liberté“ 1946, di Toyen, olio su tela, 165 x 65 cm

While many lots from the previous catalogue found more than one buyer with difficulty, the mood of the next hour changed dramatically thanks to the 26 lots of the sale dedicated to Surrealist Art, which yielded a result of £42,978,950. The lots were all sold after the withdrawal of a Magritte work from 1938, estimated at £5-8 million, while the other four lots by the Belgian master were all secured by third parties. This was the 25th iteration of the sale established at the beginning of the new millennium by Olivier Camu, who still curates it with evident passion, and who has been instrumental in the international success of this avant-garde art movement.

The major realiser worth one fifth of the total was a 1961 Magritte canvas 'Les graces naturelles' which stopped at the guaranteed low estimate of £7m, or £8.5m with commissions, while the most satisfying results came from two artists who set respective auction records: the well-known Dorothea Tanning thanks to a small, detailed and disturbing 1942 composition 'Children's Game' contended for up to £4.7m, from an estimate of £1-2m; and the lesser-known Toyen, who in life eluded clear gender identification, choosing this pseudonym that recalls the French term Citoyen, the country chosen as her residence after surviving Nazism and escaping Communism in Czechoslovakia, and whose works rarely make it to auction: her large 1946 vertical canvas with the significant title 'Le devenir de la Liberte' was fought over to end up with a collector in the room at £3.7m, well above the estimate of £1.2-2.2m.

Most of the Surrealist lots were contested by more than a couple of buyers, including Mirò's poetic 1949 canvas which went to the Nahmad family for £4.8m, well above the estimate of £1.5-2.5m, after a prolonged series of bids that included several art advisors in the room, and Picasso's severe 1929 grey and green toned 'Figure' canvas pushed to £2.6m, a multiple of the £600-800k estimate, thanks in part to both coming from the Renker collection.