Strong results at auction for Italian art and the 20th-century avant-garde
Around 300 million in works were sold this week across Christie’s, Sotheby’s, Phillips and Artcurial. Kupka sets a new record at auction
In addition to the two collections and their respective catalogues on 22 October, the two leading auction houses achieved total sales of around 160 million euros across three catalogues for Christie’s and two for Sotheby’s, to which must be added Phillips’s sales of nearly 5 million, and nearly 21 million euros for the two catalogues presented by the Paris-based Artcurial on 23 and 24 October, bringing the total to around 300 million euros in sales over three days of auctions held in conjunction with the Art Basel fair. These results confirm Paris’s prominent position in the European market, despite the climate of social protests and insecurity that characterised the week.
Christie’s and Italian art
On the evening of 22 October, the catalogue of 80 lots of 20th-century and contemporary art offered by Christie’s raised 66 million euros, with nine lots remaining unsold. A significant contribution of around 26 million euros came from the 22 out of 25 lots of Italian art sold, ranging from Modigliani to the post-war period, thanks above all to the five works by Fontana, which brought in 11 million, including two works that each fetched over a million: a rare square canvas with holes, measuring one and a half metres, from the series dedicated to Venice, ‘Concetto Spaziale, Mezzogiorno in Piazza San Marco’ (1961), which sold for 6.8 million euros, within the estimate of 5.5–7.5 million, and the unusually pink, six-panel canvas, which was hotly contested up to 2.5 million, exceeding the guaranteed estimate of 1.4–1.8 million euros.
Among the works from the first half of the 20th century, the female portrait of ‘Minoutcha’, painted by Modigliani in 1916–17, sold for 6.2 million euros, against a guaranteed estimate of 5–7 million, whilst the classic metaphysical composition by de Chirico from 1925, dedicated to Aeschylus, came close to the upper end of its estimate at 1.7 million euros. A sensual ‘Arabesco’ table by Carlo Mollino from the 1950s, made of glass and wood, also came close to the one million mark, selling for 947,000 euros.
Among the unsold works were a series of 11 ballpoint pen panels entitled ‘Ononimo’ by Alighiero Boetti, with an estimate of 1.5–2 million euros, a ‘Sacco’ by Burri from 1956, and a mirror by Pistoletto, ‘Donna nuda’, from 1966 (estimated at 700–900 thousand euros).
In addition to Italian art, the top results included a Pointillist painting by Signac entitled ‘Saint-Cloud’ from 1903, which sold for 3.3 million, doubling the estimate of 1.5–2 million euros, and a nude by Kupka from 1904, which tripled the high estimate to 1.8 million, whilst among the unsold lots, an abstract painting by Joan Mitchell from 1957, estimated at 5–7 million euros, stands out.
