Six paintings by Gerhard Richter sold last night at auction for a total of almost $30 million, confirming his status as the most bankable living artist, dealers said.
The German painter’s works pushed the Sotheby’s London contemporary-art sale to an $80 million total as investment- minded buyers were attracted by rising prices and a relatively plentiful supply of quality works.
Sellers of Richter, who was recently the subject of a retrospective at London’s Tate Modern, have been encouraged by the performance of a group of eight abstracts at Sotheby’s in New York on Nov. 9, which all sold above upper estimates.
“After the buzz of that collection, people were keen to cash in,” said Heinrich zu Hohenlohe, director of the Berlin branch of the dealership Dickinson. “There’s a lot of Richter out there, and the market seems able to absorb it. He produces paintings that appeal to every kind of taste and there are buyers coming in from all over the world. They think art is a good place to be at the moment.”
Last night’s top price was 4.9 million pounds ($7.7 million) with fees, paid for the 1992 “Abstraktes Bild (768-4),” featuring vertical waves of black and white paint. Fresh to the auction market, it was bought by Georgina Macpherson, head of Sotheby’s (BID) London-based client services department, for a private telephone bidder against an upper estimate of 4 million pounds.
Frozen Seascape
The 1981 photorealist painting “Eis (Ice),” showing a desolate expanse of frozen seascape, was sold to Sotheby’s London-based specialist Olivia Thornton, acting for another phone buyer, at 4.3 million pounds, a record for a landscape by the artist, the auction house said. All the Richters attracted multiple bids and their final total with fees was more than 7 million pounds more than the low estimate, based on hammer prices.
In last November’s New York sale, a 1997 “Abstraktes Bild” in purple, red and blue was bought by the London-based collector Lily Safra for a record $20.8 million.
At last night’s Sotheby’s auction 57 of the 63 lots successfully found buyers. Still, it lacked any lots valued at more than 5 million pounds, unlike the equivalent 80.6 million- pound event at Christie’s International (CHRS) the previous evening, where a 1994 Richter abstract sold for 9.9 million pounds.
Sotheby’s total of 50.7 million pounds with fees was slightly above the high estimate of 48 million pounds. Buyers hailed from 20 different countries, the auction house said.
“If interest rates remain low, prices will keep rising,” the Montreal-based collector Francois Odermatt said in an interview. “People aren’t making any money on deposit and when there’s a financial crisis, they want art assets. I just wish I’d bought Richter when they were more affordable.”
Orange Basquiat
Five bidders contested the 1982 Jean-Michel Basquiat painting “Orange Sports Figure,” before it was bought by Sotheby’s New York-based specialist Scott Nussbaum, representing a client on the telephone, for 4.1 million pounds against an estimate of 3 million pounds to 4 million pounds.
The work, entered by a European collector, was of a prime date by the artist whose paintings are becoming increasingly scarce, dealers said.
Growing demand from Asia was underlined by the 1.8 million pounds and 1.6 million pounds respectively paid by telephone bidders for colorful 1990s abstract paintings by the Chinese artist Zao Wou-Ki. Both works sold for double their high estimates.
