As the wider Impressionist and modern market slowly withers on the auction vine — the victim of a paucity of first-rate material — the international market for Surrealism has started to sizzle. Interest in the erotically preoccupied mid-century movement languished for decades as collectors lavished money and attention on Impressionist and Fauve art. Yet in the last two years, works by the handful of brand name artists associated with Surrealism — Salvador Dalí, Max Ernst, René Magritte, and Joan Miró — are taking center stage.
In June at the Christie’s London Impressionist and modern sales, for example, Magritte’s darkly menacing “Les jours gigantesques,” 1928, depicting a violent struggle between a clothed man and a naked woman and remarkable for the illusionistic effect of one body superimposed on and merging with the other, sold to the New York financier Wilbur Ross for £7.2 million ($11.3 million) on an estimate of £800,000 to £1.5 million. Ross outgunned a posse of competitors, including London dealer Daniella Luxembourg.
