Displaying items by tag: Sotheby's

Pablo Picasso’s colorful 1932 oil painting “The Rescue” sold for $31.5 million at a New York auction Wednesday, far exceeding its $14 million to $18 million estimate.

“The Rescue” led the bidding at a Sotheby’s sale of impressionist and modern art. The auction house sold 50 pieces, raising about $219 million.

It was the second straight night a painting by the Cubist master changed hands for a big price. Picasso’s 1942 painting of his mistress in a purple dress titled “Portrait of Dora Maar” sold Tuesday for $22.5 million at Christie’s.

Now that the first week of the big spring auctions is over, Sotheby’s is wasting no time touting its sales in London next month, hanging highlights in its York Avenue galleries for collectors to peruse during the contemporary-art previews this weekend.

Knowing that today’s appetite for prime abstract paintings appears boundless, Sotheby’s expects a 1927 Mondrian that has not been on the market since the 1950s to be a star of its June 23 auction. This stark canvas, “Composition With Red, Blue and Grey,” was first owned by Harry Holtzman, an artist who helped found the American Abstract Artists Group, an influential organization that espoused the principles of European Modernism, and who was a friend of Mondrian’s and an expert on his work.

For decades, the Norman Rockwell painting hung in the principal’s office at Gardner High School, all but unknown to the world beyond.

Now, the 1941 original has burst into the public eye, slated for a Sotheby’s auction that could fetch millions for the Central Massachusetts city.

In the early 1950s, Rockwell gave the painting, part of a popular World War II series for The Saturday Evening Post, to the principal, who hung it in his office. There it would stay until 2001. Realizing its value, school officials had the painting appraised, then stored it away for safekeeping.

Simon Shaw, Co-Head of Sotheby’s Worldwide Impressionist & Modern Art Department, commented: “A key factor in tonight’s successes was our longstanding relationships with top collectors, and our partnership with them throughout the sale process – the three works from the Private American Collection that led our sale, Monet’s Le Pont japonais, and more were non-competitive consignments. It was a privilege to offer Picasso’s spectacular Le Sauvetage exactly a decade after we last auctioned it in New York, and we are thrilled to see its price double in that time. We are pleased to once again deliver exceptional results on behalf of a great American institution, with Monet’s Sur la Falaise à Pourville selling for well over its high estimate to benefit the Acquisitions Fund of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.”

Yet another ancient statue looted in the 1970s from a single remote temple in the jungles of Cambodia has turned up in the United States, this time at Christie’s, which is voluntarily paying to return it to its homeland.

Christie’s sold the statue, a 10th-century sandstone depiction of a mythological figure known as Pandava, to an anonymous collector in 2009, but bought it back earlier this year after officials determined that the sculpture had been looted.

One of the harshest battles between an activist investor and a company came to an end on Monday, when Sotheby’s announced it had reached a deal with hedge fund billionaire Dan Loeb.  Third Point, run by Loeb, won a partial victory, securing three board spots and the removal of a poison pill that will allow it to raise its stake in the company to 15%, yet he didn’t manage to force embattled CEO Bill Ruprecht to ease his grip on the company, as he’s manage to hold on to his job while remaining president and chairman of the board of directors.

Auction houses expect to sell as much as $2.3 billion of art in New York this month as billionaires from China to Brazil compete for trophy works by Claude Monet, Pablo Picasso and Jeff Koons in a surging market.

Two weeks of semiannual sales of Impressionist, modern, postwar and contemporary art at Christie’s, Sotheby’s (BID) and Phillips begin May 6, with online bidding as early as today. Their combined sales target represents a 77 percent increase from estimates for a similar round of auctions a year ago.

A new world auction record price per carat for any sapphire was set tonight at Sotheby’s New York, when an Exceptional Platinum, Kashmir Sapphire and Diamond Ring sold for $5,093,000 / $180,731 per carat (est. $4/5 million). The square emerald-cut Kashmir sapphire weighing 28.18 carats is one of the finest sapphires ever to appear at auction, described by the American Gemological Laboratories (AGL) as “a gem of singular importance.”

Sotheby’s will offer a rare series by Andy Warhol titled “Six Self Portraits” during its Evening Auction of Contemporary Art on May 14 in New York. Created in 1986, the self-portraits are among the last works created by the pioneering Pop artist.

“Six Self Portraits” was acquired by the current owners in July 1986 from the London gallery of dealer Anthony d’Offay for $57,500. The works anchored the first and only show in Warhol’s career dedicated to his self-portraiture. Purchased the Sunday before the exhibition opened to the public, it was the first sale in an ultimately sold-out and fabled exhibition. “Six Self Portraits” is expected to fetch between $25 million and $35 million next month at Sotheby’s. 

Warhol made his first significant self-portrait in 1963, followed by a small series in 1964. In 1966, Warhol constructed a series of self-portraits in what would become one of his signature styles -- a grid of bright, repeated images. In wasn’t until he made “Six Self Portraits” twenty years later that he would find an equally powerful self-image.

A Ming Dynasty wine cup sold for $36.05 million at Sotheby’s in Hong Kong on Tuesday, April 8, breaking the world auction record for Chinese porcelain. The tiny porcelain cup, which features a color painting of a rooster and a hen tending to their chicks, was purchased by the Shanghai-based financier, Liu Yiqian, by telephone bid.

The previous record for Chinese porcelain was set in 2010 when a gourd-shaped vase from the Qianlong period sold for $32.58 million. The chicken cup also surpassed the previous world record for Ming Dynasty porcelain, which was set in 2011 by a blue and white vase that brought more than $21 million. Nicolas Chow, deputy chairman of Sotheby’s Asia, said, “There is no more legendary object in the history of Chinese porcelain. This is an object bathed in mythology.”

The chicken cup was created during the reign of the Chenghua Emperor between 1465 and 1487, a period known for its exceptional porcelain. A number of later emperors were so enamored by the chicken cup’s design that they commissioned numerous copies. There are less than 20 such cups in existence, with only four in private collections. Yiqian’s cup is the only genuine chicken cup in China.