Displaying items by tag: amedeo modigliani

The estate of a Paris art dealer filed a suit against the Nahmad family in New York State Supreme Court on Tuesday over the restitution of a $25 million Nazi looted portrait by Amedeo Modigliani purportedly in the possession of the Nahmads, the New York Times reports.

The same court dismissed a previous attempt by the original owner's grandson, 71-year-old Philippe Maestracci, to secure the return of Modigliani's Seated Man With a Cane (1918) in 2012, after a judge ruled the France-based claimant lacked standing to pursue the case in the US.

Liu Yiqian, a former taxi driver turned billionaire art collector, confirmed on Tuesday that he was the buyer of the painting of a nude woman by Amedeo Modigliani that sold for $170.4 million at Christie’s New York on Monday night.

Speaking by telephone from Shanghai, the Chinese collector said he planned to bring the work back to the city, where he and his wife have two private museums.

Christie's on Monday smashed world record prices at auction for Amedeo Modigliani and Roy Lichtenstein, selling works by the artists for $170.4 million and $95.37 million respectively.

Modigliani's "Nu Couche" or "Reclining Nude," painted in 1917-18, sold in New York after a frantic nine-minute bidding war in the first time the painting has ever come to auction. 

It was the second highest price ever achieved at auction for a work or art, Christie's said. Applause erupted in the packed room when the sale concluded.

Christie's and Sotheby's jump-started the fall season last week with announcements of respective blockbuster consignments including a $100 million Modigliani nude and the roughly $500 million collection of illustrious former Sotheby's chairman A. Alfred Taubman's estate.

According to the 8-K SEC filing Sotheby's made on September 9, the publicly traded auction house is betting big on the $500 million Taubman collection, having given estate overseer and Taubman's son Robert a financial guarantee "for the collection at approximately that level." The SEC Filing was first flagged by the Art Market Monitor's Marion Maneker in a post this morning.

Christie’s auction house in New York will be selling Amedeo Modigliani’s Nu couché (Reclining Nude) at a special evening sale of 20th century art on Monday, November 9, organized around the theme of “The Artist’s Muse.” The auction will kick off the November sales week, and will be Christie’s attempt to rival its success at the auctions last May, when Christie’s made $1.7 billion in sales over the course of one week.

Christie’s Evening Sale of Impressionist and Modern Art realized $202,608,000 (£128,721,728/ €178,022,150) with sell-through rates of 93% by lot and 99% by value. Bidders from 34 countries competed in the room and on the phone for works by Impressionist and Modern masters, including Piet Mondrian, Chaïm Soutine, Claude Monet, Pablo Picasso, Amedeo Modigliani and Fernand Léger. Bidding on Modern works was particularly active, a testament to the energy brought to the market by crossover collectors and the success of Christie’s curated week of sales spanning both Impressionist & Modern and Post-War and Contemporary categories.

When art mavens see drawings with simplified lines, elongated torsos and the oval faces of androgynous subjects, they instantly think of Amedeo Modigliani. Small though it is, “Modigliani: A Unique Artistic Voice” at London’s Estorick Collection will give a great deal of pleasure to those who love them—and to those fascinated by the story of the handsome but apparently cursed, talented youth who crashed out on drink and drugs.

The show, which runs April 15 to June 28, constitutes a curious footnote to the Italian artist’s life, as it includes the 1918 painting “Dr. François Brabander” (1) plus a handful of drawings owned by the gallery’s fascinating American founder, Eric Estorick.

The major spring auctions in New York are still more than a month away, but clues are starting to emerge about potential heavyweights. Earlier this week, Christie’s said that it plans to ask around $40 million for the 90-work estate of former Goldman Sachs chairman John Whitehead on May 4-5, including Impressionist and modern pieces by Claude Monet and Amedeo Modigliani.

On Friday, Sotheby’s said it plans to seek even more—around $50 million—on May 12.

The art collection of the late John Whitehead, former chairman of Goldman Sachs, is being offered as the cornerstone in Christie's Impressionist and Modern Art sale this May in New York.

The 90 piece estate, with rare works by Claude Monet, Vincent Van Gogh, Amedeo Modigliani, and Pierre Bonnard, is expected to achieve over $40 million in sales.

Whitehead served in the U.S. Navy during World War II, where he commanded a landing craft at Omaha Beach, in the D-Day invasion of Normandy.

Russian oligarch Dmitry Rybolovlev had decided to send off a tough 2014 in New York City. The Monaco-based billionaire had been in the headlines for all the wrong reasons after a Swiss judge awarded his ex-wife Elena $4.5 billion in their seven-year divorce battle. An avid art collector, Rybolovlev decided to spend New Year’s Eve with Sandy Heller, Steve Cohen’s well-known art advisor. As they exchanged war stories, one particular tale made his jaw drop: it was about a beautiful "Nude" by Italian artist Amedeo Modigliani that Cohen sold for a juicy $93.5 million to a mystery buyer. What Heller didn’t know was that behind the veil of anonymity stood Rybolovlev, fuming internally on that December 31. Rybolovlev had paid his trusted friend and art broker Yves Bouvier $118 million for the piece, more than $22 million above what he just found out the market value should’ve been, including the fee.