Displaying items by tag: Art Market

Asian collectors snapped up paintings by Vincent Van Gogh, Pablo Picasso and Claude Monet at a Sotheby’s auction in New York that totaled $368.3 million.

The tally on Tuesday was the second highest for an Impressionist and modern art auction at Sotheby’s and a 67 percent increase from a similar sale last May. The auctioneer also surpassed its high presale target of $351 million despite failing to sell 14 of the 64 lots.

“Cheap, quick, and dirty, that's how I like it,” Robert Frank is said to have replied when he first heard about the plans for his exhibition at Museum Folkwang in Essen, Germany titled “Robert Frank, Books and Films, 1947-2014." Rather than present his works as pristine prints in a white cube atmosphere, the exhibition features Frank’s photographs on inkjet-printed rolls of newsprint, up to four meters long, glued directly to the hallways of the museum.

Frank’s status as a photographer is legendary, as is his skepticism about the established art market.

Judged by visitor and exhibitor figures—56,000 visitors and 200 galleries from 23 countries this year—Art Cologne, whose 2015 edition closed on April 19, is not quite in the top ten fairs internationally. But as a regional event with a strong focus on Germany’s vibrant art scene and the German, Benelux and eastern European market, it has established itself as an essential stop-off on the art fair circuit for many collectors and dealers. “We need to be here,” said Alex Reding of the Luxembourg gallery Nosbaum Reding.

On May 21, as the star lot of its sale of American Art, Christie’s will offer "Two Puritans" by Edward Hopper (1882-1967). Painted in 1945 at the height of Hopper’s career, "Two Puritans," one of only three canvases by the artist of that year and the only one in private hands, is estimated to bring in excess of $20 million when it appears at auction for the first time this spring. The painting has been included in nearly every major exhibition and publication on the artist and, most recently was on view in Paris at the Grand Palais, where the Hopper exhibition broke attendance records, proving that the artist has arrived on an international stage.

Elizabeth Beaman, Head of American Art, states; “Edward Hopper's masterwork 'Two Puritans' can be considered at once an intimate and revealing portrait of the artist and his wife, as well as a testament to his dogged dedication to realism in the face of a changing visual world that increasingly championed abstraction.

In another sign of the market’s bubbling strength, Christie’s announced it will offer Alberto Giacometti’s life-size bronze “Pointing Man (L’Homme au Doigt)” from 1947 on May 11 in New York, along with an unpublished estimate in the record-breaking region of $130 million. Of the six works in the famed edition, as well as one artist proof, this example is believed to be the only one that is hand-painted by the artist. Five of the six in the edition are tucked away in museums or private foundations, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Tate Modern in London. Only two are left in private hands.

“Pointing Man,” standing 69 7/8 inches tall and bearing a crusty patina, as if charred by the horrific aftermath of the Second World War, reaches out with his spindly right arm, while his left remains raised at shoulder height, as a fencer might guardedly stand before an opponent.

On March 17, Christie’s hosted its first-ever evening sale dedicated to Asian art in New York. The occasion was the first offering from the prized Robert Hatfield Ellsworth Collection, regarded as the most prestigious — not to mention largest — private collection of Asian art to hit the auction block. Thanks to the freshness of the material and the pedigreed provenance, the house had no trouble securing buyers for all 57 lots, and with a whopping $61,107,500, total, the results demonstrated strength across all areas of the market for Indian, Himalayan, Southeast Asian, Chinese, and Japanese art.

The sale began promptly at 6 p.m., with fierce participation from telephone bidders and individuals in the room for a superb gilt-bronze figure of a seated bear from China’s Western Han Dynasty (206 BC).

The granddaughter of one of the world’s leading dealers of Modern and Impressionist art, whose collection was looted by the Nazis, is launching her own gallery on New York’s Upper East Side.

Marianne Rosenberg, a long time international finance lawyer, has signed a lease on a space measuring around 1,500 sq. ft in the ground floor of a townhouse on East 66th Street between Madison and Fifth Avenue, in what was formerly the home of the Dickinson Gallery. The gallery, Rosenberg & Co, is scheduled to open on March 7 and will focus on the secondary Modern market, and also work with contemporary artists.

British rock legend Eric Clapton is selling Cy Twombly's "Crimes of Passion I" (1960). The painting will go under the hammer next week during Sotheby's London Contemporary Art Evening Auction, and comes with a presale estimate of £4-6 million.

Clapton hasn't hold on to the Twombly masterpiece for long. The guitar hero purchased it in November 2012 at Sotheby's New York—but then again, it looks like Clapton has become a very astute market player.

Claude Monet's acclaimed work "L’Embarcadère," 1871, is to be offered at Sotheby’s forthcoming London Impressionist & Modern Art Evening Sale on 3 February 2015. The Dutch landscape by Claude Monet is appearing on the market for the first time in a quarter of a century. The painting has been internationally exhibited at institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and provides the perfect embodiment of the evolution of Impressionism. "L’Embarcadère" was painted by Monet in Zaandam in Holland, where the artist lived with his family for four months over the summer of 1871.

The artist produced a series of 25 works that explored several areas surrounding Zaandam, focussing his attention upon the architectural motifs of the Dutch landscape, canals, mills, and boats. Within a strong compositional framework and in a boldly inventive style, Monet’s use of color and the areas of lively brushwork represent his attempts to evoke the atmosphere of the scene, and Monet includes subtle, but evocative, signifiers of the weather in the full sails of the river-boats, glistening yellow painted houses - and the cool relief of the shaded river-bank.