Displaying items by tag: kunsthall stavanger

Barbara Hepworth’s sculpture Figure for Landscape (1960) sold for a record-setting £4,170,500 / ($7,085,680) at Christie’s sale of modern British and Irish art in London on Wednesday evening. Hepworth’s previous record was set at the same Christie’s sale in July of last year for Curved Form (Bryher II) (1961), which was sold for £2,413,875 ($3,604,412), according to the artnet Price Database.

The sculpture, which was estimated to fetch £1–2 million, was consigned by Norway’s Kunsthall Stavanger, which is on the brink of closure due to lacking public funds.

‘Figure for Landscape’ by Dame Barbara Hepworth DBE (1903–1975) was first unveiled outside Kunsthall Stavanger’s building in 1968.

Her sculpture hit the local headlines last and this month after the art association – formerly known as Stavanger Kunstforening – decided to sell the work to raise money.                        

The sale is intended to bring funding to maintain the building and operation, keep staff on, and put on exhibitions for further revenue. But the 41 to 15 vote in favour of selling Stavanger’s most valuable sculpture was not without repercussions.

Local art milieu members and representatives slammed the Board, calling the move “a theft”, and “madness”. Over 260 signed a petition, and Stavanger’s Galleri Oppdahl encouraged people stage a boycott.