Sotheby’s tapped into the vitality of Artwork Basel Paris week and recorded the highest-ever totals in France for surrealist and trendy artwork auctions on Friday. The home’s Surrealism and Its Legacy and Modernitês gross sales took a mixed €89.7 million ($104 million), marking a 50 p.c improve on the identical double-header sale final 12 months.
The outcome was additionally the best complete for a numerous proprietor sale sequence at Sotheby’s Paris.
Amedeo Modigliani’s Elvire en buste (1918-1919) led the way in which, hovering previous its €7,500,000 ($8.7 million) excessive estimate and promoting for €27 million ($31.3 million). That is the best public sale worth for the Italian artist in France. Not solely this, but it surely additionally grew to become essentially the most useful work ever bought by Sotheby’s Paris. Seven bidders chased the portray, which had not been seen since 1947, when it entered a non-public assortment.
One other work by Modigliani titled Raymond (1915)—believed to depict the novelist Raymond Radiguet and held in the identical personal assortment for over 65 years—additionally set pulses racing on the night time. After a tense 10-minute bidding battle, it bought for €10.6 million ($12.4 million), greater than double its excessive estimate.
The surrealist a part of the sale generated €26.9 million ($31.2 million), the second-highest complete ever for a surrealist public sale at Sotheby’s in France. René Magritte’s La Magie Noire (1934) was the highest performer, going for €10.7 million ($12.4 million), doubling its estimate and setting a report for a piece from the sequence. It had been in the identical personal assortment for nearly a century and described by the home as certainly one of Magritte’s “most legendary works.” The portray was acquired instantly from the artist by the household of World Struggle II resistance heroine Suzanne Spaak, who was executed by the Gestapo for serving to Jewish youngsters escape Nazi persecution. The Spaaks had been patrons of Magritte throughout a interval when he had did not promote a single portray for 2 years.
“It’s fairly extraordinary to face such an icon of Surrealism that has remained in the identical assortment since Magritte painted it,” Thomas Bompard, vp of Sotheby’s France, beforehand advised ARTnews. “When you consider all of the generations of collectors who’ve acquired works by Magritte for the reason that Fifties, together with American collectors, nobody may have dreamt of proudly owning this seminal and celebrated La Magie Noire—till now.”
Paul Delvaux’s Girl with a Rose (1936) was purchased for €2.4 million ($2.7 million), Óscar Domínguez’s Paysage Fantastique (1938) bought for €990,600 ($1.2 million), and Der Mustergatte (1964) by Konrad Klapheck realized €825,500 ($957,580).
The second half of the sale—Modernités—took €62.8 million ($72.8 million), with 85 p.c of heaps bought. On high of the Modiglianis, Pablo Picasso’s full Séries 347 etchings bought for €1.9 million ($2.2 million), setting a French public sale report for any print by the artist.
Throughout each classes, nearly 90 p.c of heaps discovered patrons, with American collectors snapping up almost a 3rd of the surrealist works that hit the public sale block.
