The big news in the fine art auction scene last week was the sale of Giacometti's L'homme qui marche I (Walking Man I) for what was said to be the most money paid at auction for an art work.The artist's life-sized sculpture fetched £65million
The big news in the fine art auction scene last week was the sale of Giacometti’s L'homme qui marche I (Walking Man I) for what was said to be the most money paid at auction for an art work.
The artist’s life-sized sculpture fetched £65million (well up on the £12million reserve) after just eight minutes of bidding at Sotheby’s.
The extraordinary thing about the work is that it is from an edition of eight. Several of the casts are in major public institutions already so there is the possibility of a few more of them coming onto the market.
The sculpture originated as part of the public project that Giacometti was commissioned to do for the Chase Manhattan Plaza in New York, which, when completed, was to be the first modernist outdoor project in the city's financial district. and a cast of L'Homme qui marche I was first exhibited at the Venice Biennale in 1962.
The previous record for the auction of an art work was a Picasso’s Boy with a Pipe which was sold for £58.5million in 2004.
That had surpassed the previous record of US$82.5 million paid for Van Gogh's Portrait of Dr Gachet in 1990 and also became the first US$100million painting.
These are not the highest prices that art works have sold for, as some of the private sales are not often verified. Works by Jackson Pollock Willem de Kooning and Gustav Klimt have sold for around £75,million in the last few years.
But of more interest to New Zealand was the sale at Sotheby’s of a work by the Russian artist Natalia Goncharova who has three works in the Te Papa collection which are never on show.
Her work La Fenaison (Haymaking) sold for £1.1 million nearly twice the reserve of £600,000
Te Papa says that it won’t sell the work they have for ethical reasons even though sale of the paintings would allow for the purchase of relevant works to be added to the collection The artists work has previously achieved even higher prices with several of her works selling for around £5million.
Other big sales at the Sotheby’s show included Gustav Klimt's Kirche in Cassone which went for £26.9million, far above the £12 million estimate.
It was a record price for a Klimt landscape and the second highest auction price paid for any work by the Austrian painter.
Another Austrian artist had a good sale as well. Egon Schiele’s Sitzende Frau Mit Violetten Strümpfen (Seated Woman In Violet Stockings) went for £4.85million (£3million)
There were several good Impressionist sales with Paul Cezanne's Pichet et Fruits sur une table selling for £11.8million (£10million)..
One of George Seurat’s major drawings, a crayon and gouache work of Garçonnet Assis sold for £1.9million (£750,000).
Also by Seurat was a small painting (15.8 cm x 25 cm) Hospice Et Le Phare De Honfleur which sold for £657,250 (£300,000).
