Sotheby's London Contemporary Art Sale Fetches $61.1 Million

(MENAFN- USA Art News) Sotheby's London's contemporary art sale on Thursday achieved £46.1 million ( $61.1 million ) in a slow but steady auction, with a 1977 Willem de Kooning abstraction securing the top price at £9.8 million ( $12.9 million ).

The sale's overall estimate ranged from £41.7 million to £58.6 million ( $55.3 million to $77.8 million ). The hammer total, before Sotheby's fees, reached £36.9 million, falling short of the low estimate. The one-hour auction included 34 lots, with 10 carrying guarantees. Three works by Damien Hirst, Anselm Kiefer, and Leon Kossoff were withdrawn, while pieces by Banksy, Georg Baselitz, Jadé Fadojutimi, Lucian Freud, Gerhard Richter, and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye went unsold. Last year's equivalent sale totaled £47.6 million ( $63.3 million ), led by a Francis Bacon work that sold for £13 million ( $17.5 million ).

Ivana Miloradovic, an art historian and consultant, observed the market was“very cautious.” Miloradovic told ARTnews at the sale that most lots“either underperformed or were at the lower end.”

The untitled Willem de Kooning painting from 1977, measuring 5 feet wide, was estimated at £8 million to £12 million ( $10.6 million to $15.9 million ). It hammered at £8.2 million, selling within its estimate, and reached a total of £9.8 million ( $12.9 million ). The painting previously sold at Sotheby's New York in 2015 for $6.1 million.

Coming in second was Gerhard Richter's 8-foot-wide Abstraktes Bild (1992), estimated at £6 million to £8 million ( $7.9 million to $10.6 million ). It hammered below its estimate at £5.4 million, totaling £6.7 million ( $8.9 million ) with fees. The seller had acquired it at Christie's London in 2011 for £3.6 million ( $5.7 million at the time).

An untitled, dark-hued Mark Rothko abstract from 1969, estimated at £3 million to £4 million ( $4 million to $5.3 million ), hammered at its low estimate to fetch £3.8 million (just under $5 million ) with fees. Its last market appearance was at Christie's New York in 1992, where the seller purchased it for $264,000. Works by Georg Baselitz, David Hockney, Albert Oehlen, and Andy Warhol completed the top 10, with Baselitz, Hockney, and Warhol each featured twice.

Miloradovic highlighted strong demand for British artists, stating that“British sales on British soil are always joyous.” She cited the success of David Hockney's 10th, 22nd June 2021, Water Lilies in the Pond with Pots of Flowers (2021) and Michael Andrews's Butterfly Fish (1978). Andrews's Butterfly Fish, depicting the titular animal, hammered at £550,000 against a high estimate of £120,000. It sold for a total of £704,000 ( $933,117 ) with fees, establishing a new record for an Andrews work on paper. Ottilie Windsor, head of contemporary art at Sotheby's London, noted the rarity of Andrews's works on the market. Windsor told ARTnews,“The paintings that he did make were often bought as they were being made by a group of collectors who followed his work really closely. [Those collectors have] never really needed to sell and so we get very, very low supply of his work to the market; when they do come up, they really do very well.”

Results for artists under 50 were mixed. Louis Fratino's Kissing Couple (2019) sold within estimate for £320,000 ( $424,144 ), and Adrian Ghenie's The Wall (2019) also met its estimate at £640,000 ( $848,288 ). Despite this, pieces by Fadojutimi and Yiadom-Boakye went unsold. Windsor maintained that selling 28 out of 34 lots was a success, saying,“Any dealer at the [Frieze] fair would be thrilled to sell nearly 30 secondary market lots.” She added that while there is interest and money,“the market continues to be selective and continues to surprise us with what it's looking for.”

We previously reported:

A Gertrude Abercrombie painting bought for $30 at an estate sale fetched $1.35 million at auction, setting a new record for the Surrealist artist.

A Jan Brueghel the Elder still life sold for $6.5 million at Frieze London, alongside strong sales across various international galleries.

A Barbara Hepworth sculpture featured in a 1948 Lee Miller photograph for American Vogue will be auctioned at Christie's for an estimated $6.6M–$10.5M.

Source: ARTnews

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