Results: Sotheby's London Evening Contemporary Art Auction

Sotheby's just completed its London evening contemporary art sale, totaling $61.8 million. This fell well within the pre sale auction estimate of $57.2 million to $79.5 million. The sale offered a total of 53 lots with 44 selling for a very respectable 83% buy through rate. Kelly Crow of the Wall Street Journal reported that 11 lots each sold from a single bid, meaning there was little competition from the room. The top selling lot was an Yves Klein, selling for $9.32 million.

It is my opinion the sale was decent and fell within expectations. Yet we have recently become so used to at least a few items or lots breaking away from the pre sale estimates, that it is almost disappointing when there is not the stand out item or two within a sale. Have we become too spoiled at the top end of the art market?

Sotheby's is stating

Commenting on the sale tonight, Cheyenne Westphal, Sotheby’s Chairman Contemporary Art Europe, said: “We assembled the auction with a focus on classic works from the 1950s and 1960s by blue-chip artists and carefully considered quality, provenance and pricing. Tonight’s solid results, well above the June 2009 total, build on the recent successes of New York and London and affirm the strength and trajectory of the market for Contemporary Art and the renewed confidence from both buyers and sellers alike. Blue-chip artists, such as Klein, Fontana, Richter, Auerbach and Warhol led the way tonight and we established an average sold lot value of £933,904 – the strongest at Sotheby’s London since July 2008.”

Discussing the results of the British Art collection Oliver Barker, Senior Director and Senior International Specialist, said: “We are pleased with the results overall tonight, in particular the British and School of London Art which triumphed and saw the works in this field from a private collection total £4,256,750, near the high estimate for the group. Frank Auerbach’s ‘Mornington Crescent – Summer Morning’ led the group, selling for £2.2 million - a new record for the artist in GBP - which means Sotheby’s has now established four of the top five prices for the artist at auction. These results further consolidate Sotheby’s strength in the field of British Art.”

Headlining the sale was Yves Klein’s work, RE 49, Relief Eponge Bleu, which saw competition from four bidders for around three minutes and sold for £6,201,250 (est. £4.5-6.5 million). The work was created at the height of the artist’s career and came to auction from the collection of HypoVereinsbank. The proceeds of the sale of this work - one of only a small number of large-scale blue Relief Eponge to have remained in private hands - will enable the bank to carry out future art-related and cultural projects. Further works by Yves Klein to sell well this evening included his gold leaf of panel, MG42, which fetched £481,250 ($732,848 / €586,886) above the pre-sale estimate of £200,000-300,000, almost six times the price the work sold for (£80,500) when it last appeared at auction, in June 2000; and the artist’s fire painting F124, which sold for £914,850 ($1,376,026 / €1,115,663) against an estimate of £800,000-1,200,000.

Commanding £3,737,250 ($5,621,198 / €4,557,592), against an estimate of £3.5-4.5 million, Gerhard Richter’s monumental (145 by 200cm) oil on canvas Neger (Nuba), highlighted the works in the sale by the German artist. The painting, which achieved a sum over 12 times what it realised in 1995 (£298,500), is a masterpiece of Richter’s groundbreaking photopainting of the 1960s and is exceptional for its very early execution date, impressive scale (at two metres across), exquisite execution, and its extraordinary re-presentation of subject matter. The artist’s oil on canvas Abstraktes Bild (100 by 90cm) sold within estimate (est. £1-1.5 million) for £1,161,250 ($1,746,636 /€1,416,149).