Bloomberg looks ahead to some February sales in London. This includes the Feb 12th sale at Sotheby's which includes a Francis Bacon triptych with a $24 million estimate. The sale is expect to bring $101 million which would be the highest in London February sales since 2008. After the strong contemporary sales in November of 2012 it will be interesting to see if the top end of the market stays strong.
Bloomberg reports
Source: Bloomberg
A Francis Bacon triptych self- portrait is estimated to sell for as much as $24 million at a sale in London next month.
It will be the first big test of the auction market for contemporary art after a record week in New York in November.
Sotheby’s (BID) 56-lot auction on Feb. 12 carries a minimum valuation of 63 million pounds ($101 million), based on hammer prices, the highest figure for one of the company’s February London contemporary sales since the previous art market boom of 2008, the New York-based company said today in an e-mail.
Wealthy individuals, concerned about continuing instability in the wider economy, are increasingly turning to contemporary art as an alternative investment, dealers said. Recent auctions of contemporary art have been dominated by high prices for classic works by gold-standard names such as Bacon, Andy Warhol, Gerhard Richter and Jean-Michel Basquiat.
Bacon’s “Three Studies for a Self-Portrait” dates from 1980 and is one of 11 such smaller-scale triptychs. Painted when the artist was 71 years of age, it has been entered by a European collector. Its formal top valuation is 15 million pounds. The current auction high for this type of triple self- portrait is the 17.3 million pounds paid for a 1975 version at Christie’s International in 2008.
Richter was the biggest-selling living artist at auction in 2012, according to the Artnet database in New York, racking up $298.9 million of sales, a 48.8 percent increase on 2011.
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