Results: Sotheby's London Contemporary Art Evening Sale

The results for Sotheby's Contemporary Art Evening sale shows continued strength in the very top end of the sector.  According to Sotehby's, the sales total of $116.36 million (including buyers premiums) was the second highest ever for a February Contemporary Art sale.  The sale offered 54 lots, of which 44 sold for a respectable but not great 81.5% sell through rate.  The sale did claim an impressive 95.3% by value, showing that some items did very well.  The pre sale estimate range was $97.15 million to $133.76 million.

The top selling lot was by Francis Bacon, Three Studies for a Self Portrait, 1980, oil on canvas, triptych, selling for $21.53 million (see image).  Of the top ten selling lots, 3 sold for above the high estimate, 6 hammered between the pre sale estimates and on fell below the low estimate.

There are reports stating the availability of top quality reports is shrinking as it is getting harder and harder to obtain these pieces for sale, even though the values are extremely strong.

Bloomberg reported on the sale

The U.K. capital’s auction houses, Sotheby’s, Christie’s International and Phillips, are looking this week to maintain the momentum in New York in November when they raised a record $1.1 billion from contemporary sales. While there were some high quality works up for auction, some material was more routine and bidding was less frenzied in London, dealers said.

“The auction houses are finding it more difficult to get top quality material,” said New York-based Jonathan P. Binstock, senior adviser in postwar and contemporary art at Citi Private Bank. “Not a whizz-bang sale. It was solid nonetheless.”

Bacon painted the portrait, one of 11 smaller-scale triptychs, in 1980, a less sought-after period than the 1960s and 1970s. It is the only work for sale all week that carries an eight-figure estimate (10 million pounds to 15 million pounds).

The lot had been entered by a European collector, who acquired it at auction in June 2006 for 3.8 million pounds, and had no guaranteed price. Nadia Abbas of Sotheby’s Cologne office, acting for a client, was successful over another telephone bidder. 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 in 2008.

Richter Sales

This Sotheby’s event included four paintings by Richter, the biggest-selling living artist at auction in 2012, according to the Artnet database in New York. Last year, the German racked up $298.9 million of sales, a 48.8 percent increase on 2011.

“Abstraktes Bild (769-1)” from 1992 and the 1976 photorealist painting “Wolke (Cloud)” were estimated to fetch at least 7.5 million pounds and 7 million pounds respectively. Both sold for hammer prices below these figures.

The large abstract, distinguished by its vertically louvered gradations of blue, yellow and red, was being sold by a European collector and hadn’t been seen at auction before.

Source: Bloomberg