Sotheby’s surreal second evening sale in Paris on March 15 totaled 16.98 million euros ($18 million), with a 73.9% sale rate of the 23 lots on offer, led by names from first-rate like René Magritte, Francis Picabia and Yves Tanguy, as well as an artist record set for Kurt Seligmann.
However, the sale total for “Surrealism and Its Legacy” was below the lower limit of pre-sale expectations at 19.8 million euros ($21 million) despite including buyer’s fees ( presale estimates do not include fees, sale prices do, unless otherwise noted) for three guaranteed lots. Several highly anticipated premium lots including Andy Warhol’s 1982 canvas The Two Sisters (after de Chirico)a painting by Salvador Dalí from 1956 and a work by Lucio Fontana from 1965 did not find a buyer.
Wednesday’s evening sale total was nearly half of the category’s first evening sale in Paris last year, which came in at 32.9 million euros ($34.89 million). . It also offered 23 lots (11 guaranteed lots), but achieved a sell-out rate of 95.7%.
Yves Tanguy, New Games. Photo courtesy of Sotheby’s / ArtDigital Studio.
Sotheby’s explained that the substantial difference was largely due to the sale of Picabia last year Pavonia (1929) from the artist’s “Transparencies” series, which set an auction record for the artist at 10 million euros ($11 million). The house maintains its confidence in the potential of the French capital as a key auction market in Europe.
“We saw high prices throughout the sale…as well as deep bidding pockets. We are pleased with the results, especially at such a busy time for the market,” Thomas Bompard, Sales Director and Vice President of Sotheby’s France, told Artnet News via email.
Bompard noted that the auction room of Paris has been “thriving” and the market is diversifying, with categories ranging from 20th century design and decorative arts to wine and NFTs. The market is also becoming more international, with shipments featured in Wednesday’s evening sale coming from private collections around the world, including the US, UK, Belgium, Spain, Denmark, Italy, Germany and France. The sale has also generated interest and bidding from various places, he added.
Kurt Seligman, The alchemy of painting (1955). Photo courtesy of Sotheby’s / ArtDigital Studio.
The flagship lot of the sale was that of Magritte The Music Lesson (circa 1965), lot guaranteed. Painted two years before his death, the work is the only known oil version of the iconic image believed to be a nod to the work of the same name by Vermeer. It sold for 3 million euros ($3.2 million) within expectations. The sale price was almost 10 times higher than the price realized almost two decades ago at a Sotheby’s sale in London in 2002.
This was followed by Picabia Nova (1916), back on the market for the first time in almost a century. The work sold for 2.2 million euros ($2.4 million), in line with expectations. by Ed Ruscha eye with fluid (1968), also a first-guarantee lot, sold for €1.7 million ($1.9 million), within expectations.
Chez Tanguy New Games (1940) sold for €1.4 million ($1.5 million), slightly above the upper end of pre-sale expectations. The work had been in the same private Paris collection since the 1980s. The sale set an artist record for the Swiss-American surrealist painter Seligmann, whose The alchemy of painting (1955) sold for €317,500 ($340,709).
Wednesday evening also saw the sale of the Robert and Helga Ehret Collection, which included 51 works by artists from 19th-century Paris to the German avant-garde. The sale totaled 3.5 million euros ($3.8 million).
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