Reporting a 3.4% decline in foot traffic, Scott Reyburn is all over TEFAF:
- Landau Fine Art Inc: A unique 1945 Joan Miro wood sculpture, “Oiseau Lunaire,” priced at $5 million, was confirmed sold today at the opening of the world’s largest art-and-antiques fair.
- Van de Weghe Fine Art: Christopher Wool’s 1999 enamel-on-linen “Night of the Cookers I” was priced at $1.5 million.
- Odermatt-Vedovi: Wool’s 2004 “Untitled (P447)” was valued at $850,000.
- Ael Vervoordt: El Anatsui priced at 600,000 euros — and bought by a Russian collector
- Littleton & Hennessy: A Chinese late Qianlong-dynasty rock-crystal sculpture of a “Qilin” mythical beast was among the few confirmed early sales to Asian visitors. Priced at $65,000, it was bought by a Hong Kong collector.
Judd Tully hoovers up the sale reports in Maastricht too:
- Landau also sold Henri Laurens‘s striking, glass-topped bronze “Grand Table, Cariatide” from 1938 for a price in excess of $500,000.
- Small-scale works appeared to be in high demand as Wassily Kandinsky‘s “Study for the Horsemen of the Apocalypse II,” a 1914 work of watercolor and Indian ink on paper, measuring 8 ¾ by 5 5/8 inches, sold to a European collector for a bit under €1 million ($1.5 million).
- Van de Weghe Gallery selling a untitled 1981 Jean-Michel Basquiat painting, signed with the artist’s street tag name of Samo, to a French collector for $2.5 million
- Blain Southern sold Berlin artist Jonas Burgert‘s “Blendlauf,” a large-scale 2011 figurative painting with Bosch-like apocalyptic overtones, for €95,000 ($134,000).
- Seoul’s Kukje Gallery, partnering with New York’s Tina Kim Gallery, sold an über-reflective untitledAnish Kapoor wall sculpture from 2008 in a blazing shade of magenta, measuring five by five feet in stainless steel and lacquer, for £600,000 ($880,000).
- Waterhouse & Dodd: Suzanne Valadon‘s 1924 “Nature Morte aux Tulipes et Compotier de Fruits,” which sold for €130,000 ($190,000); Albert Gleizes‘s “Juliette a la Toque” from 1921, which sold for €250,000 ($370,000). Raoul Dufy‘s jaunty 1922 townscape “Le Dome a Florence” for €70,000 ($100,000), and Andre Lhote‘s “Nature Morte a la L’Eventail” from 1912 for €38,500 ($57,000)
Billionaires Get Choosy at $1.4 Billion Art Fair (Bloomberg)
Visions of the Apocalypse and Elegant Sex Catch Buyer’s Eyes at TEFAF (Artinfo.com)