Colin Gleadell looks at Ron Arad’s prices in recent years:
Yet, although Arad has shown in art galleries before – with Edward Totah in the Eighties, for instance, and with London dealer Ben Brown, who shows his work at art fairs beside paintings by Warhol and Picasso – this is the first major exhibition to emulate the stance taken by Gagosian Gallery’s groundbreaking show for the world’s most expensive living designer, Australian Marc Newson, in 2007. And Arad is not far behind.
To get an idea how Arad’s prices have increased, take another old Arad classic, the “Big Easy” stainless-steel armchair, first made in 1988. Number 11 from the edition of 20 was estimated at £16,000 to £18,000 at an auction in Paris in 2005 but did not sell. Last October, in a contemporary art sale at Christie’s, the same chair sold for £67,250 to a buyer from Asia. The auction record, set at Phillips in 2007, is £200,000 for the stainless-steel “D” sofa, made in an edition of 20.
Private sales, however, have been higher, with Sotheby’s selling a piece by Arad for close to €1 million (£930,000) at an open-air sculpture exhibition at Chatsworth House.
Ron Arad: The Designer Who Re-Drew the Borders (Telegraph)
