Canada’s National Post reflects on its auction season and concludes that the Group of Seven, Canada’s blue chip artists, have faded and are being replaced by Contemporary artists whose work has begun to set records and post seven-figure sales. At the same time, the last round of sales brought too many Group of Seven works to the auction block; too few of them were of the quality that would generate excitement and high prices.

Sotheby’s David Silcox puts it in perspective:

“One exceptional price is a fluke, two is a coincidence, three is a trend and four is a new definition of the market,” Silcox says. “I don’t know if this indicates a real shift in taste, but you could almost feel the change in the room when we switched over to post-war art.”

This season, there were 15 living artists represented at the Sotheby’s auction. Heffel featured the work of 10 living artists and Joyner Canadian Fine Art featured 35 at their auction.

David Heffel agrees:

“The future of our market is maturing post-war contemporary artists. It’s a trend based on attrition and matches what we’ve seen in the U.S.”

The Group of Seven is so last century: auction season winners and losers (National Post)