Colin Gleadell focused on Russian buying in London last week. He points to high-end purchases like the top lot of the week, Picasso’s La Lecture that made £25 million, and an early work being sold by the Art Institute of Chicago. But Gleadell also finds that Russians are buying in other sectors of the master’s oeuvre:
Russian buyers also powered the market for Picasso ceramics, which he turned out by the thousands from 1946 onwards. Eighty-one were offered last week, and all sold, many doubling and tripling estimates, for prices between £600 and £127,000. Picasso’s contribution to the last week’s sales came to just over £46 million.
More than that, according to Gleadell, Russians also had a taste for Surrealist works along side their previous appetite for colorful post-Impressionist works like Bonnard, Derain and van Dongen.
Impressionist and Modern Sales: The Prices are Almost Surreal (Telegraph)
