Stefan Simchowitz made a name for himself as a renegade dealmaker in the volatile market for emerging artists. But this week in London he has gotten much more attention for bidding on established artists. Most art advisors and dealers like to keep their clients privacy. But Simchowitz isn’t like others, is he? So it should not be a surprise that he took to Instagram to celebrate his purchases last night with his clients (above) whom he describes as “my Lebanese, Jordanian and Kuwaiti clients. All collecting emerging contemporary. The interest for art is far and wide.”
And here’s what he bought last night at Sotheby’s for his clients from Judd Tully’s report:
There were also some surprises in terms of bidders as Los Angeles emerging art guru Stefan Simchowitz, hard to miss in the first row, bought two works of a very different nature, Anselm Kiefer’s jumbo-scaled, mixed-media “Die Ungeborenen,” from 2013, for £1,085,000/$1,679,580 (est. £350-450,000) and Sean Scully’s “Enter Yellow,” from 1999, which made £557,000/$862,236 (est. £350-450,000).
“There’s no weakness in the market,” said Simchowitz as he exited the salesroom. “There’s a huge expanding interest growing outside of this zip code zone and I think it’s healthy.” Referring to the just acquired Kiefer for a client, Simchowitz noted, “Kiefer is undervalued and you can buy 10 for the price of one Richter squeegee painting.” Self-serving or not, the statement makes sense.
Sotheby’s Italian Art & Contemporary Sales Bring $118.8M (BLOUIN ARTINFO)
