We’re In a Fontana Market Now as Christie’s Ups Ante to $30m on Yellow La Fine di Dio

Bloomberg’s Katya Kazakina does a tally of the Fontanas on offer at Frieze. Following on their success, Christie’s is bringing a yellow La Fine de Dio to market in New York next month with a healthy estimate of $30m.

Here’s Kazakina’s tour of the Fontana waterfront:

Sotheby’s and Christie’s offered 12 pieces each by the postwar artist, selling 21 of them for a combined 36.6 million pounds ($56.6 million), during their evening auctions. The week’s top lot was Fontana’s punctured, black, egg-shaped canvas, “Concetto Spaziale, La Fine di Dio (The End of God),” which fetched 15.9 million pounds at Sotheby’s. […]

“You didn’t come away thinking, ‘Oh my god, there’s a crisis,”’ said Abigail Asher, a partner in art advisory firm Guggenheim Asher Associates Inc. in New York. “You went away thinking, ‘All those Fontanas sold.”’ […]

More paintings by Fontana were on view at Frieze Masters, an art fair focusing on historic material. At the booth of London-based Robilant + Voena, Fontana’s blue monochrome slashed seven times was paired with Old Master paintings and marble busts. Another exhibitor, the Dominique Levy gallery, said it sold seven paintings by Fontana, declining to reveal prices.

Italy’s Tornabuoni Art gallery opened its London branch this month with a Fontana exhibition. The 55 artworks on view are valued at 120 million euros ($136 million) and accompanied by a lavish hard-cover catalog.

“I didn’t know there would be this invasion,” said Ursula Casamonti, whose family owns the gallery and most of the works on view, about the glut of Fontanas on the market in London. “Each time we open a new branch, we open with Fontana.”

Canvas-Slashing Artist Boosts $369 Million Auctions in London (Bloomberg Business)