Radio Prague spoke with Jan Skrivanek who is an expert on the Czech art market which has seen 926m Crowns of auction volume in 2015, up 70m Crowns from the year before or about an 8% rise. That makes the second best year for auctions in the Czech republic.

Like all other art markets, there’s power law at work. Last year, the most expensive painting was a 16 million Crown work by Emil Filla.

Here’s what Skrivanek said:

“The Czech art market is mainly driven by classical modern or more widely speaking the first half of the 20th century, but there is also a growing interest also in 19th century art. A number of famous Czech painters of that era, such as Václav Brožík, Antonín Chitussi or Antonín Slavíček, sold for top prices.

“On the other side of the spectrum we also noticed a growing interest in post-war art. There was a painting by Mikuláš Medek which sold for 10 million crowns, which is again a record in that specific category.”

Czech auction market strengthens in 2015 with surge in sales set to continue (Radio Prague)