Art Market Monitor

In an annual report, the Arts Council England confirmed a record total of £64.5 million worth of art was allocated to U.K. public institutions through the British government’s Acceptance in Lieu (AIL) tax scheme. The total tax settlement from those acquisitions amounts to £40 million across 52 cases.

Through the program, which exists as a provision under U.K. tax law, owners of valuable artworks can offer them to the country in exchange for credit used to offset estate taxes. According to the organization’s 2019 report, the government committee placed 46 objects totaling a value of £58.6 million in public museum collections. The tax settlements from those works totaled £33.6 million. Since 2010, the panel has reported a total £423 million worth of art allocated to museums through the government program and £264.1 million in tax settlements. Museums incur no cost for acquisitions made through the tax plan.Continue Reading

This week, Munich-based auction house Ketterer Kunst reported a total of €60 million ($73 million) in sales for the year of 2020. Despite challenges to the market during the pandemic months, the annual figure is just 3 percent below the total result of €62 million ($75.5 million) from 2019. For Ketterer, the figure reveals a strong performance in an industry that has seen an 25 percent drop in overall sales.

The house reported that half of the sales volume was generated in the second half of 2020, with 126 lots reaching the six-figure price point, surpassing the previous record number of lots in that price category of 114. Three lots reached the €1 million mark, including Gerhard Richter’s Christiane und Kerstin and two works by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. The house set auction records for artists such as Arnulf Rainer, Hermann Nitsch and Emil Schumacher.

“This excellent balance is a strong and important signal in challenging times like these“, said auctioneer Robert Ketterer in a statement.

Speaking of the year-end December sales, he added, “While we saw slightly weaker markets in London and New York just recently, this past weekend showed that the demand for art is stronger than ever. Top quality and provenance, as well as a targeted digital strategy are key factors.“

One of the top consignments that passed through the house this year was the first portion of the corporate collection of Deutsche Bank, headlined by Karl Hofer‘s 1932 painting Arbeitslose, which came first from the artist’s estate and was won by a Berlin-based bidder for a record price of €825,000, against a high estimate of €400,000. “The corona-stricken market yearns for quality and provenances of this kind,” said Ketterer in a statement prior to the collection sale in December.

Elsewhere in the collection sale, Otto Piene‘s Rasterbild sold for €325,000 to a Bavarian collector against an estimate of €150,000, and Ernst Wilhelm Nay‘s Blau bewegt went for € 750,000 to an American bidder, against an estimate of €200,000. In October, Deutsche Bank announced plans to sell around 200 works of art from its 55,000-item collection as part of an initiative to raise €10 million  ($11.8 million) in order to focus its holdings on contemporary and emerging art, with sales set to take place across Christie’s Paris and Ketterer. Ketterer did not report the total sales figure for lots sold from the Deutsche Bank collection.

The 20th and 21st century art departments generated sales around €27 million ($33 million), well under last year’s total of €53 million ($64.6 million) made across the 20th and 21st century art department. The 19th century art department brought in €3.7 million ($4.5 million), €1 million ($1.2 million) more than 2019 and the department’s highest total. And the rare books category brought in €4 million ($4.9 million).

Ketterer estimated that online sales generated around €3 million in 2020, up 76 percent from last year’s predicted figure of €1.7 million.

A painting by Brazilian modernist Tarsila do Amaral sold for a record-setting 57.5 million reais ($11.2 million) at a São Paulo auction last week, making it the most expensive work by the artist ever sold at auction and one of the most expensive works by a Latin American artist ever to sell on the block.

A Caipirinha (1923) came to sale by court order from the collection of banker Salim Taufic Schahin, who is the subject of a lawsuit over unpaid debt to 12 creditors. Schahin was a partner at investment firm Schahin Group, which went bankrupt in 2018. The Brazilian government denied a request to block the auction, filed by Schahin’s son, who claimed he purchased the painting in 2013 and gifted the work to his father.

The canvas was sold at the São Paulo–based Bolsa de Arte auction house, where it sold above its estimate of $47.5 million reais ($9.25 million) after drawing 19 bids, ultimately going to a Brazilian buyer. That puts it among the most expensive works sold in Brazil. The price surpasses the previous top result achieved by a Brazilian artist when Alberto da Veiga Guignard’s Vaso de flores sold in 2015 for 5.7 million reais ($1.12 million dollars). Prior to that, Brazilian artist Lygia Clark’s Modulated Surface No. 4, which made 5.3 million reais in 2013.

“A work of this importance and value has never been sold in Brazil,” said Jones Bergamin, president of Bolsa de Arte, in a statement.

During her lifetime, Tarsila—who often went only by her first name—strove to help define modernism in Latin America. Born and based in Brazil for much of her life, she was recently the subject of an acclaimed survey that showed at the Museum of Modern Art and the Art Institute of Chicago between 2017 and 2018. A separate survey went on view at the Museu de Arte de São Paulo in 2019. Tarsila’s paintings from the 1920s are among her most sought-after works; many are held privately.

The market for Tarsila’s work has ascended since 1995, when Argentine businessman and art collector Eduardo Costantini purchased Abaporu (1928), widely considered to be her most iconic piece, for $1.3 million during an auction in New York. Most recently in the online edition of TEFAF New York this past October, a painting made during the early stages of Tarsila’s career Idílio (1929) was offered with an asking price of $7 million (36 million reais).

The record comes on the heels of MoMA’s acquisition of its first work by Tarsila, A Lua (The Moon), from 1928, which is said to be worth $20 million.

Paris-based auction house Artcurial reported a total of €149.2 million ($180.5 million) in sales for the year 2020. The total is down 19 percent compared to last year’s collective sales figure of €203.1 million ($223.4 million).

The top works sold via auction include a monumental standing sculpture by Alexander Calder, which went for €4.9 million ($6 million), marking a record price for large-scale sculpture by the artist and the highest price achieved for a single lot at the house in 2020. (By contrast, that is about half the price of the top lot of 2019, a Paul Gauguin painting that sold for €9.5 million, or $10.5 million.) Also among the top lots was Bernard Buffet’s 1989 canvas Deux clowns trompette, which sold for €1 million ($1.2 million), more than double the low estimate of €400,000.

“In spite of the current health crisis which has hit us hard, we have been able to increase visibility and attract many new buyers,” said Martin Guesnet, European director at Artcurial. Modern and contemporary art sales account for 39 percent of the house’s sale total; auxiliary fine art categories, including Old Masters, Asian art and books and manuscripts, account for 18 percent; and the luxury category accounts for 43 percent.

The house’s Old Masters department showed signs of life in 2020. Leonardo student Salaì’s The Penitent Magdalene—which went for €1.7 million ($2.1 million) in October, realizing a record high for the Old Master—was also among the top lots of the year for Artcurial. The department also sold the private collections of Baron François Empain and the Donon-Maigret in 2020 and realized three auction records in the process. According to the house, 21 museums made acquisitions through the Old Masters department this year.

Across a total of 16,678 lots sold throughout the year, the house realized a solid sell-through rate of 78 percent. Collectively, the house reported sales of 12 works in excess of €1 million ($1.2 million) and 17 lots above €500,000 ($613,025). Sixty-seven lots were pre-empted or acquired by museums.

Alongside the top auction houses Christie’s and Sotheby’s, which together reported annual sales of $9.4 billion, Artcurial increased its online sales volume substantially as the pandemic forced art vendors to move selling channels digital. The house cited a 59 percent increase in online sales volume.

Recently, Artcurial has made moves to expand its footprint abroad in the new year. The auction house recently appointed Christophe Person as the head of a newly-founded contemporary African art department, which is based at Artcurial’s headquarters in Paris and has an outpost in Morocco. The first sale there is due to take place on December 30.

In the past decade, Artcurial has been bolstering its presence in the regional hub as the market around contemporary African artists expands internationally. The Paris house held its first contemporary African art sale in 2010, and in 2017, it staged “Paris#Marrakech, African Spirit,” the debut auction at its Morocco venue.

“It is in our DNA to expand into new territories, and in doing so we have become the first international auction house to have a presence on the African continent,” said Guesnet.

On Monday, one of Ansel Adams’s most recognized images sold for a record price of $988,000 during an auction of a Texas oil executive David Arrington’s photographs collection at Sotheby’s in New York.

The single-owner sale of 115 works from Arrington’s extensive photographers collection brought in a collective $6.4 million, over $6.2 million pre-sale high estimated value and the realizing the highest total for a photographs sale at the house since 2014. Three landscape photos sold in the auction achieved the artist’s highest auction price.

A mural-sized print of “The Grand Tetons and the Snake River” sold for $988,000, against an estimate of $400,000-$600,000. Photographed on commission for the Department of the Interior in 1942, the view of Jackson Hole is said to be one of 10 mural-sized prints of this image. Arrington acquired the early edition from Adams’s relatives Michael and Jeanne Adams. It was purchased by art advisory firm Gurr Johns.

The figure surpasses Adams’s previous record set in June 2010 during the Polaroid corporate collection sale at Sotheby’s. There, his mural-sized print Clearing Winter Storm, Yosemite National Park, said to have been printed in the 1950s or 1960s sold for $722,500.

The firm also purchased a rare early print of “Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico” for $685,500, hammering below the pre-sale expectation of $700,000-$1 million. Prior to the sale, it was Moonrise that was poised bring a new record for Adams; the negative is one Adams revisited throughout his career, according to Emily Bierman, Sotheby’s head of the photographs department in New York, and is the earliest print from the negative that has come to market. Its first owners were Sidney Liebes, former chairman of San Francisco department store, H. Liebes & Co. who acquired the work directly from Adams around 1941-42. The last highest price paid for a print of Moonrise was $609,600 at Sotheby’s New York in 2006.