Art Market Monitor

Phillips has announced it will sell a rare Clyfford Still painting that go up for auction during the house’s modern and contemporary art evening sale on December 7 in New York, where it will hit the block alongside a $35 million David Hockney landscape. Still’s large-scale crimson and black abstract canvas PH-407 (1964) is expected to achieve a price of $17 million.

The painting comes to the market from a private West Coast collection. Prior to that, it resided at the namesake museum of German art collector and publishing heir Frieder Burda, where it was exhibited extensively, most recently in the museum’s “Gerhard Richter. Birkenau (& Grosse Abstraktion)” showcase in 2016.

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Last week, a rare set of seven glass Tiffany Studios windows sold at Philadelphia’s Freeman auction $705,000, more than double its pre-sale high estimate of $250,000.

After online and phone bidding, the set was won by a Philadelphia-based philanthropist, who plans to display the windows in a museum, according to Freeman’s statement on the sale.

Commissioned from Tiffany Studios in 1902 for the New Jerusalem Church in Cincinnati, Ohio, Angels Representing Seven Churches comprises a set of eight-foot-high glass panels each depicting a winged angel, the title and imagery of which refers to an episode from the Bible’s Book of Revelation.

Churches accounted for a majority of Tiffany’s commissions. By the early 20th century the design studio, headed by Louis Comfort Tiffany was a leading producer of painted glass, following recognition for the studio’s presentation of a chapel interior of leaded glass windows at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago.

A similar example of the Tiffany glass window pane design resides at the the Richard H. Dreihaus Museum in Chicago.

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Last week, with highlights by leading modernists in the category: Diego Rivera, Rufino Tamayo, Fernando Botero, Matta and Wifredo Lam, Christie’s held its seasonal Latin American Art sale. Realizing a total of $9 million, across 53 lots, the sale’s performance fell below expectations, placing only 63 percent of lots with new buyers and reaching a collective price 27 percent below the pre-sale low estimate of $12.3 million.

Colombian artist Fernando Botero’s Card Players (1985) sold for $2 million, against an estimate of $1 million-$1.5 million, making it the leading lot of the group. An untitled abstraction from 1959 by Matta sold for $231,250, against an estimate of $100,000. Each of those works were new to the market, coming from private collections to which they were acquired from Marlborough gallery in the 1980s. The sale also realized a new record for Haitian Surrealist Hector Hyppolite, whose portrait of a reclining woman, La Dame en vert – La Sirène, sold from the estate of Jamaican collector Wallace Campbell completed around the year 1947 made $100,000, against an estimate of $70,000. The price surpassed Hyppolite’s last record of $75,000 paid for his Portrait of Jean-Jacques Dessalines in 2017 at Christie’s New York. This was also the work’s debut on the market. Another from the Campbell collection, Manuel Mendive’s 1992 canvas The Eyes of the Snail went for $68,750, doubling the $30,000 low estimate, but still around half of the artist’s record price of $125,000 paid for Energías para el amor y la bondad at Christie’s New York in 2017.

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Ahead of their upcoming London Old Masters sale series, Christie’s has unveiled a rediscovered monumental still life by Dutch painter Jan Davidsz de Heem that will go up for auction on December 15 at the house’s London headquarters. The painting is expected to fetch a price of £4 million– £6 million ($5.3-$7.9 million).

If the work reaches its high estimate, it will be a new benchmark for the artist, whose last record was set nearly three decades ago when a similar canvas Banquet Still Life with a Lobster (1642) sold at Christie’s in January 1988 to a private collector for $6.6 million.

In the mid-17th century, still life painting was in-demand among wealthy European patrons, and de Heem, who was active in Antwerp and Utrecht, is known as one of the founders of the Dutch golden age genre. Ornate still life scenes, featuring detailed renderings of imported food, objects of vertu and other vanitas elements emblematic of wealth, were de Heem’s area of expertise.Continue Reading

Artcurial has appointed Christophe Person as head of their contemporary African art department, a category within the house’s modern and contemporary art departments, established only a decade ago. In the new position, Person will be based at the house’s Paris headquarters.

In his previous post, Person served as head of the contemporary African art department, which he founded, at French auction house PIASA since January 2016, making inroads into the market in Europe for emerging African artists. Prior to his tenure in the auction industry, Person came from a background in finance, serving in positions at French asset management firm Amundi and the Grameen Crédit Agricole Foundation where he worked in fundraising. He also holds a Master’s degree in Art Law and Business from Christie’s Education in London.

The move follows the department’s regional expansion in 2019, when Artcurial established a second location in Marrakech; the auction house currently holds two annual sales in Morocco. The director of the company’s Morocco branch, Olivier Berman, said in a statement, the department will look to Person to “develop this young and dynamic market in Paris and Marrakesh, with the aim of promoting talent in Africa.”

In the past decade, Artcurial has been growing 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 they staged “Paris#Marrakech, African Spirit,” the debut auction at its second sale site of Marrakech. Since 2018, according to a statement, Artcurial has moved up 12 records for artists frequent in the category such as Bodys Isek Kingelez, Malick Sidibé, Omar Victor Diop, Abdoulaye Konaté and Seydou Keïta.

“The development of new markets is part of our DNA and has largely contributed to Artcurial’s success,” said Martin Guesnet, Artcurial’s director of Europe. “I am confident that this young speciality will benefit from access to a growing number of collectors,” added Person.

Outside of his role as a specialist, Person currently serves as president and founder of BISO, the first International Biennial of Sculpture of Ouagadougou and as an Advisory Board member of the Connecticut-based Josef and Anni Albers Foundation, where he is advising on a museum initiative in Senegal.