Auction Houses

German Auction House Van Ham Reports $19 M. in H1 2020 Turnover

August 20, 2020 by Angelica Villa

Saint Catherine of Alexandria (17th Century). Courtesy Van Ham.

With a total turnover of over €16 million ($18.9 million) across 31 auctions and 6,000 lots, Cologne-based auction house Van Ham Kunstauktionen ended a successful spring season with reformatted Classic Week and Modern Week sales. The 2020 total aligns with Van Ham’s H1 earnings of €16.3 million ($19.4 million) generated in 2018.

The live auctions led the bulk of sales. With a semi-annual turnover of €10 million ($11.9 million) the Modern Week auction series was led by four editions from postwar German painter Fritz Winter’s Driving Forces of the Earth series, which together realized €678,000 ($805,006). Two works by American hyperrealist artist Tom Blackwell, exceeded their estimate achieving a combined result of €84,000 ($99,735). The sale saw new records for photo-realists Anthony Brunelli, with a new benchmark of €134,000 (159,101) and Roberto Bernardi at €38,500 ($45,712).

In contemporary art, Insomnia, a painting by Belgian artist Luc Tuymans, realized €148,000 ($175,724), marking a record for the artist in a German auction. In the modern sale, a 1935 work by German painter Georg Schrimpf titled Girl at the Window made €251,000 ($298,018) after being held privately for 70 years. Competitive bidding moved the price far past its low estimate of €50,000, hammering at €195,000 to a German buyer. Van Ham offered significant holdings from the corporate collection of SØR Rusche, a German clothing retailer to auction this series, among which were 150 modern and contemporary works.Continue Reading

Portrait of a Portrait Artist

June 7, 2010 by

Tonight, Sotheby’s offers Yuri Annenkov’s Portrait of Zinovii Grzhebin for £800,000 to £1,200,000. Grzhebin, the subject of the 1919 painting, was a prominent literary figure of Russia’s Revolutionary Era whose publications often featured collaborations with World of Art artists like Annenkov.

Although Annenkov completed portraits of numerous Russian cultural and political leaders, such works rarely appear on the market. The last comparable example to cross the block was Annenkov’s Portrait of Aleksandr Nikolaevich Tikhonov, which nearly doubled its high estimate, bringing £2,260,500 at Christie’s in 2007.

The estimate on the forthcoming Grzhebin portrait is about the same as the one carried by the Tikhonov portrait (the Grzhebin portrait‘s low estimate is £100,000 less, but the high estimate is the same). Will the Grzhebin portrait also mimic the Tikhonov portrait’s record-breaking performance? For more on Annenkov’s market and the fate of Sotheby’s cover lot, see the latest edition of The ART Report.

[wpsc_products product_id=’7′]

Russia's Post-Boom Blues

June 4, 2010 by

Was Russian art’s recent influx in value just a boom-era phenomenon? Russian sales achieved most of their highest prices in 2007, when works like Konstantin Somov’s The Rainbow soared in the sales room, overthrowing their estimates by factors of two, three and sometimes even four.

Since 2007, however, both high and average prices in the category have ceased to climb. For analysis of Russian art’s current value, as well as a comparison between Russian art and art from other emerging markets, see the latest edition of The ART Report.

[wpsc_products product_id=’7′]