"the most expensive work of art ever sold at auction"
Giacometti sets sale record with £65m sculpture
By Peter Aspden, Arts Correspondent
Published: February 3 2010 16:58 | Last updated: February 3 2010 23:44
Heads up: Picasso’s ’Tête de Femme (Jacqueline)’, a highlight of the £77m sale at Christie’s. It sold for £8.1m, twice its high estimate EDITOR’S CHOICE
Culture: It doesn’t make sense - Jan-29
Profit and loss - Jan-08
Theatres enjoy record performance - Jan-27
Reid’s poetry wins Costa book award - Jan-26
A sculpture by Alberto Giacometti became the most expensive work of art ever sold at auction when it fetched £65m ($104.3m) at Sotheby’s London on Wednesday night.
The sculpture, “L’Homme qui marche I”, soared over its £12m-£18m estimate and beat the record held by Picasso’s painting “Garçon à la pipe”, which sold for $104.2m at Sotheby’s New York in May 2004.
The Giacometti work was put up for sale by Commerzbank AG, which acquired it after it took over Dresdner Bank last year. Proceeds from the sale are to be put towards supporting the bank’s charitable foundations as well as selected museums.
Ten bidders competed over the telephone for the sculpture, which was cast in 1961. The lifesize work ranks among the most arresting of the Swiss artist’s sculptures. The sale marked the first time a Giacometti figure of a walking man – one of the artists recurring themes – has come to auction in more than 20 years.
The Giacometti sale was the highlight of the auction of modernist and impressionist works, which saw £146.8m worth of art sold, the highest total ever made at a sale in London.
Another notable sale was of a painting by Gustav Klimt, the Austrian master, that went missing during the second world war and came to auction following a deal between the work’s original and present-day owners. It easily exceeded its £18m estimate to sell for £26.9m.
The deal was brokered following a restitution claim by Georges Jorisch, the 81-year-old great-nephew of the painting’s original owner, Viktor Zuckerkandl, the Viennese-Jewish steel magnate and renowned art collector.
The painting, “Kirche in Cassone”, a landscape painted in 1913 while the artist was on holiday in Lake Garda, Italy, went missing while Mr Jorisch, who has lived in Montreal since the 1950s, was in exile in Brussels with his father during the war.
The rest of his family, which had inherited the work from the childless Zuckerkandl, died in a concentration camp.
Sotheby’s has declined to give details of the deal, nor will it reveal the identity of the present-day owner.
A third work to sell for more than £10m on Wednesday night was a still life by Paul Cézanne, “Pichet et fruits sur un table”. It was estimated at £10m-£15m and fetched £11.8m.
The corresponding sale at Christie’s on Tuesday evening saw £77m worth of art sold. Its highlight was the sale of painting by Picasso, “Tête de femme (Jacqueline)”, a portrait of the artist’s second wife, which went for £8.1m – twice its high estimate.
Giovanna Bertazzoni at Christie’s London said the sale “sent a strong signal to consignors that demand is high and that knowledgeable buyers from around the world are committed to acquiring works of art”. She said the last six months of 2009 saw a “noticeable uptake” in the number of high-quality works on the market.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2010. You may share using our article tools. Please don't cut articles from FT.com and redistribute by email or post to the web.
