Highest price for a work at auction
Alberto Giacometti’s L’homme qui marche I (Walking Man I) sold for £65,001,250 or €74,185,983 at Sotheby’s in London on Wednesday night, becoming the most expensive work of art ever sold at auction.
Formerly part of the corporate collection of Dresdner Bank AG, the sculpture came into the possession of Commerzbank AG after the latter’s takeover of Dresdner Bank in 2009. Commerzbank intends to use the sale proceeds to strengthen the resources of its new Foundation Centre, and also to provide funds to their partner museums for restoration work and educational programmes.
The record sale eclipsed Pablo Picasso’s Garcon a la Pipe, which sold for £58,052,830 (€85,949,017) at Sotheby’s New York in May 2004.
The sale of Giacometti’s work was swiftly followed by that of Gustav Klimt’s Kirche in Cassone (Church in Cassone), which made £26,921,250 (€30,725,246), a new record price for a landscape by the artist.
Once part of one of the greatest early collections of Klimt’s work – that of the Austro-Hungarian iron magnate and collector Victor Zuckerkandl and his wife Paula – the work went missing in Vienna during the Nazi period and only resurfaced decades later. It was offered for sale tonight pursuant to an agreement between Georges Jorisch, the now 81-year old great nephew of the original owner, and the European private collector in whose family the painting had been for several years.
These two works headlined a sale that realised a record-breaking total of £146,828,350 (€167,575,324), making it the highest value sale ever staged in London and exceeding pre-sale estimates.
“These great works have been recognised for the masterpieces that they are,” explained Melanie Clore, Co-Chairman, Impressionist & Modern Art, Sotheby’s Worldwide. “ The competition which generated these exceptional results demonstrates the continued quest for quality that compels today’s collectors.”
The sale also saw the highest price of the week for a Surrealist work. Rene Magritte’s Le Beau Navire – one of the finest 1940s nudes ever to have appeared on the market, and in the same private collection since 1977 – made £3,737,250 (€4,265,327) against an estimate of £2,500,000-3,500,000.
In all, 51% of the lots sold achieved prices in excess of their high estimate and of the 39 lots offered, 31 were sold.
The average lot value was £4,736,398, the highest ever for a London sale.
