Monthly archive
27 headlines
Source-linked reporting
bloomberg.com
Dmitry Rybolovlev paid 54 million euros (then $85 million) for Paul Gauguin's 1892 landscape Te Fare (La Maison) in June 2008. At Christie’s in London, the work sold for 20.3 million pounds ($25 million), including commission, leaving Rybolovlev with an estimated net of about $22 million.
nmz.de
The article discusses a competition organized by the Deutsche Stiftung Musikleben in Hamburg, where 60 young string players (ages 12 to 28) will audition with 33 instruments from renowned makers such as Gagliano, Guarneri, Testore and Vuillaume, plus a commissioned instrument by Ersen Aycan. A Stradivari violin (Cremona 1703) from the Federal Republic of Germany is also available.
news.artnet.com
Two works from the Cornelius Gurlitt hoard, a Menzel drawing and a Pissarro painting, have been restituted to the heirs of their original Jewish owners. The Menzel work was handed to the heir of Elsa Helen Cohen, and the Pissarro painting was returned to the heir of Max Heilbronn.
theartnewspaper.com
The drawing by Adolph Menzel of the interior of a Gothic church and Camille Pissarro's View of the Seine from the Pont-Neuf were returned to the heirs of Elsa Helen Cohen and Max Heilbronn respectively. The restitutions were announced by the Kunstmuseum in Bern and the German government, with culture minister Monika Grütters commenting on the importance of clarifying persecuted individuals’ fates. These two artworks bring the total restitutions from the Gurlitt collection to four, with more suspected looted works under investigation.
news.artnet.com
Eric Spoutz was sentenced to 41 months in prison for selling dozens of fake artworks purported to be by postwar American masters such as Willem de Kooning, Robert Indiana, and Joan Mitchell; he will also have three years of supervised release, forfeit $1.45 million in ill-gotten gains, and pay $154,100 in restitution.
apnews.com
Three men were sentenced and ordered to pay 104 million euros for stealing five masterpieces from Paris Modern Art Museum, including works by Picasso, Matisse, Modigliani, Braque and Leger. The thief nicknamed “Spiderman” Vjeran Tomic received eight years; antiques dealer Jean-Michel Corvez seven years; Yonathan Birn six years. The court also fined 104 million euros in total.
theartnewspaper.com
Eric Spoutz was sentenced to 41 months in prison and three years of supervised release for wire fraud related to a scheme to sell forgeries of works by Willem De Kooning, Franz Kline, and Joan Mitchell, amounting to $1.45 million in ill-gotten gains; restitution of $154,100 was ordered.
Sotheby’s
Sotheby’s inaugural Erotic: Passion & Desire auction totaled £5.297 million against a £3.1–4.6 million combined estimate, with almost half the sold works exceeding high estimates and records set for sculptures by Jacques Loysel and Sarah Bernhardt.
news.artnet.com
The Essl Collection will be placed on permanent loan at the Albertina Museum in Vienna until at least 2044, announced by Karlheinz Essl and Hans Peter Haselsteiner with culture minister Thomas Drozda and Albertina director Klaus Albrecht Schröder. The collection comprises more than 6,000 works, including pieces by prominent artists such as Gerhard Richter, Georg Baselitz, Sigmar Polke, Albert Oehlen, Rosemarie Trockel, Ai Weiwei, Anish Kapoor, Maria Lassnig, and many Austrian artists; it was previously housed in Klosterneuburg. The Austrian Federal Chancellery is contributing €1 million ($1.06 million) for the absorption of the collection.
news.artnet.com
The article discusses two museums staging exhibitions to display hundreds of the roughly 1,500 artworks Cornelius Gurlitt kept hidden in Munich and Salzburg. It notes that the collection, amassed by his father Hildebrand and discovered in 2012, was bequeathed to Kunstmuseum Bern and mentions works by Picasso, Monet, Chagall, Cézanne, Kirchner, Dix, and Courbet. It also covers the collaboration with the Bundeskunsthalle in Bonn and the ongoing provenance investigations.
rp-online.de
The Provinzial Versicherung is selling part of its art collection to fund future acquisitions and support arts. Peter Doig's painting Winterlandschaft, acquired in the 1990s for a low five-figure amount, is put up for auction at Christie's in London as a single lot named Cobourg 3 + 1 More, with an estimated bid of eight to twelve million pounds.
news.artnet.com
Georg Baselitz, Mit Roter Fahne (With Red Flag), 1965, is highlighted in Sotheby’s London contemporary art evening sale with a pre-sale estimate of £6.5–8.5 million ($8.1–10.65 million). The piece is part of Baselitz’s “Heroes” series, and the article notes a prior record set in 1983 for Der Brückechor (The Brücke Chorus) at Christie’s New York for $7.45 million.
clevelandart.org
The article describes acquisitions and bequests added to the Cleveland Museum of Art in the year leading to its centennial, including The New Testament Trinity Byzantine icon (circa 1450) and the Gund bequest of Japanese and Korean art, among textiles, prints, drawings, and photographs.
theviolinchannel.com
German violin virtuoso Julia Fischer is announced to have joined the D’Addario Orchestral Strings artist roster. The piece notes Fischer has performed with major orchestras and conductors and holds a professorship at the Munich Academy of Music; she was recently awarded a Federal Cross of Merit.
news.artnet.com
Gustav Klimt, Bauerngarten (1907) is highlighted as leading Sotheby’s London Impressionist & Modern Art Evening Sale, with an estimated value in excess of $45 million. The work is described as one of Klimt’s best landscapes and from his golden period, last exhibited publicly in 1908, and has not appeared at auction in over two decades.
artnews.com
Gustav Klimt’s Bauerngarten (1907) is set to lead Sotheby’s Impressionist and Modern art evening sale in London with an on-request estimate above $45 million. The work follows Klimt’s Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer II selling for $150 million in a private deal reported by Bloomberg with involvement from Larry Gagosian and Oprah Winfrey.
web.archive.org
The artwork mentioned is Gustav Klimt's Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer II (1912). The piece was reportedly sold by Oprah Winfrey for $150 million to an unidentified buyer in China, with the sale brokered by Larry Gagosian. Winfrey purchased the work at Christie’s on November 8, 2006 for $87.9 million, yielding a reported profit of $62.1 million; the sale is described as potentially the largest private sale of a single artwork in 2016.
nytimes.com
The New York Times reports that Christie’s sold 4 billion pounds of art and collectibles in 2016, a 16 percent decline from the previous year, with sales at Christie’s contracting 22 percent to £3.3 billion (about $4.1 billion). Private transactions rose 25 percent to £694 million, including a joint acquisition for €160 million ($170.8 million) of Rembrandt’s wedding portraits by the Louvre and the Rijksmuseum. Sotheby’s and Phillips also saw decreased auction activity in 2016.
benningviolins.com
Eric Benning, a Los Angeles-based luthier, is highlighted in an article on Segmation’s blog Outside the Lines. The piece discusses his status as a rising star in the golden age of modern American violinmaking and mentions artists who have played his instruments, including cellist Ronald Feldman and violinists Vijay Gupta, Ashot Tigranyan, Aleksandra Maslovaric, and Paul Coletti; four Los Angeles Philharmonic musicians currently play Benning instruments.
hollywoodreporter.com
The Gustav Klimt painting Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer II (1912) was reportedly sold by Oprah Winfrey for $150 million to an unnamed buyer in China, according to Bloomberg’s Katya Kazakina. Winfrey purchased the work at Christie’s on November 8, 2006 for $87.9 million, setting an auction record for a Klimt at that time, yielding a claimed $62.1 million profit on the sale.
heraldscotland.com
Peter Doig's painting Cobourg 3 + 1 More, depicting figures in a blizzard, is expected to fetch up to £12 million at Christie’s Post War and Contemporary Art Evening Auction in London. The work, executed in 1994 and acquired by Provinzial Rheinland in the same year, features Doig and his brother on a frozen Cobourg lake.
press.christies.com
Peter Doig’s Cobourg 3 + 1 More (1994, estimate £8,000,000–£12,000,000) is highlighted for Christie’s Post-War and Contemporary Art Evening Auction in London. The release notes the work’s auction history, its status among Doig’s early oeuvre, and mentions its recent Art Icon Award recognition for Doig at the Whitechapel Gallery. The press release is dated 6 February 2017 and lists media contacts Belinda Bowring and Stephanie Manstein.
Sotheby’s
Artist Pension Trust said 34 works would enter Sotheby’s Contemporary Curated sales in New York and London, marking the first auctions drawn from holdings of nearly 13,000 works by 2,000 artists in 75 countries.
fox13news.com
The FOX 13 Tampa Bay article covers the Violins of Hope tour, featuring Amnon Weinstein and his family restoring and touring violins used by Jewish musicians during the Holocaust. The piece notes that one violin is defaced and will remain mute for 100 years, and mentions concert tours in Sarasota and surrounding counties with ticket information at jfedsrq.org/violins-of-hope.
news.artnet.com
Two Van Gogh landscape paintings, recovered in Italy in 2016 after being stolen fourteen years earlier, will be shown briefly at the National Museum of Capodimonte in Naples before being returned to the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. The recovery was announced by Giovanni Colangelo, with connections to investigations into the Amato Pagano clan of the Camorra.
artsy.net
Artsy article discusses the rise of all-female exhibitions and market momentum, highlighting Sotheby’s Traumata: Bourgeois / Kusama in London and past auction results involving women artists such as Jenny Saville.
broadwayworld.com
Molly Tracy reported that the New York Philharmonic, conducted by Music Director Alan Gilbert, commissioned and will premiere Lera Auerbach's NYx: Fractured Dreams (Violin Concerto No. 4) with soloist Leonidas Kavakos, along with Mahler's Symphony No. 4 and Bartók's Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta in early March performances.