Monthly archive
30 headlines
Source-linked reporting
news.artnet.com
Paul Gauguin, Nafea Faa Ipoipo (When Will You Marry?) (1892) is discussed as the painting previously billed as the most expensive, with a reported sale price of $300 million. The UK High Court suit reveals the actual sale price was $210 million, $90 million less than reported; the article also notes related works and historic auction records.
artnews.com
Wolfgang Tillmans’s Freischwimmer #84 (2004) sold for £500,000 hammer (£605,000 with fees) to set a new auction record for the artist at Phillips. The sale also featured Gerhard Richter’s Abstraktes Bild (682-4), 1988, at £2.4 million and Peter Doig’s Tunnel Painting (Country-rock), 2000, at £1.16 million. Joe Bradley’s Hat Trick (2009) passed at £200,000. The evening sale totaled £24.4 million ($31.7 million) with a 94 percent sell-through rate.
euronews.com
Pablo Picasso’s painting titled Femme écrivant or Woman Writing, dated 26 March 1934, sold at Christie’s in London for £34,885,000 / €39,570,000. The work depicts Picasso’s muse Marie-Thérèse Walter and had not previously appeared at auction.
rabtrust.org
Sam Brouwer is featured in relation to the Rowan Armour-Brown Memorial Trust Fund and a New Jersey Newark School of Violin Making RAB Special Award for attending the Oberlin Violin Makers Workshop in 2017. The page recounts his Oberlin workshop experience, including work on a late Del Gesu model, varnishing a Strad copy by Antoine Nedelec and Jeff Philips, and notes about prior RAB funding in 2014 for cello wood and a work placement with Helen Michetschläger.
standard.co.uk
Kandinsky’s works set two auction records at Sotheby’s New Bond Street in London, with Murnau – landschaft mit grünem haus selling for £21 million and Bild mit weissen Linien selling for £33 million; the sale also included records for Joan Miró and a Giacometti sculpture, among other lots in the Impressionist and Modern Art Sale valued at over £127 million.
artsy.net
Wassily Kandinsky’s works set a new record at Sotheby’s London, with Bild mit weissen Linien selling for £33 million and Murnau – Landschaft mit grünem Haus selling for £21 million. The sale overall totaled £127.9 million, with a 73.9% sell-through rate, and Christie’s June contemporary auctions were canceled with Modern and Impressionist sales planned for next week. The article also reports on a forged-Hirst operation led by Vincent Lopreto, involving fake prints sold to multiple buyers.
pers.rubenshuis.be
David Bowie’s Tintoretto is discussed as part of the Rubens House unveiling of Bowie’s collection, focusing on Tintoretto’s St Catherine altarpiece and the underdrawing revealed by KIK-IRPA, with plans for a scholarly publication and potential temporary return of the painting to Venice for the 2019 Biennale.
artinvestment.ru
Kandinsky in the Tretyakov gallery reports a new record for Kandinsky works at 41,825,000 USD, making it the third-largest auction result by a Russian artist. The painting discussed is Painting with white lines, 1913, sold at Sotheby’s on 21 June 2017, with earlier estimates around 30,000,000 USD and a result near 41,825,000 USD.
bloomberg.com
Kandinsky’s 1913 painting Bild mit Weissen Linien (Painting With White Lines) sold for 33 million pounds (about $41.6 million) at Sotheby’s in London, setting an auction record. The same evening, Kandinsky’s 1909 landscape with a green house sold for $26.4 million at the same sale.
apnews.com
AP News reports that a $40,000 violin, a 1855 George Gemunder, and a $6,000 bow were recovered by Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority police at South Station and are expected to be returned to owner Amy Sims. Sims, a freelance musician from Watertown, left the instrument at the station, and a surveillance image led to investigative developments; a person of interest is no longer being pursued.
cbsnews.com
The story reports that Amy Sims was reunited with her $40,000 violin by MBTA Transit Police at South Station after it was left there for over a week. The instrument, handmade in New York in 1855, was recovered with the help of a woman who had picked it up and returned it to authorities; Sims expressed gratitude toward the woman and the Transit Police.
news.artnet.com
Helge Achenbach, a prominent German art adviser, has been ordered by the Düsseldorf district court to pay €18.7 million ($20.8 million) to the heirs of billionaire Berthold Albrecht. The ruling largely upholds an earlier 2015 decision and stems from Achenbach secretly inflating his commissions by tampering with receipts. The case previously involved a 2015 sentence of six years in prison and a damages figure that has since been adjusted in the subsequent ruling.
marinij.com
The Marin Independent Journal reports authorities are searching for a $40,000 violin left behind at a train station. The incident allegedly occurred at South Station in Boston, with the violin owner reportedly forgetting it and boarding a train; another woman is believed to have taken possession of the instrument and it has not been located.
culturetype.com
The Culture Type article discusses acquisitions by the National Museum of Women in the Arts for its 30th anniversary, including Faith Ringgold's 1997 story quilt and works by Yael Bartana, Louise Bourgeois, Lalla Essaydi, Jami Porter Lara, and Berthe Morisot. It highlights Ringgold's piece, American Collection #4: Jo Baker’s Bananas (1997), and notes the museum's ongoing exhibition history with Ringgold’s work.
houstonpublicmedia.org
The article covers Florian Leonhard, a Stradivarius expert, and violinist Katie Thomas visiting Houston Public Media. It discusses Leonhard’s work with rare violins, notable instruments in his collection, including a 1735 Giuseppe Guarneri del Gesu and a 1724 Abergavenny ex Kavakos Stradivarius, and references the Immanuel and Helen Olshan Texas Music Festival. The piece mentions Leonhard’s estimated value near $10 million for the Abergavenny and notes his authentication work and a related performance by Katie Thomas.
benningviolins.com
The piece discusses five Los Angeles Philharmonic musicians who perform on instruments crafted by Eric Benning: cellist Jonathan Karoly, violist Mick Wetzel, and violinists Mitchell Newman, Stacey Wetzel, and Vijay Gupta. Karoly plays a Stradivarius-model cello by Benning, and Gupta plays a 2015 Bergonzi-model violin.
tass.com
A 17th century violin was reportedly replaced with a fake; the instrument was kept at the daughter’s flat on Maly Kislovsky Street. Police are examining the case as a theft, with official documents of authenticity not presented and experts noting inconsistencies between the case date (17th century) and the violin itself (20th century).
philanthropynewyork.org
Agnes Gund sold her 1962 Roy Lichtenstein Masterpiece for $165 million (including fees) to create the Art for Justice Fund, which will start with $100 million from the proceeds. The Ford Foundation will administer the fund and help raise an additional $100 million over five years.
ideastream.org
A painting by Roy Lichtenstein, Masterpiece (1962), owned by Agnes Gund, was reportedly sold for $165 million to fund criminal justice reform, with proceeds supporting the Art for Justice Fund and related initiatives.
harpersbazaararabia.com
The article discusses a strong start to 2017 in the international art market with high-profile auction results in London, including Sotheby’s £195m and Klimt’s £48m top lot, and Christie’s £2.5m result for Njideka Akunyili Crosby. It notes a shift toward more curated auctions, greater selectivity, and rising attention to female artists such as Agnes Martin.
theviolinchannel.com
Ioana Cristina Goicea of Romania was awarded the 1st prize at the 2017 Michael Hill International Violin Competition in Auckland, New Zealand. She will receive NZ$40,000 (US$31,000), a recording on the Atoll label, a performance tour in New Zealand and Australia, a custom-designed outfit, and a professional development programme.
rfi.fr
Pierre Soulages is the artist of the 1962 painting sold in France for more than six million euros, beating its estimate; the work cited is Peinture 162 x 130 cm, 14 Avril 1962. The sale surpassed a previous Soulages record at Sotheby's London in 2013 for Peinture, 21 novembre 1959.
news.artnet.com
Timothy Sammons, a British art dealer and former Sotheby’s specialist, faces extradition to the United States on 14 counts of grand larceny and one count of scheming to defraud. The extradition request was filed by the New York County District Attorney’s Office and UK District Judge Mike Snow has agreed to comply. Sammons allegedly ran a Ponzi-like scheme to acquire art from collectors, promising to find buyers and using funds for himself, including paying for travel to a beachfront home in South Africa.
u.osu.edu
Zhang Daqian’s 1965 scroll painting Ancient Temples Amidst Clouds sold for 102.5 million Hong Kong dollars (about $13.2 million) at a Christie’s sale in Hong Kong. The article notes Zhang as the biggest-selling artist at auction, with Picasso in second place at $31 million less in 2016, according to Artprice. It also mentions Zao Wou-Ki selling for about $19.6 million at Christie’s Hong Kong and discusses China’s growing share of public fine art sales.
Sotheby’s
Sotheby’s June Impressionist and Modern day sale was led by sculptures from Mary and George Bloch, spanning Moore, Hepworth, Giacometti, Arp, Dubuffet and Calder and tracing four decades of collecting.
broadwayworld.com
Jeremy Tai, a cellist, won the 32nd Irving M. Klein International String Competition with a prize purse of $13,000. The finals were held at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music on Sunday, June 4, with Zhanbo Zheng (viola) taking second and Kyumin Park (violin) taking third; the competition featured nine finalists and 99 entrants from 13 countries.
glenclarson.com
The article discusses Stephen Kolbinson, a Saskatchewan farmer who collected the Amati String Quartet and sold it to the University of Saskatchewan in 1959 for $20,000, a collection now valued around $3 million.
theviolinchannel.com
The Cavani String Quartet, based in Cleveland, announced the appointment of cellist Si-Yan Darren Li to the ensemble. Li is a Juilliard and Peabody alum, prize winner at the Tchaikovsky International Cello Competition and the Young Concert Artists International Auditions, and will replace Merry Peckham. Li previously played with the Euclid Quartet and holds an assistant professorship of cello at the University of Central Florida; the Cavani Quartet will join the chamber music faculty of the Cleveland Institute of Music in September.
levante-emv.com
Renaud Capuçon plays the Guarneri del Gesù Panette violin, made in 1737, previously owned by Isaac Stern for 50 years; the article covers its history and Capuçon’s upcoming performance at the Palau de la Música de València with the Orquestra de València under Alexander Liebreich.
artobserved.com
The article reports Sotheby’s London auction results from June 21, 2017, noting a new auction record for Wassily Kandinsky at £33 million and a total London sale figure of £127,945,750. It covers the Actual Size curated sale, which achieved £20,931,250, including highlights like Ed Ruscha’s Blue Scream (£1,568,750) and Picasso’s Buste de femme couchée (£2,408,750), as well as a Piero Manzoni Achrome (£1,208,750).