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15 headlines
Source-linked reporting
artobserved.com
Francis Bacon’s painting of a female nude was sold at Sotheby’s in London for £20 million ($39.7 million). The sale marked Europe’s biggest contemporary-art sale, with the buyer remaining anonymous; three Warhol self-portraits from 1986 also brought nearly £11.5 million from an anonymous buyer.
artforum.com
Chicago Tribune reports that United States postal inspectors and FBI agents raided Kass/Meridian gallery in Chicago, with authorities not commenting on specifics. The article notes the gallery specializes in contemporary and twentieth-century prints, paintings, and sculptures. It also mentions Bono’s (Product) Red auction at Sotheby’s in New York featuring works by Damien Hirst, Jeff Koons, Banksy, and other artists.
cbc.ca
Jeff Wall is the photographer of two new works acquired by the Vancouver Art Gallery: Concrete ball, 2002, and War game, 2007. The gallery now has nine works by Wall in its collection. The acquisition was aided by a grant from the Audain Foundation.
theartnewspaper.com
The article discusses Jytte Dresing, a Danish collector who has loaned eight works by Damien Hirst to Copenhagen's Arken Museum of Modern Art. It mentions her extensive collection, her husband Dennis Dresing, and other artists in her collection, including David Hockney, Marc Quinn, Richard Estes, James Rosenquist, Raoul Dufy, Max Ernst, César, Pierre Soulages, Neo Rauch, Asger Jorn, Jackson Pollock, Gerhard Richter, Sigmar Polke, Per Kirkeby, and Jonathan Meese.
abc.net.au
Francis Bacon’s Triptych 1974-1977 sold in London for 26.34 million pounds ($57.87 million), but narrowly missed the artist’s record at auction. The piece was described by Christie’s as the most important Bacon work to appear at auction, and the sale fell short of the record for a Bacon sold at auction. The record for any post-war painting remains Mark Rothko’s Yellow, Pink, Lavender on Rose, at $72.8 million.
elpais.com
The article reports that Francis Bacon's Tríptico 1974-77 sold for 35.2 million euros at Christie’s in London, becoming the highest-priced postwar painting in Europe. It notes this amount falls just short of the global record held by Estudio del papa Inocencio X (1962) which sold for 35.45 million euros in New York, also mentioning Sotheby’s totals in London and other works by Picasso and Renoir. Francis Bacon is identified as the artist; the work was painted between May and June 1974.
reuters.com
The four paintings stolen from the Buehrle Collection in Zurich are by Paul Cezanne, Edgar Degas, Vincent van Gogh, and Claude Monet, with a total value of $164 million. Police described the incident as Switzerland's largest art theft in a museum setting and one of Europe’s biggest art robberies.
nytimes.com
The New York Times reports that three men wearing ski masks stole four 19th-century paintings from the E. G. Bührle Collection in Zurich, including works by Cézanne, Degas, van Gogh, and Monet, estimated at $163 million, following a separate earlier theft in Pfäffikon of two Picassos worth about $4.4 million.
artforum.com
Jean-Michel Basquiat painting Hannibal_ (1982) was located in a Manhattan warehouse after allegedly being smuggled from Brazil. The work, valued at about eight million dollars, was found by US authorities after a courier brought it from London to New York via JFK Airport; prosecutors sought to seize it to aid Brazilian authorities. Its last-known owner was Edemar Cid Ferreira, formerly of Banco Santos, who was later convicted on charges including money laundering and bank fraud.
france24.com
The article covers an exhibition in Jerusalem of artworks looted by the Nazis in France, including works by Claude Monet, Eugene Delacroix and Georges Seurat, that were never reclaimed by their owners. The exhibit, titled Looking for Owners, is on loan from French museums and aims to prompt owners’ heirs to come forward; about 2,000 unclaimed works exist from the Third Reich era.
artnews.com
Richard Diebenkorn is discussed as his early abstract paintings, figurative works, and Ocean Park series rise in value, with prices cited from roughly $500,000 to $6.76 million at Christie’s, and estimates of $8 million and up for Ocean Park works.
nytimes.com
Carol Vogel reports that Monet's 1874 painting The Railroad Bridge at Argenteuil, once sold for 12.6 million pounds in 1988, is up for sale again at Christie’s with an estimated 35 million. The Nahmad family, longtime dealers, are selling the work they once owned, with Christie’s planning an auction in New York on May 6.
nhmf.org.uk
The page reports the establishment of ARTIST ROOMS, a national collection of post-war and contemporary art created through a gift/sale arrangement by Anthony d’Offay, with involvement from NHMF, The Art Fund and Scottish and British Governments. The collection is valued at £125 million and will be jointly owned and managed by National Galleries of Scotland and Tate to benefit audiences across Britain.
independent.co.uk
Vincent van Gogh’s L'Enfant à l'Orange (The Child with an Orange) is set to go on sale at the European Fine Art Fair in Maastricht for £15.3m, sold by Arthur and Hedy Hahnloser. The painting, created during Van Gogh’s late period in Auvers-sur-Oise in June 1890, follows a time of contentment before his final depression and suicide.
Christie’s
Christie’s announced that the circa-1700 Stradivari violin known as “The Penny” would lead its April Fine Musical Instruments sale with a $1–1.5 million estimate. The roughly 200-lot auction also included violins, violas, bows and guitars and was expected to exceed $3 million.