Gerhard Richter’s 1968 photo-realist painting Domplatz, Mailand, will headline Sotheby’s spring Contemporary Art Evening Auction in New York with an estimated price of $30-40 million.
Gerhard Richters Gemälde Domplatz, Mailand, wird am 14. Mai in New York versteigert. Das Bild entstand 1968 als Auftragsarbeit für Siemens Elettra in Mailand und misst 2,75 mal 2,90 Meter; es wird auf 30 bis 40 Millionen USD geschätzt (etwa 23,4 bis 31,2 Millionen EUR). Das Werk hing lange im Siemens-Büro bzw. später bei Hyatt Hotels und wird nun von der Hyatt Hotels Corporation verkauft.
Gerhard Richter’s painting Domplatz, Mailand, an estimated $30/40 million, was auctioned by Sotheby’s as a highlight of the spring Contemporary Art Evening Auction. The work, a commission for Siemens Elettra in 1968, measures over 9 by 9 feet and is noted as Richter’s largest figurative work; it previously sold in 1998 at Sotheby’s London, acquired by the Pritzker family for $3.6 million. It was later associated with the Hyatt Hotels Corporation and was shown in Hong Kong, Zurich, London, and New York before the sale.
The NeNorwegian Henie Onstad Art Centre near Oslo owns Henri Matisse’s 1937 painting Blue Dress in a Yellow Armchair, which family of Parisian dealer Paul Rosenberg demands returned after Nazi seizure during World War II; the painting was bought by the Onstad center in 1950 from Galerie Henri Benezit in Paris.
Zao Wou-Ki painting leads Sotheby’s April 6 auction of 20th century Chinese art in Hong Kong, selling for $4.8m and setting a new auction record for the artist. The 1983 oil on canvas is signed in both Pinyin and Chinese and was acquired from the artist by a Swiss private collector.
Pablo Picasso’s Femme assise dans un fauteuil (Eva) (Woman in an Armchair) (1913) is noted among the works in the Leonard A. Lauder Cubist Collection donated to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which will create the Leonard A. Lauder Research Center for Modern Art as part of a $22 million endowment. The gift comprises 78 Cubist works by Picasso, Braque, Gris, and Léger, and is described as transforming the Met into a major Cubist art center.
Charles Le Brun's Sacrifice of Polyxène (lot 36) fetched €1,441,500/£1,229,311/$1,885,194. Other notable works included François de Troy's Portrait de la famille Davène de Fontaine (€577,500/£492,492/$755,255) and Jan Brueghel The Younger’s L’Arche de Noé (€481,500/£410,623/$629,706). The Old Master paintings sale totalled €5,117,200/£4,363,948/$6,692,274 with 62% sold by lots and 84% by value.
The article discusses Christie’s auctions in Dubai (April 16–17) and Sotheby’s in Doha (April 22), highlighting record results for Middle Eastern artists such as Farhad Moshiri with The Secret Garden (2009) at $987,750, Chafic Abboud and Safwan Dahoul, Fateh Moudarres, Louay Kayyali, and notes an upcoming Doha sale including Maurizio Cattelan’s installation Andreas and Mattia with an estimated $1–1.5 million, and a total estimate around $11 million across multiple works by Ai Weiwei, Rudolf Stingel, Subodh Gupta, Donald Judd, Damien Hirst, Mahmoud Said, and others.
Carla Accardi, Giuseppe Capogrossi and Francesco Lo Savio are highlighted in a Christie’s Milano spring session report. The sale total was 8.6 million euros with 91% lot sold and 96% by value; top lot was Lucio Fontana’s Concetto spaziale, Attese sold for €757,200. Carla Accardi’s works (1965 painting on sicofoil and a 1990 canvas) sold for €114,600 and €57,900 respectively; Giulio D’Anna, Giorgio de Chirico, Giuseppe Capogrossi, Francesco Lo Savio, Victor Vasarely, Gianni Colombo, Donald Baechler, Bertozzi and Casoni, and Pierre et Gilles are also mentioned with various prices. The report attributes strong results to second half of the twentieth century works and overall positive market sentiment in Italy.
Cézanne and Modigliani are highlighted as leading works in Sotheby’s May 2013 Impressionist and Modern sale. The post notes that Lot 7, Paul Cézanne’s Les Pommes (1889-90) sold for $41,605,000 and Amedeo Modigliani’s L’Amazone (1909) sold for $25,925,000, among other results that helped the sale gross about $230 million. The Lewyt estate provided a major portion of the total with 20 works, including the Cezanne and Modigliani pieces mentioned.
Sotheby’s traces Zao Wou-Ki’s reception in China while documenting auction demand, including RMB 610 million in 2012 public-auction transactions and recent Hong Kong sales.