The world record sale of a sculpture by Swiss artist Alberto Giacometti shows confidence is returning to the art market after the global slowdown, experts said Thursday.
L homme qui marche I had been expected to go for up to $29 million at the sale in London Wednesday – but an anonymous telephone buyer paid almost four times that amount, 65 million pounds ($104.3 million).
The life-size bronze statue of a man beat the previous record for a work sold at auction, said the auction house. That was set by Picasso s painting Garcon a la Pipe, sold for $104.2 million in New York in 2004.
Bidders at the auction snapped up a string of other sought after art works, bringing in more than $235 million and making it the highest value sale ever staged in London, according to Sotheby s.
It s a sign of buyers being more confident and putting best pieces in the market again, said Clare McAndrew of Arteconomics, a research and consultancy specialized on the art market.
This sale shows that the art market is a very supply-driven marketplace. Over the last year people have been very hesitant to sell good pieces – maybe the pieces that were sold were of a lesser quality.
Robert Read, head of art and private clients at Hiscox, a leading art insurer, added that the market was recovering after the global slowdown put an end to a prolonged surge in prices.
We were in a huge bubble before, where everything was selling at huge prices, we ve gone back to normal now. The bubble lasted so long we thought it was normal, he said.
The auction house hailed an exceptional result after a dramatic bidding battle forced up the price of Giacometti s work.
L homme qui marche I ( Walking Man I ) fetched exactly $104,327,006 (65,001,250 pounds), which included the buyer s premium.
The 1961 metal figure, by the leading 20th century artist known for his stick-thin sculptures of the human form, was sold by German banking firm Commerzbank, said Sotheby s.
The price is a reflection of the extraordinary importance of this exceptionally rare work, said Helena Newman, of Sotheby s Impressionist and Modern Art department.
Georgina Adam, editor-at-large of The Art Newspaper, attended the auction and hailed the astonishing price paid.
There were so many bidders chasing to get it that even before it was put up for sale somebody had started bidding, she told the BBC.
Explaining the huge interest in the work, she said: If something is a one in a lifetime opportunity, people will really step up to the plate and they will spend enormous amounts of money.
It is the latest example of a revival in art auction prices after they took a dive in 2008 as the global economic crisis devastated wealthy collectors.
But it still lags behind works sold privately. One of the most expensive of all time is believed to be Austrian artist Gustav Klimt s Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I , which reportedly sold for 135 million dollars in 2006.
Klimt s work also found favour at Wednesday s sale when his Kirche in Cassone sold for $43.2 million, a new auction record for a landscape by the artist.
This painting, bought by an anonymous telephone bidder, was sold for well in excess of the top expected amount of $29 million.
L homme qui marche I had formerly been part of the corporate collection of German bank Dresdner Bank AG, and passed into the collection of Commerzbank when the institution took over Dresdner last year. -AFP
