May 2011 Latin American Auctions NY

Abundance was the qualifying word this season for the Latin American sales at both Christie's and Sotheby's. Rarely does the market get a chance to see Latin American art of quality in such quantities and from almost every period and school. The success of the sales, which totaled an outstanding $26,853,025 for Sotheby's and $22,571,450 for Christie's, is very impressive indeed. Sotheby's had three catalogues printed for the sale, with a combined total of $13, 973,150. The evening sale also included two other collections, one titled "A Discerning Eye: Latin American Masterpieces from a Private Collection," consisting of 19 lots and featuring an exquisite early work by Diego Rivera, as well as a sampling of other Latin masters, totaling of $5,423,750. The other extra catalogue comprised a selection of works by Fernando Botero and featured early works to recent ones, including paintings and sculptures as well as works on paper. This selection of Botero works was crucial to the sale's success as a whole, as the main sale and the private collection together totaled $19,396,900; the total for the sale of the Boteros was higher than the entire private collection at $7,456,125 (although the first five Boteros offered were from the private collection), and slightly more than one half of the entire main catalogue. In financial terms these sales have established beyond any doubt that Botero is now to Latin sales like his contemporary fellow artist, Andy Warhol -a cornerstone of the market, as the single most important artist by numbers of works and value in the Latin American sales. In fact, by occupying the same position that Andy Warhol has in the international Contemporary Art market, the volume of his works, and the high value of the pieces, Botero is now the Andy Warhol of Latin art. The highlight of the Botero selection was the Family from 1972 that featured a Botero interpretation of the subject at its most ironically bourgeois: the complacent, slightly cross-eyed mother looks over her oldest girl, her excessive day jewelry in sharp contrast to the bucolic surroundings, while her infant jumps to her knee, and her sitting husband, the very image of staid bureaucracy, holds the other son in his knee. Already sporting glasses, the son seems to preclude a future very similar to the present. The painting seems to be as much an allegory for the support of bad government as a comical take on the incongruences of modern formal dress in the middle of the tropical outdoors. This detailed and wonderfully colored work in Botero's most delicate pastels did very well within the estimated $1,000,000/1,500,000 selling at $1,398,900. The other big price of the sale went to Man on a Horse, from 1992, a monumental bronze sculpture that carried an estimate of $800,000/1,200,000 and realized $1,172,500. Established collectors may recall with nostalgia the golden provenance of another work offered, The poet, from 1970, acquired from the legendary Dr. Atencio's collection, a highpoint of quality collecting in Latin American art. It was offered with an estimate of $500,000/700,000 and it sold for $602,500 -exactly the same result, with the exact same estimate as another great work from the '70s that was offered from a distinguished European collector and trend setter, Lovers on a French Sofa, a masterpiece of Botero's depictions of one of his favorite themes: nude lovers in amorous embrace. This particularly humorous rendition, depicting an unusually hirsute gentleman with a lady whose abundance of hair would have made Marie Antoinette jealous, were comfortably settled into a huge French settee, like a lovely pair of whales in an ocean of pink satin. At Christie's, Botero's work also did well. His Woman in Front of a Mirror from 1986 sold for $602,500 (est. $500,000/700,000) and another painting, Homage to Bonnard from 1977 carried the same estimate and realized the exact same result, pointing also to the fact that works from the `70s and '80s stan...