The Spring season was quite successful for Latin American sales in New York. Christie's achieved a total of $27,731,875 and Sotheby's followed with $26, 859,250, which add up to a combined total of $54,591,129; with the welcome addition of Phillips an additional $3,500,000 make it a grand total of $58,091,129, the highest for any Latin American art season on record, which clearly shows the art market at large is showing no inclination for a slowdown and that includes the Latin market as well.
The highlight of Sotheby's sale was the wonderful Idolo, a complex surreal composition by Wifredo Lam that carried an estimate of $2,000,000/3,000,000 and realized a new world record for the artist at $4,562,500, bidding went on as a concentrated war of wills from two telephone bidders from the start. There were many determined buyers in the sale, three bidders pushed the price of Claudio Bravo's Ad laudes, a beautiful painting of hanging fabrics in two colors that carried an estimate of $700,000/900,000 until one of the bidders prevailed surpassing the estimates at $1,172,500.
There has been a continued appreciation for the abstract and minimalist artists from the region in the past seasons, particularly during the past three years and we saw this trend continue as well on this season. There has been a shift however from Venezuelan artists to Brazilian works bringing the highest prices in this sector. Although the great success at Phillips by the result achieved by Arturo Herrera's Untitled from 1998, an attractive piece in red felt that carried an estimate of $20,000/30,000 and realized a spectacular $206,500, a new record for the artist is a welcome addition to a new generation of Venezuelan artists in the quarter million dollar range.
At Sotheby's Sergio Camargo's white monochrome Hommage a Fontana had been estimated at $600,000/800,000 and quickly rose to $1,538,500. At Christie's the cover lot, Candido Portinari's Navio negreiro, an important piece form the De Barros collection sold at $1,142,500, a 1982 piece by Iberé Camargo, Visão, sold twice above the estimated $50,000/70,000 achieving $140,500 and the following piece, by Alfredo Volpi also went above the estimates $350,000/450,000 selling for $458,500.
Phillips, which entered the auction season within the same time frame this season also achieved good results with Brazilian art, the first lot of the sale, Electronic eyes, 2011 by Os Gêmeos had an estimate of $80,000/120,000 and sold above the high estimate for a total of $122,500. The two pieces by Helio Oiticica offered in the sale were of particularly good quality, Mataesquema 169 a beautiful abstraction from 1958 carried an estimate of $180,000/220,000 and sold for $230,500 and Mataesquema 179 from the same year which had been estimated at $250,000/350,000 brought the hammer down at $266,500.
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