Sotheby’s Mid-Season Impressionist & Modern Art Sale Scores $6.4 Million

Sunday, 12 October 2008 19:40

New York City - Jennifer Roth, Senior Vice President at Sotheby’s, said, “We were delighted with the results of yesterday’s midseason sale of Impressionist and Modern Art, including Latin American and Russian Art. We saw bidding from all parts of the world, including the United States, Western and Eastern Europe, with results exceeding the high estimate for the sale. Grand total $6,435,939 (£3,673,272) on October 7th.

Extremely strong bidding was seen for the cover lot, Sinfonie 23 (lot 76), by Rudolf Bauer, which achieved $254,400. Bauer is a figure who has often been marginalized in the history books; however he was painting at a crucial time in the development of abstract art in the 1910s and 1920s and had a strong relationship with his Friend and mentor Wassily Kandinsky. This early work, from 1916-1919, was exhibited in Der Sturm andDas Geistreich, two important galleries in Berlin. Sinfonie 23 was unquestionably the finest work by Bauer to come to the auction market in many years, which is reflected in the world auction record achieved for the artist that more than doubled the previous record.

Almost 15% of the value of the sale was achieved by 20 lots sold on behalf of the Patti Birch Trust, dominated by works by Zoran Music. These included portraits landscapes and works from the important series Nous Ne Sommes pas les Derniers, of which lot 177 brought $314,500.

Works by Russian artists performed extremely well in this sale, with 3 of the top 10 lots in the entire sale coming from Russian-born artists. Pavel Tchelitchew’s 'The Clown' (lot 120), executed in sand and gouache on paperboard, is an extraordinary example of the artist’s device of incorporating animals, people and objects into a figural composition. The work was exhibited in the one-person exhibition of works by Tchelitchew at the Museum of Modern Art in 1942. A small study of a Fortress by Nikolai Roerich, (lot 131), exceeded its presale low estimate by over ten times, bringing $116, 500. In addition, the lyrical bronze by Ukranian-born artist Alexander Archipenko entitled The Past (lot 119), which was inscribed with a romantic dedication to his lover and exemplified the Art Moderne style of the late 1920s and 1930s, performed very strongly bringing $128,500.”

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