Following the successful Danute and Alain Mallart Collection on 18 October, Christie’s held yesterday its evening auction: Avant-Garde(s) including Thinking Italian, celebrating important 20th and 21st century art by offering over fifty major works. Tonight’s sale totaled €50,859,000 | $55,217,134 bringing Christie’s running auction total during Art Basel Paris to €64,446,808 | $69,988,470. With a sell through rate of 98% and 15 works selling over €1 million. The quality of the works attracted a large audience, with a strong presence of bidders in the room.
Several new auction records were set in France during this sale, including:
• Zao Wou-Ki, 05.65 (€4,396,000)
• Piero Manzoni, Achrome (€2,944,000)
• Fernando Botero, Nightlife (€2,036,500)
• Jean Fournier, Otage (€1,794,500)
• Christopher Wool, Untitled (H.H) (€630,000)
• Andrè Cadere, Barre de bois rond B 13204000 (€520,750)
• Arnaldo Pomodoro, Sfera con sfera (€478,800)
• Georges Vantongerloo, Fonction de lignes (€176,400)
Opus 1, Torse de jeune fille (élégante) by Victor Servranckx established a new world record for a sculpture by the artist, fetching €264,600.
Zao Wou-Ki’s 24.05.65 led the evening with an impressive final bid of €4,396,000, closely followed by an Untitled painting by Joan Mitchell, which fetched €4,275,000. Other highlights included Nicolas de Staël’s Fleurs rouges, which fetched €2,581,000. The sale also featured a Surrealist work by Francis Picabia, Myrte, which fetched €1,734,000, marking the Centenary of Surrealism this year. Design pieces also featured in the sale, with sculptures by François-Xavier Lalanne, whose Moutons de laine, un mouton et trois ottomans fetched €1,794,500.
The Thinking Italian section, for the third year running in Paris, offered an exceptional selection of the greatest names of Italian art history, sold 100%. This year’s offering was highlighted by Lucio Fontana’s remarkable red Concetto Spaziale, Attese, which sold for €3,670,000. Three further lots sold for over a million, including Achrome by Piero Manzoni, which sold for €2,944,000, La Robe Rouge by Domenico Gnoli, which sold for €1,068,500, and another Concetto Spaziale, Attese, this time in blue by Fontana, which sold for the same price.
Echoing the newly opened exhibition at Bourse de Commerce – Pinault Collection, the auction offered works by Giuseppe Penone and Giulio Paolini, important artists of the Arte Povera movement. Two major works by Giuseppe Penone, from the Grafiti series, were sold in positive-negative format: Pelle di grafite (scuro) and Pelle di grafite (chiaro), for €163,800 and €119,700 respectively which set a new record for a work on paper by the artist.
