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Art Market Watch
5/29/02
$4 MILLION AT CHRISTIE'S LATIN AMERICAN
Christie's evening auction of Latin American art in New York on May 28, 2002, totaled just over $4 million (with premium), with only 33 of the 57 lots finding buyers, or 58 percent by lot. The relatively modest results for a relatively small sale are the first sign that economic malaise in general, and South American social turmoil in particular, may finally be touching the high-flying art market.
Still, the auction had its triumphs. Matta's existential The Ecclectrician (1945-46), a large oil showing a Surreal central figure in white presiding over a mechanical 3D universe, sold to an unnamed Mexican collector for $669,500, at the top of its $400,000-$600,000 presale estimate. The Mexican artist Rufino Tamayo's Dos Mujeres (1968), a gaudily colored painting done in oil and sand, was offered from the collection of the late Hollywood actor Anthony Quinn and went for $559,500 (est. $300,000-$400,000) to an unnamed European institution. And the Cuban Wifredo Lam's Dona Asseguda (1940) sold for $317,500, well above its presale high estimate of $200,000.
Auction records were set for three artists. Francisco Rodon's Ines en mis suenos (1996-2002), a large-scaled Pop-style portrait with the kind of bright colors that made the Puerto Rican artist's reputation in the 1960s, sold for $229,500 (est. $220,000-$260,000) to a Latin American collector.
The Brazilian modernist Alfredo Volpi's Fachada (ca. 1955), a folkish color construction in tempera, went for $47,800. And Maria Fernanda Cardoso's Woven Water (1994), a suspended structure made of starfish attached at their tips, sold for $22,705. Cardoso's previous auction record, $17,625, was set one year ago.
Other notable lots included a 1979 gouache on paper by Francisco Toledo, The Rabbit Exterminator, an exceptionally lively composition of a red hare running through a field of spider-web-like ringlets of color dotted with wasps and a fumigation gun. It sold after spirited bidding for $218,500, well over its presale high estimate of $100,000. Toledo is described in the catalogue as arguably Mexico's greatest living artist.
Fernando Botero's Caballo (1999), an attractively jade-colored 20-inch-tall bronze of a horse in an edition of six (a larger-than-life-sized version goes on the block at Sotheby's on May 29), sold for $229,500, just at its high estimate. "The Botero market is consistently good for sculpture," said Christie's Latin American expert Ana Sokoloff after the sale.
Jesus Rafael Soto's elegant Vibration I (1959), a proto-Op wood and metal construction measuring more than six feet wide, was purchased by New York dealer Roland Augustine for $71,700, above its presale high estimate of $60,000.
Among the passed items was a collection of personal effects belonging to Frida Kahlo -- two peasant blouses, a letter to Trotsky, some jewelry, an address book, a carved and painted skeleton -- that was estimated at $30,000-$40,000. The sale had no actual artworks by Kahlo (for a good report on "Kahlismo," see David D'Arcy on NPR.
Rufino Tamayo's La Tierra Prometida (1963), a 20-foot-long oil on paper on canvas mural representing contemporary Israel and originally commissioned for an ocean liner, estimated at $1,000,000-$1,500,000, failed to sell, (condition may have been a problem -- the work was at sea for over 20 years), as did the important Lam, La Sierra Maestra (est. $400,000-$600,000), a dramatic 10-foot-wide abstraction done in 1959, the year of Castro's inauguration, and celebrating the mountains in Western Cuba that was his revolutionary redoubt. "The size of the works presented a problem," suggested Sokoloff.
As usual, for illustrations and complete auction info, see Artnet's unique Fine Art Auction Results.
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