Viola Raikhel Head of Art and Design Advisory Reflects on the Spring Sales

June 2010

Art market history was made at Christie's New York on 4 May 2010 when a Picasso, Nude, Green Leaves and Bust, sold for $106,482,500 (₤70,278,450 €81,991,525), setting a new world record for any work of art sold at auction. Bearing the largest presale auction in history the significant 1932 oil painting of Picasso with his young mistress Marie-Therese Walter far exceeded the auction house's expectation of $70 to $90 million and sold after a nine minute bidding war between eight rivals to an anonymous buyer.

Picasso's paintings of Walter are some of his most-coveted because of their size and expressiveness, among other reasons. Adding to the work's market appeal was its exceptional provenance from the collection of L.A. philanthropist Frances Brody.

Also, the fact that the work had been off the market for the last sixty years (originally purchased in 1950 for $17,000 at New York) proved a triumphant combination for compelling connoisseurs into the market place.

On the day of the auction, the Euro dropped below US $1.30 for the first time in a year, amid concern of Europe’s government debt.  Despite the Dow's decline Christie's auctioneer Christopher Burge indicated that the New York salesroom saw "absolutely no effect whatsoever". Overall the auction tallied $335.5 million, the company's biggest sale since November 2007.

The sale reflected the current demand for late Picassos in the marketplace. Three paintings from the 1960s were among the sale's 10 most expensive lots. The priciest - Picasso's "Femme au chat assise dans un fauteuil," of 1964 - fetched $18 million, selling more than $10 million above the low estimate to Greek millionaire Dimitri Mavrommatis.

The record breaking price fetched by Nude, Green Leaves and Bust means that it is the second time this year that the world record has been shattered. In February, Sotheby's set the record to beat of $104.3 million with Alberto Giacometti's bronze sculpture Walking Man II.

Until the Alberto Giacometti sale, the previous record was set in 2004 by Sotheby's sale of Picasso's Boy with a Pipe (1905) $104.1 million; this record lasted six years over the art market boom. Now as the recession continues on, economists predict more world records will be broken in the current Spring 2010 auction season as the rich shift their wealth from currency into art at a time when catalogues aren't clogged with works, meaning buyers can focus.

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