Alberto Giacometti sculpture sold for £65 million


16 februari 2010

A potential resurgence in today’s art market might occurred when a 1960 Alberto Giacometti sculpture sold for £65 million (€74 million, $104.3 million). In a tense contest at the company's London salesroom, bidding on the bronze "Walking Man I" began at £12 million and quickly rose, with roughly 10 bidders fighting for the sculpture. The winner, who bid via telephone, has chosen to remain anonymous.The sale breaks the previous $104.2 million auction record, set six years ago at Sotheby's, for Pablo Picasso's 1906 portrait "Boy With a Pipe," whose buyer also remains unknown

The high sum for the Giacometti work came as a surprise to Sotheby's, which had thought the sculpture would sell for around one-fourth of the final price. David Nahmad, a multi-billionaire fine art dealer and descendant of an art and banking family in Monaco vied unsuccessfully for the Giacometti sculpture, but said the sale shows that after a weak year, the wealthy are once again "parking their cash in art."

The six-foot-tall bronze depicts a wiry man in mid-stride, his right foot jutting forward, his head erect and his arms hanging at his side.

Giacometti, a Swiss modern master known for his memorable sculptures of blank-face Everymen, cast the work 50 years ago as part of a commission to plant several of his bronze figures outside Chase Manhattan Bank in New York City's financial district. The artist famously struggled with the project and finally abandoned the commission. But he later cast stand-alone versions of some of the planned sculptures, including "Walking Man I."

The steep run-up in bidding for the Giacometti Wednesday was likely to have been helped by two factors: the work's large size and the artist's popularity among buyers from Russia and the Middle East. His nearly nine-foot-tall figure of a woman, "Big Standing Woman II," sold at Christie's in May 2008 for $27.4 million, but dealers say his oversize sculptures of men are even more desirable. "Walking Man I" is three times taller than the "Toppling Man" sculpture that Sotheby's sold in November for $19.3 million.

Dealers say the surge in casts of Giacometti's works made after his death in 1966 also has made works crafted during the artist's lifetime like "Walking Man I" more valuable. New York art dealer Marc Glimcher said the price for "Walking Man I" also might simply reflect the persistence of the final two bidders: "Above $50 million, the fight for any artwork goes from love to a grudge match.

Giacometti works have become very popular for Russian collectors like billionaire business magnate Roman Abramovich, but someone familiar with the matter said that Mr. Abramovich was not the buyer of "Walking Man I." Mr. Abramovich caused a stir in 2008 at the Swiss art fair Art Basel when he bought one of the artist's 1956 bronze figures of a woman from New York gallery Jan Krugier. That work had an asking price of around $14 million."Walking Man I" was being sold by Commerzbank AG, which inherited the work when it took over Dresdner Bank, and its corporate art collection, last year. Commerzbank says it plans to use the proceeds to fund philanthropic endeavors.

The record sale came during Sotheby's auction Wednesday of Impressionist and modern art. The sale brought in $234.6 million in total, beating rival Christie's $122.9 million sale on Tuesday. Highlights from the Sotheby's sale included Gustav Klimt's leafy 1913 landscape, "Church in Cassone (Landscape with Cypresses)," which sold for $43.2 million. Paul Cézanne's smoky-colored still life, "Pichet et fruits sur une table," sold for $18.9 million. Henri Matisse's portrait of a woman draped in a lacey shawl and lying on a sofa, "Femme couchée" sold to an unnamed American collector for $7 million.


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