Impressionist & Modern Art sales in London: trends

Judging by the unsold rates (16% and 18%) the two sales in London on 18 and 19 June produced honourable results. These rates reflect a buoyant level of global demand with bidders from more than 30 countries as well as a rather special context from a provenance point of view. Indeed, some of the best works came from the Nahmad family whose collection is famous for its quality and size (one of the world’s largest) and which has encountered one or two problems with the American justice system in recent months.

As for the turnovers generated during the two evening sales, they fall within the estimated price ranges announced by Christie’s and Sotheby’s, but they look relatively meagre compared with previous years when we had become accustomed to totals ranging from £207 million and £246 million. This year the combined total was just £173.9 million (including buyer’s premium).
For the record, the latest Contemporary art sales at the end of May 2013 generated substantially more than twice that amount ($691.7 million or £447.7 million). We are clearly witnessing a levelling of prices at the high-ends of the Modern and Contemporary segments. Thus, today, a budget of $20 million can just as much buy an Yves KLEIN blue sculpture (Sculpture Eponge Bleue Sans Titre, $19.5 million excluding buyer’s premium) as it can a Composition by Wassily KANDINSKY.

Kandinsky in effect was one of the most anticipated signatures of the June sales with his Studie zu Improvisation 3, a mixed technique of about 60 cm (44.7 cm x 64.7 cm) whose price has been revised by an additional $4 million between 2008 and 2013 (including buyer’s premium).

Kandinsky: 1909, the key year
The period 1908 to 1915 was pivotal in the history of Western art and is a period that appeals particularly to lovers of historical abstract art and hence to Kandinsky fans. After his European tour, during which he discovered such avant-gardists as Paul Cézanne, Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse in the years 1906-1907, Wassily Kandinsky entered a period of pictorial maturation and theory that resulted, in 1910, in his famous book Concerning the Spiritual in Art. That year is also the date of a water-colour by the artist that was long considered the first abstract work, although some historians suspect that the artist predated it.
Kandinsky’s current auction record stands at $20.5 million for a 1909 work entitled Studie für Improvisation 8 (on 7 November 2012, $23 million including buyer’s premium at Christie’s). Supported by the new record of last autumn, the same auctioneer offered a work from the same year entitled Studie zu Improvisation 3 that had already fetched $15 million in 2008 and sold this time (on 18 June 2013) for the equivalent of $18.8 million ($21.21 million including buyer’s premium).

Owned by the Nahmad family, the work had one of the most recognized provenances on the art market. The same family also put Monet’s Palais Contarini up for sale the following day at Sotheby’s, and so it was also thanks to the Nahmad “collection” that Sotheby’s managed to pull off its biggest challenge on 19 June, i.e. to sell the latter work (oil on canvas, 1908, 73 cm x 92 cm) within its estimated range. In 1996, the Nahmad family acquired the work at Christie’s for just $4 million including fees. Its price in 2013 including buyer’s premium is equivalent to $30.8 million… Representing an increase by 650% in 16 years (hammer price: £17.5 million). In fact, the Claude MONET work alone generated 28% of Sotheby’s turnover figure on 19 June in London.

On 20 and 21 June, the two market leaders held their Impressionist & Modern Art day sales, with equally important art-historical signatures, but with less high-end works. At this type of sale, the prices usually range from on average £5,000 to £500,000. This time a pencil drawing Nu debout sur socle (1955) by Alberto GIACOMETTI sold for just £13,750 (roughly $21,000), when on 9 May 2006 an admittedly larger drawing by Giacometti, Femme debout/Groupe de personnages (c.1946), fetched $1.4 million (excluding buyer’s premium) at Christie’s.