Sotheby’s failed to sell a third of the lots at its Impressionist and modern art auction last night in New York, the latest sign that worldwide financial distress is undermining demand for trophy paintings and sculpture.
Just 64 percent of the 70 lots found buyers, the lowest rate for an Impressionist evening sale at Sotheby’s since May 2001. The $223.8 million tally was a third below the $338 million low estimate. Christie’s International holds its Impressionist and modern art sales tomorrow and Thursday nights.
“The market just corrected”, said John Good, a director at Gagosian Gallery, as he and about 800 others departed Sotheby’s cavernous white-walled salesroom.
Among the bright spots, Kazimir Malevich’s geometric 1916 “Suprematist Composition” sold for a record $60 million to a lone bidder. Henry Kravis’s elegant Edgar Degas ballerina pastel made $37 million, also an auction record for the artist. (Bloomberg)

Kazimir Malevich’s Suprematist Composition from 1916 sold for $60,002,500, not only a record for the artist, but a record for any Russian work of art ever sold at auction. Regarded as an icon of Russian art and a paradigmatic example of the 20th century avant-garde, the masterwork was executed in 1916, the same year that Malevich published his Suprematist Manifesto.
Emmanuel Di-Donna, Vice Chairman, Impressionist and Modern Art Worldwide and Head of Sotheby’s Evening Sales, New York, said, “We are thrilled with the price of $60 million which was received for the Malevich. This is a true masterpiece and we have been privileged to offer it at auction on behalf of the family. What we saw tonight was a great work of art perform at the highest level even in challenging times.”
The Heirs of Kazimir Malevich issued a statement through a spokesperson as follows: “The heirs are delighted with the extraordinary sale achieved for Suprematist Composition which confirms Kazimir Malevich’s position among the greatest masters of the 20th century.”
The painting had been featured in the collection of the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam for the past fifty years before being restituted to the artist’s family. It has been included in every major exhibition of Malevich’s work ever mounted – both inside Russia and abroad, and was selected by the artist for his first ever exhibition to a Western audience in 1927.
Edgar Degas’ Danseuse au repos reaffirmed its position as the preeminent work by the artist ever to be sold at auction tonight, commanding $37,042,500, and establishing a new record for the artist at auction. It last appeared on the market in the summer of 1999 when it achieved a price of $28 million, a record that stood until this evening. Completed in 1879, this exquisite pastel and gouache is remarkable for the great quality of its richly worked surface and the detail of its vision and scope. (Artdaily)

Henry Kravis, co-founder of the leveraged-buyout firm KKR & Co. LP, has asked Sotheby’s & Co. to auction an Edgar Degas work in his collection estimated to fetch more than $40 million, according to two New York dealers.
Kravis, 64, is selling a Degas pastel of a seated ballerina at Sotheby’s in New York on Nov. 3, according to the dealers, who declined to be named because the information is private. The financier bought the 1879 work, titled “Danseuse au repos”, at Sotheby’s in London in 1999 for $28 million, setting a Degas auction record that has stood since. He has locked in a “guarantee” from Sotheby’s to receive an undisclosed amount regardless of the sale’s outcome.
Kravis declined, through KKR spokesman David Lilly at Kekst & Co., to comment on the sale.
Kravis served on Sotheby’s board from 1997 to 2003 and has periodically sold other works at auction by Henri Matisse, John Singer Sargent and others. Dealers speculated that his taste had moved toward 20th-century modern works, prompting him to prune the 19th-century Degas. Kravis’s wife, Marie-Josee Kravis, is president of the board of trustees at New York’s Museum of Modern Art.
Sotheby’s Nov. 3 impressionist and modern-art sale is projected to tally in excess of $350 million. The sale is led by Russian Kazimir Malevich’s 1916 geometric “Suprematist Composition”, estimated to sell for more than $60 million.
The approaching New York auctions of impressionist and modern works come amid a weakening art market and global financial crisis. Recent contemporary-art auctions in London missed projected totals.
Dealers privately moan that buying has stopped as collectors wait to see if prices will drop in the coming months. Yet other merchants of older art remain optimistic. (Bloomberg)

Christie’s and Sotheby’s, the two most important auction houses in the world, really seem to want to ignore the great financial crisis that is hitting the global economy, to challenge each other with their masterpieces. Which of the two will sell the most, gaining the title of “queen of the autumn auctions”? All we can do is wait for the following dates: the 19th October at Christie’s London with the auction “Post War & Contemporary Art” and the sale at Sotheby’s New York, “Impressionist & Modern Art” organized for the 3rd November 2008.

One of the most significant bequests to the nation in a century, including masterpieces by Edgar Degas, Claude Monet, Lucian Freud and Francis Bacon, goes on public display from today.
The exhibition of the 18 masterpieces, at Tate Britain, London, is likely to be the first and last opportunity to view the £100m collection in its entirety before the works are split between the Tate and the National Gallery.
Simon Sainsbury, the British philanthropist and art collector who died in 2006, left the pieces to the two institutions – five to the National, with the rest to be housed by the Tate. Some, such as Freud’s Boy Smoking, have not been seen by the public since 1954. Paul Gauguin’s Bowl of Fruit and Tankard before a Window has not been exhibited since 1936.
The pieces left to the Tate include three works by Freud, a rare early work by Bacon, Thomas Gainsborough’s Mr and Mrs Carter, and three works by the French artist, Balthasar Klossowski de Rola. Two pieces by the French painter, Pierre Bonnard, Nude in the Bath and The Yellow Boat, will make the Tate one of the principal places to see his work outside Paris.
Other works include the gallery’s first “conversation piece” by the German painter Johan Zoffany, and an oil painting of a hunt by the English artist John Wootton, who specialised in sporting subjects. The National Gallery will receive impressionist and post-impressionist works, including Monet’s Snow Scene at Argenteuil and Water-Lilies, Setting Sun.
Simon Sainsbury had a passionate interest in the arts, particularly 18th and 19th century architecture and art. Sir Nicholas Serota, the director of Tate Galleries, said the gift would “transform” the Tate’s ability to show a number of artists in depth. He said it was “one of the most important in the history of Tate” and would greatly enhance its collection.
Nicholas Penny, the National Gallery’s director, said the bequest would make a “huge difference to our impressionist and post-impressionist galleries”.
(The Independent)