A precious painting by Pablo Picasso was the announced star of Sotheby’s upcoming auction to be held on 3rd November in New York. In just a few days Sotheby’s will put up for auction all high-level proposals, in the session dedicated to impressionist and modern art, which includes in its élitist range of choices various pieces by Degas, Munch, Matisse, Van Gogh, Monet, Kandinskij and Picasso.
Yesterday, a sudden and unexpected change of course was announced, then published on the New York Times, regarding the piece that was considered one of the highlights of the event: Picasso’s “Arlequin” from 1909 has been withdrawn from the auction; this painting was estimated at more than 30 million dollars, equivalent to about 24 million euros.

A Picasso Cubist painting that was to have been a star of Sotheby’s Impressionist and Modern art sale on Nov. 3 has been abruptly withdrawn from the auction. “Arlequin” (1909), which the auction house estimated at more than $30 million, was one of the most expensive works in a high-profile sale that will kick off the important fall art season. The painting is included in the catalog that was sent to potential buyers this month.
“It’s been withdrawn for private reasons,” David Norman, a co-chairman of Sotheby’s Impressionist and modern art department worldwide, said late Monday. He was speaking on behalf of the seller, who could not be reached. It had been rumored for weeks that the work would be taken off the market because of fears that art prices were heading the way of the world financial markets.
The painting, which depicts a harlequin resting his chin on one hand, had belonged to the Surrealist painter Enrico Donati, who bought it for about $12,000 in the late 1940s.
When Sotheby’s announced in September that it was selling the painting, auction house officials said it was being sold without a guarantee — an undisclosed sum promised to the seller regardless of the sale’s outcome. On Monday, auction experts familiar with the negotiations said that both Sotheby’s and its archrival, Christie’s, had offered the estate a guarantee, as well as other types of financing. In the end, however, the painting was to be offered at auction without a guarantee, but with a clause in the sale contract giving the seller the right to withdraw the painting.
Donati, who died in New York in April at age 99, bought the painting after visiting the Musée d’Art Moderne in Paris in the late 1940s. On the visit to the museum, he happened on an early Picasso Cubist work and was so taken with what he saw that he headed straight for the Louise Leiris Gallery — lender of the painting — in the hope of buying a Cubist Picasso for himself before returning to New York.
When Donati arrived, the gallery door was locked, but a man inside came out to see what he wanted. That man was Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, Leiris’s brother-in-law and a legendary dealer. Kahnweiler had met Donati through a mutual friend, Marcel Duchamp.
With a palette of jade, rose and amber, “Arlequin” is a prime example of Picasso’s Analytic Cubist phase. The figure is similar in composition to portraits Picasso had painted of his mistress Fernande Olivier.
Asked if Sotheby’s planned to attempt to sell the painting privately, Mr. Norman replied, “Right now it’s just off the market.” (The New York Times)

Christie’s International has assembled $350 million of art in Abu Dhabi, combining highlights from its Oct. 30 auction in nearby Dubai with a Rothko, a Bacon and two Monet works as it seeks to woo emerging-market buyers.
Christie’s is betting that cash from emerging markets in the Middle East, Asia and Russia will stop the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression from triggering a similar slump in the art market.
The size of the Abu Dhabi exhibition “gives you some idea of the growth and our belief that it will be consistently maintained over the next period”, said Jussi Pylkkanen, chairman of Christie’s Europe, in a telephone interview. “There’s no other way we’d be bringing $350 million worth of art to the Middle East”.
Contemporary-art auctions in London by Christie’s, Sotheby’s and Phillips de Pury & Co. between Oct. 17 and 19 made a combined 59 million pounds ($91 million), against minimum estimates of 106.2 million pounds, according to Bloomberg calculations.
“There’s certainly an adjustment, but in the early 1990s, we didn’t have the breadth of buying that we have today”, said Pylkkanen. “Then the top of the market was very much driven by Japanese and there was nobody else around them and the truth is that today’s art market is a very global one”. (Bloomberg)

With a market for Munch and Warhol seeing some slowsown in demand at the October print sales at Sotheby’s and Christie’s, it will be interesting to see how a unique Andy Warhol impression based on a famous image by Edvard Munch fares later in the year.
“Eva Moducci (After Muncj”, a 3ft 6in x 2ft 8 in (1.02×81 cm)silkscreen in colours which Warhol produced in 1984, will appear at Bloomsbury Auctions in their modern and contemporary prints sale on December 4. From a private US collection, it has an authentication stamp from the Warhol Foundation and is in excellent condition.
Warhol was commissioned by Norwegian company to make this work along with four other impressions of iconic Munch images from “The Frieze of Life series”. Munch’s image depicts his lover, the British violinist Eva Mudocci, whom he met in Paris between 1901 and 1903. The silkscreen will have an £80.000 - 120.000 estimate.

CHRISTIE’S AND SOTHEBY’S OVERCOME THE WINDS OF CRISIS WITH “MADE IN ITALY” ART 
If the London auctions dedicated to contemporary art alarmed the art market due to the downturns of Sotheby’s, Phillips de Pury and Christie’s, which altogether had an average of unsold works equal to 50%, at last the economy of sales seems to have heaved a small sigh of relief with the Italian Sales.

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