Sotheby’s tapped into the energy of Art Basel Paris week and recorded the highest-ever totals in France for surrealist and modern art auctions on Friday. The house’s Surrealism and Its Legacy and Modernitês sales took a combined €89.7 million ($104 million), marking a 50 percent increase on the same double-header sale last year.
The result was also the highest total for a various owner sale series at Sotheby’s Paris.
Amedeo Modigliani’s Elvire en buste (1918-1919) led the way, soaring past its €7,500,000 ($8.7 million) high estimate and selling for €27 million ($31.3 million). This is the highest auction price for the Italian artist in France. Not only this, but it also became the most valuable work ever sold by Sotheby’s Paris. Seven bidders chased the painting, which had not been seen since 1947, when it entered a private collection.
Another work by Modigliani titled Raymond (1915)—believed to depict the novelist Raymond Radiguet and held in the same private collection for over 65 years—also set pulses racing on the night. After a tense 10-minute bidding battle, it sold for €10.6 million ($12.4 million), more than double its high estimate.
The surrealist part of the sale generated €26.9 million ($31.2 million), the second-highest total ever for a surrealist auction at Sotheby’s in France. René Magritte’s La Magie Noire (1934) was the top performer, going for €10.7 million ($12.4 million), doubling its estimate and setting a record for a work from the series. It had been in the same private collection for almost a century and described by the house as one of Magritte’s “most legendary works.” The painting was acquired directly from the artist by the family of World War II resistance heroine Suzanne Spaak, who was executed by the Gestapo for helping Jewish children escape Nazi persecution. The Spaaks were patrons of Magritte during a period when he had failed to sell a single painting for two years.
“It is quite extraordinary to face such an icon of Surrealism that has remained in the same collection since Magritte painted it,” Thomas Bompard, vice president of Sotheby’s France, previously told ARTnews. “When you think about all the generations of collectors who have acquired works by Magritte since the 1950s, including American collectors, no one could have dreamt of owning this seminal and celebrated La Magie Noire—until now.”
Paul Delvaux’s Woman with a Rose (1936) was bought for €2.4 million ($2.7 million), Óscar Domínguez’s Paysage Fantastique (1938) sold for €990,600 ($1.2 million), and Der Mustergatte (1964) by Konrad Klapheck realized €825,500 ($957,580).
The second half of the sale—Modernités—took €62.8 million ($72.8 million), with 85 percent of lots sold. On top of the Modiglianis, Pablo Picasso’s complete Séries 347 etchings sold for €1.9 million ($2.2 million), setting a French auction record for any print by the artist.
Across both sessions, almost 90 percent of lots found buyers, with American collectors snapping up nearly a third of the surrealist works that hit the auction block.
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