Relief éponge or (RE 47 II),  Yves Klein Estimate: £5 – £7 million. Price Realized: £5,865,250. Image via Christie’s

Last night, Christie’s evening sale of post-war and Contemporary art in London totaled £39,149,500, exceeding the pre-sale estimate of £26,290,000 to £38,260,000. More than half of the lots offered sold above estimate, and in selling 9 works over  £1 million (16 over $1 million), the auction house easily surpassed the equivalent figure for all three of their auctions of Post-War and Contemporary art in London last year.  The evenings auction confirmed that not only has confidence returned to the art market but also that there is a real hunger from international collectors in this market – Europeans dominated the bidding, eventually accounting for 41% of the sales, 22% of works sold to Americans, 31 percent went to Britain. Four percent went to Asia. Particularly strong prices were realized for classic European artists including Yves Klein as well as Joana Vasconcelos and Alighiero Boetti, both of whose work established world record prices.The strong results at our international auctions during the second half of last year encouraged vendors who were previously resistant to consign works of art, and the increased supply of quality works fed a strong demand and led to competitive bidding.

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Tall Figure II and Tall Figure III both 1960 Alberto Giacometti. All images via MoCA

To celebrate their 30th Anniversary, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MoCA) are exhibiting ‘Collection: MoCA’s First Thirty Years‘ – an exhibition comprising of more than 500 artworks by more than 200 artists, it is the largest ever installation of works from MoCA’s permanent collection. This comprehensive survey of the past 70 years of contemporary art history fills both of MoCA’s downtown L.A. locations – MoCA Grand Avenue and The Greffen Contemporary.

Big Wheel, Chris Burden (1979) via MoCA

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