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USArtists shines at PAFA
ArtfixDaily / October 20th, 2010
The 2010 USArtists appeared right at home at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts's beautiful Samuel M.V. Hamilton Building in the center of Philadelphia from Sept 30 to Oct. 3. While rain storms kept some collectors away, about 3,000 show visitors gave an enthusiastic response to the venue ...
Property of artist Ben Shahn featured in Rago auction, Nov. 14
ArtfixDaily / October 18th, 2010
Ben Shahn (1898-1969) was one of the most popular artists of the 1940s and 1950s. His graphic brilliance, visual and emotional realism, and social conscience attracted an international audience. The children of Ben Shahn and his wife, Bernarda, chose Rago Art and Auction Center, in ...
Legendary designer Michael Taylor's 'California Look' at auction
ArtfixDaily / October 18th, 2010
Bonhams & Butterfields brings American and European furniture and decorative arts to auction in San Francisco on Monday, November 1, 2010, concurrent to the San Francisco Fall Antiques Show. The international auctioneers will offer several important collections to bidders, including ...
Charlotte's Web art, Italian sculpture break records
ArtfixDaily / October 17th, 2010
Last week in London, Christie's sold Italian sculptor Marino Marini's equestrian bronze "Cavaliere" for 4.5 million pounds ($7.1 million), about three times the estimate and a world record auction price for the artist. The lot led a series of contemporary art and Italian art sales at Christie's ...
Rietveld Revival: Dutch modernist's work gains permanence
ArtfixDaily / October 14th, 2010
The output of Dutch furniture designer and architect Gerrit Rietveld (1884-1964), best known as a proponent of the artistic movement De Stijl, is rising in the public view. This fall a seminal work from his late career was recreated while one of his first influential designs entered the permanent ...
$5.6 million Hirst, other sales warm up Frieze
ArtfixDaily / October 13th, 2010
London's Frieze Art Fair started off on a high note with a number of swift sales. The VIP preview opening on Oct. 13, featuring $375 million worth of art by contemporary artists, attracted high-profile collectors from hedge-fund manager Steven Cohen to Greece's Dakis Joannou, among others, ...
New book claims Michelangelo rediscovered in New York home
Buffalo News / October 12th, 2010
A retired pilot in Western New York state may have unknowingly enjoyed a lost Michelangelo masterpiece in his living room for years. The unfinished painting of the Virgin Mary holding the body of Jesus is certainly by the hand of the Renaissance master, according to art historian Antonio ...
Demi Moore to sell European paintings at Sotheby's
ArtfixDaily / October 12th, 2010
Strong women figure largely in two 19th-century paintings that actress Demi Moore is offering at Sotheby's in New York this fall. A poignant scene of a mother and children by Belgain artist Alfred Stevens along with William Bouguereau's touching rendition of a sister carrying her little brother ...
Ferocious demand for Chinese artworks at Fine Art Asia
Wall Street Journal / October 11th, 2010
The Fine Art Asia fair at the Hong Kong Convention Centre wrapped last week with strong sales concurrent with the record-breaking Sotheby's auctions. Dealers who exhibited Asian antiques are now faced with an inventory dilemna---a supply shortage---while dealers in Western art, who offered up big ...
Lea Grundig drawing documents dark chapter of 20th century
ArtfixDaily / October 11th, 2010
John Phillips, famous for his striking photo documentaries in Life Magazine, acquired another kind of compelling document of the 20th century while in Palestine as a war correspondent. He purchased a drawing directly from the artist Lea Grundig (German, 1906-1977) in the early 1940s that depicts ...
Imperial vase skyrockets above $32 million at Sotheby's sale
Reuters / October 8th, 2010
Sotheby's seven-day series of auctions in Hong Kong culminated in HK$3.08 billion ($400 million) worth of Asian art, jewelry, wine and watches sold. The total for this biannual sale soundly exceeded the $400 million tally for the auction firm's annual Asian sales of 2009. Imperial treasures ...
Early 20th c. decorative arts soar at Rago auction
ArtfixDaily / October 8th, 2010
Rago Arts and Auction Center totalled a strong $5.6 million for 1,380 lots in its 20th c. Design sale, from October 1 to 3. Pieces dating from the early 20th century, including Roycroft furniture and metalwork, which completely sold-out, elicited fierce bidding "at levels not seen since 2007," ...
Boldini painting discovery elicits record €2.1 million
Telegraph / October 7th, 2010
On the eve of World War II, a woman closed up her Parisian flat, headed south and never returned. Seventy years later, after she had passed away at age 91, experts tasked with compiling an inventory of the woman's estate discovered her treasure trove in Paris. The Telegraph reports that one ...
Adobe debuts virtual museum
ArtfixDaily / October 7th, 2010
Adobe Museum of Digital Media is a new, all-digital museum showcasing digital art and media. A VIP launch party held in New York at The Standard Hotel on Oct. 6 unveiled the inaugural exhibition "Valley" by American artist Tony Oursler which was guest curated by Bard College’s Tom ...
Pink diamond, blue chip art heat up Hong Kong sales
Bloomberg / October 6th, 2010
The series of Sotheby’s sales at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre have shown a strong appetite for wine, modern and contemporary art, traditional Chinese paintings, as well as the watches and jewelry in the Asian market. Among the highlights so far this week, a 6.43-carat pink ...
Fund manager to sell prized teddy bear collection
ArtfixDaily / October 6th, 2010
Rare Steiff teddy bears from a collection assembled by hedge fund manager Paul Greenwood, who is charged with fraud, will be heading to the auction block next week, according to new reports. Greenwood, a former partner of brokerage WG Trading Co, has been charged with conspiring to ...
A confluence of international exhibitions points to intensifying interest in Old Master sculpture
ArtfixDaily / October 5th, 2010
With the launch of their first collaborative exhibit Body and Soul: Masterpieces of Renaissance and Baroque Sculpture at Moretti Fine Art, 24 East 80th Street, from October 21 to November 19, Andrew Butterfield and Fabrizio Moretti will join a growing number of important galleries and museums ...
Modern masters deliver strong auction results in Hong Kong
ArtfixDaily / October 4th, 2010
A month-long series of high-end, multi-million dollar auctions are underway in Hong Kong, the world's third-largest auction hub after New York and London. On Monday a Marc Chagall masterpiece became the most expensive painting by a modern Western artist ever sold at auction in Asia. Seoul ...
Gauguin: Maker of Myth at Tate Modern
ArtfixDaily / October 3rd, 2010
At the Tate Modern in London, an exhibition on view through January 16, 2011, displays about 200 paintings, drawings, prints and sculptures that prove the importance of Paul Gauguin as a pioneering modernist. Laura Cumming of The Guardian writes, "There is a painting in this momentous ...
Neal auction sends Audubon birds to new heights
Auction Central News / September 30th, 2010
New Orleans-based Neal Auction Co.’s Sept. 11-12 auction tallied over $2.2 million including 18 world record auction prices. American buyers were focused on a group of 64 John James Audubon (1785- 1851) prints from the Havell edition of "The Birds of America." Among the star lots ...