ARTFIXdaily News Feed - Breaking News from the Art World

Old Masters attract new buyers at Ketterer Kunst

ArtfixDaily / November 2nd, 2010

An astonishing 41 percent of bidders were new customers at the Ketterer Kunst auction of Old Masters and Art of the 19th Century on October 29 in Munich, Germany. The successful sale pushed figures to an overall result of nearly € 3 million for all three of the firm's October auctions. “The ...

New York auction series may reap record $2 billion

ArtfixDaily / November 1st, 2010

Perhaps emboldened by two over $100 million prices for modern masters in the past year, the upper echelon of the art market is seemingly far removed from the global recession. Impressionist, modern and contemporary art sales scheduled over a two-week period in New York City this November may ...

Fisk University rejects latest proposal for Stieglitz collection

ArtfixDaily / October 28th, 2010

On Monday, Fisk University in Nashville told the state attorney general that it is not interested in displaying the art collection of Alfred Stieglitz. An alumna recently proposed a gift of funds to maintain the art at the financially troubled school. The school says the maintenance of the ...

“In Giacometti’s Studio – An Intimate Portrait:” Unprecedented Loan from Giacometti Family in Eykyn Maclean’s First Public Exhibition

ArtfixDaily / October 27th, 2010

(New York, NY) - For its inaugural exhibition, Eykyn Maclean is presenting a unique overview of Alberto Giacometti’s artistic achievement. Dating from 1919 to 1965, the works on view – nearly 100 sculptures, paintings and drawings, as well as photographs and documents – have been selected ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

Chinese art, modernism transform Biennale

ArtfixDaily / September 19th, 2010

Smaller, and with a many more stands focused on 20th century art, the dazzling 25th Paris Biennale on view at the Grand Palais through Sept. 22, has taken a giant leap into a new aesthetic in 2010. The New York Times' Souren Melikian calls this year's show "a watershed in the history of Western ...

Let them eat (Thiebaud) cake: SFMOMA coffee bar offers artful desserts

Huffington Post / September 12th, 2010

If you ever wanted to lick the thick and alluring frosting (brushwork) of a Wayne Thiebaud cake painting, or deconstruct Mondrian's abstractions with a fork, the time has come. The coffee bar within the new rooftop sculpture garden at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) is making edible ...

Useful & Beautiful: The Transatlantic Arts of William Morris and the Pre-Raphaelites

ArtfixDaily / September 9th, 2010

Influential English craftsman, designer, artist, and writer William Morris (1834-1896) once told an audience, "...if you want a golden rule that will fit everybody, this is it: ‘HAVE NOTHING IN YOUR HOUSES THAT YOU DO NOT KNOW TO BE USEFUL OR BELIEVE TO BE BEAUTIFUL.’" The multitude of ...

Solid sales at Baltimore Summer Antiques Show

ArtfixDaily / September 4th, 2010

The 30th Annual Baltimore Summer Antiques Show, from September 2 to 5, sustained a high gate as well as notable retail and trade business over Labor Day weekend. More than 550 exhibitors displayed nearly 200,000 objects from antiquarian books, fine art, jewelry, and silver, to textiles, ...

Missing Corot's co-owner is convicted crook

AP / September 2nd, 2010

The whereabouts of Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot's circa 1857 "Portrait of a Girl" is a mystery. A man says he got drunk and lost the work. The co-owner of the $1.3 million painting has now been identified as an art thief. Kristyn Trudgeon, who partly owns the work, sued James Carl Haggerty in ...

Millet and Rural France opens at Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Sept. 4

ArtfixDaily / August 31st, 2010

Jean-François Millet’s depiction of the arresting beauty of the natural world is the subject of Millet and Rural France, an exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA), that invites visitors to rediscover one of the most important artists of the 19th century.  On view September 4, ...