Bull Market - Dorotheum Contemporary Art Auction exceeds Expectations
Julian Schnabel, Untitled, 1983,
realized price € 214.300
Victor Vasarely, „Boglar II“,
realized price € 179.800
Lynn Chadwick, Maquette III, Jubilee III,
realized price € 139.100
The tension in the Dorotheum auction room where the successful sale of contemporary art was taking place, was palpable. At the 25th November 2009 event, all of the featured lots had their moment in the limelight and were subject to fierce bidding by international and Austrian buyers alike.
The title lot, a bronze couple by three-time documenta participant Lynn Chadwick forged ahead determinedly, right up to 139.150 Euro (Cat. No. 10). Alighiero Boetti almost quadrupled price expectations with his meticulous 1980 letter painting in blue ballpoint „Il Mondo Possibile“ which sold for 191.300 Euro (Cat. No. 1). Smashed plates certainly brought good fortune to Julian Schnabel's „plate painting“ (Untitled), one of his characteristic picture objects mainly made of porcelain shards: for 214.300 Euro the 500 kg heavyweight went to a collector in the USA (Cat. No. 49).
Victor Vasarely's large format painting – the largest Vasarely painting ever seen at auction anywhere in the world – from his early days as an Op-Art pioneer, was rewarded with 179.800 Euro (Cat. No. 7). Giuseppe Capogrossi's poetic „Superficie n. 705“ likewise sold for almost three times the estimate (Cat. No. 57). Successful German art included a horse-hair collage by Anselm Kiefer (122.300, Cat. No. 19) and the bronze „Fortuna“ by Jörg Immendorff (€ 97.900, Cat. No. 36).
Austrian art made its own forceful statement, evident in the 110.100 Euro paid for a two-part image of Christ by Arnulf Rainer (Cat. No. 25), the 97.900 Euro for an oil painting by Maria Lassnig dating to 1985 (Cat. No. 26), and an excellent 55.200 Euro for Erwin Wurm's „Fat Car“ (Cat. No. 70).
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