Record Auction: International Stars score at the Dorotheum – Nearly a Million Euro for Yayoi Kusama

Yayoi Kusama

Piero Manzoni

Günther Uecker

The time has come for contemporary art. Both, international interest and prices are on the rise. Art along with design have become an important part of modern lifestyle – as the Dorotheum Vienna's highly successful Tercentenary Auction of "Contemporary Art" once again demonstrated beyond a doubt on 28th November 2007

The Dorotheum scored particularly high with an early painting by Yayoi Kusama. „No White O.X.“, one of her characteristic early „Infinity Nets“ compositions, almost meditative in its structure of tiny repetitive brushstrokes. At sensational 996.000 Euro, it sold for more than twice its original estimate. Born in Japan , in 1929, and a resident of New York since the nineteen-fifties, the artist is considered one of Japan's most significant, versatile, and

internationally successful artists. She originally came to fame through her „Polka Dots“ series which she used in paintings but also to cover floors, walls, and various objects. The near obsessive character of her works, many of the painted in the sanatorium where she chooses to live, relates them to such contradictory movements as Pop Art or monochrome painting (Cat. No. 105).

Almost without exception, all first rate works by international artists found buyers: Piero Manzoni's work from the „Achromes“ series of 1958/59, drawing a radical line under conventional pictorial concepts, went to a buyer form North America for 1,112 million Euro USA (Cat. No. 108). „Cuadro 23“, 1957, a crucial work by Manolo Millares, one of the proponents of Spanish modernism, reached an excellent 329.000 Euro (Cat. No. 104). Also doing surprisingly well was the sculpture „Cardinale in Piedi“ by Giacomo Manzù, which went to an anonymous bidder for 237.000 Euro (Cat. No. 101).

Managing to suggest the immateriality of air through the use of heavy iron nails, Günther Uecker's equally massive and elusive nail picture „Weißer Wind“ of 1988 climbed to 295.000 Euro or more than twice the expected sum (Cat. No. 109). Every one of the five works by the 1975-born shooting star Banksy put up for sale at the Dorotheum was also successfully sold.

Austrian art, finally, shone with brilliant works by Arnulf Rainer, Maria Lassnig and Hermann Nitsch.

Press Office: Mag. Doris Krumpl, Tel +43 1/515 60-406, doris.krumpl@dorotheum.at

	Yayoi Kusama
	Piero Manzoni
	Günther Uecker
	Manolo Millares
	Presseinformation