Sotheby’s World Records: Renoir
• Bal Au Moulin de la Galette (1876) by Pierre-Auguste Renoir. Sold for $78.1 million in 1990 at Sotheby’s, New York.
Interesting Art Facts
Genius of Picasso
Picasso was the first rock-star artist, whose wild visions gripped the public imagination and changed 20th-century art for ever. But his flamboyant personality divided opinion. Was he a playful genius, as some suggest, or a capricious and cruel misanthrope who left battered lives in his wake? On the eve of a new show in London, we speak to his closest friends and family in a bid to unravel the enigma. “Picasso,” the surrealist poet Paul Eluard said, “paints like God or the devil.” Picasso favoured the first option. “I am God,” he was once heard telling himself. He muttered the mantra three times, boasting of his power to animate and enliven the visible world. Any line drawn by his hand…
The most expensive contemporary art painting ever sold
The most expensive contemporary art painting ever sold 2008: The most expensive contemporary art painting ever sold at auction: Triptych (1976) by Francis Bacon. Sold for $86.3 million.
Picasso painting can be sold at Christie’s
A judge ruled Tuesday that a Picasso painting can be sold at auction, despite a claim that its former owner was forced by the Nazis to sell it in the 1930s because his family descended from Jews. U.S. District Judge Jed S. Rakoff issued the order four days after Julius H. Schoeps, an heir to Berlin banker Paul von Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, filed a lawsuit in Manhattan to stop the sale. The judge had temporarily blocked the auction of “Portrait de Angel Fernandez de Soto”. The painting, expected to fetch up to $60 million, was scheduled to be sold at Christie’s “Portrait de Angel Fernandez de Soto” on Wednesday. The painting of de Soto, who shared a studio with Pablo Picasso, is being…
Art Forgery. How to avoid becoming a victim of art fraud.
Confronting the Issue of Fake Art (original version of a story I wrote for Mumbai Mirror, which was cut down to 400 words, but I will complain about that some other day) Buyer Beware How to avoid becoming a victim of art fraud by Amitabh Nanda The next time you’re approached about a fantastic investment in an Indian work of art, BEWARE, because it is more than possible that you are buying a fake. According to an alarming estimate made by Thomas Hoving, former director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, up to 40% of all the works in circulation globally are really forgeries, and in the last few years, a massive number of fakes have seeped into the local art…
$50 million Vincent van Gogh painting stolen by two Italians
Stolen $50 million Vincent van Gogh painting recovered in Cairo airport, stolen by two Italians The only place the Van Gogh will be going is back to the museum. A stolen painting by the famed artist worth $50 million has been recovered by the cops at an airport in Cairo, according to Egypt’s cultural minister. Airport security confiscated the painting from two Italian bandits trying to flee the country on Saturday evening, said minster Farouk Hosni. The painting, which goes by two titles “Poppy Flowers” and “Vase with Flowers,” was stolen early Saturday from the Mahmoud Khalil Museum in Cairo. The work is 1-foot-by-1-foot and illustrates yellow and red flowers. It is believed to have been painted by Van Gogh in 1887, three years…
The most expensive painting by an Old Master
Massacre of the Innocents (1611) by Peter Paul Rubens. Massacre of the Innocents (1611) by Peter Paul Rubens. Sold for £49.5m in 2002, at Sotheby’s, London. This work by the Flemish Baroque artist is the most expensive painting by an Old Master.
Forgery. Dutchman who painted Vermeers.
Han van Meegeren (10 October 1889 in Deventer, Overijssel – 30 December 1947 in Amsterdam), born Henricus Antonius van Meegeren, was a Dutch painter and portraitist, and is considered to be one of the most ingenious art forgers of the 20th century. As a child, van Meegeren developed an enthusiasm for the marvelous colours used by painters of the Dutch Golden Age, and later set out to become an artist himself. When art critics decried his work as tired and derivative, van Meegeren felt that they had destroyed his career. Thereupon, he decided to prove his talent to the critics by forging paintings of some of the world’s most famous artists, includingFrans Hals, Pieter de Hooch, Gerard ter Borch and Johannes Vermeer. He so well replicated the styles and colours of…
Sotheby’s World Records: classical antiquity
The most expensive work from classical antiquity ever sold at auction 2007: The most expensive work from classical antiquity ever sold at auction: Roman-era bronze sculpture of Artemis and the Stag. Sold for $28.6 million.
Munch’s Madonna sells for record £1.25 Million.
Edvard Munch’s Madonna sold for £1.25 million A hand-coloured image of Edvard Munch’s Madonna sold for £1.25 million today – doubling its estimate and making it the most expensive print ever to be sold in the UK. The controversial artwork, in Munch’s famous swirling style, had been estimated to fetch £500,000 to £700,000 at Bonhams Prints sale in London. Bonhams said that as well as setting a UK record, the image was also the second most expensive print to be sold in the world. Another Munch work, Vampire II, sold in Oslo in 2007 for around £1,256,000. The Madonna artwork was snapped up at Bonhams by a private buyer from the United States, for £1,252,000 including buyer’s premium. The work,…