Constantin Brancusi's "Portrait de Mme LR"
Christie’s has set an auction record for the sale of a private collection with its Yves Saint Laurent event in Paris tonight.
The sale has already fetched $262 million with fees on its first evening, defying a slowing of demand from investors nervous of economic recession. Works by Henri Matisse, Constantin Brancusi and Piet Mondrian set records for the artists’ works.
A wooden sculpture by Brancusi sold for 29.2 million euros with fees. Inspired by African tribal sculpture, the 3-foot, 11- inch high modernist work, entitled “Madame L.R. (Portrait de Mme L.R.),” dated 1914-17, is a three-dimensional portrait of the Parisian art enthusiast Leonie Ricou. The Brancusi piece was formerly owned by the artist Fernand Leger. It was acquired by the late fashion designer and his partner Pierre Berge in 1970 and had been expected to fetch at least 15 million euros.
The record auction price for works by the Romanian-born sculptor Brancusi had been the $27.5 million paid at Christie’s, New York, in 2005 for the marble and stone piece, “Bird in Space.”
Piet Mondrian’s 1922 abstract, “Composition avec bleu, rouge, jaune et noir” (“Composition With Blue, Red, Yellow and Black”) sold for 21.6 million euros with fees, also a record for the artist’s works. It had been expected to fetch 7 million euros to 10 million euros. The record for Mondrian, until the hammer fell, was the $21 million achieved for “New York/Boogie Woogie” at Sotheby’s, New York, in November 2004.
By contrast, the most highly estimated work in tonight’s sale -- Pablo Picasso’s 1914 Synthetic Cubist still life, “Instruments de musique sur un gueridon” -- failed to sell. It carried a valuation of 25 million euros to 30 million euros. The somber, gray-dominated canvas, measuring 4 feet, 2 inches high, had been acquired by Saint Laurent and Berge sometime after 1964.
The first session of the auction in the cast-iron-and-glass space of the Grand Palais, comprising 61 works of Impressionist and modern art, had a presale estimate of at least 128.9 million euros. The record for a single collection at auction, from 1997, was previously $206.5 million with fees, set with a Christie’s, New York, sale of modern artworks owned by the Manhattan collectors Victor and Sally Ganz.
Saint Laurent and Berge co-founded the Yves Saint Laurent couture house in 1961. It closed in 2002, the year in which the Pierre Berge-Yves Saint Laurent Foundation was established. The majority of the proceeds from the sale -- held in collaboration with Berge’s own Paris-based auction house, Pierre Berge & Associates -- will benefit the Pierre Berge-Yves Saint Laurent Foundation and a new foundation dedicated to the fight against AIDS, said Christie’s.
Excerpt from report by Scott Reyburn for Bloomberg News.
