An Afternoon At Sotheby’s Art Auction

More than £30m were raised on Friday at Sotheby’s Art Auction in New Bond street.

Over 40 masterpieces of Contemporary and Italian Art have been sold in total. A collection of artworks from 20th century Italian art, including works by top artists Lucio Fontana, Piero Dorazio, Marino Marini and Massimo Campigli were sold for more than £18m.

The most expensive masterpiece has been a version of Fontana “Concetto spaziale, attese,” sold for £2m, and previously estimated between £1.5m and £2.0m.

Jerry Hall, Ex-wife of Mick Jagger, contributed to Friday’s auction selling off prestigious pieces from her private collection, including portraits by  the likes of Lucian Freud and Francesco Clemente. A version of Andy Warhol’s famous “Dollar Sign” – the artwork that Warhol himself gave to the model as a present for her birthday many years ago – was sold for £180.000. A good way to let go of her past? Hall’s art collection fetched her more than £ 2.3m in one afternoon. The piece that attracted the public’s attention more consistently has been “Eight months gone,” a tiny portrait in which Hall shows naked and heavily pregnant in her porcelain skin tone, while sensuously reclining on a white sofa. The bid for the artwork was finally set at £500.000. 

Scott Nussbaum, Specialist Head of Day Sales at Sotheby’s New York, bought Antony Gormley’s “Contact” – a sculpture made of lead, fibreglass and plaster – for £230.000, estimated to be the minimum price for the work. “I bought it for a client,” he added.