Postwar German painters provided much of the momentum at Sotheby’s on Wednesday night, as the auction house scored its highest result ever for a contemporary sale in London. A remarkable $174.1m changed hands at the auction, with one collection from a German industrialist alone accounting for $96.6m. Not unexpectedly, however, the evening’s top sale belonged to Francis Bacon’s $13.3m “Crouching Nude.”
Two paintings by Sigmar Polke led the way among the German works, with his 1967 “Jungle,” painted when he was just 26, achieving a result of $9.2m. Other strong sellers included Gerhard Richter’s $6.8m “1024 Colors,” and Georg Baselitz’s “Spekulatius,” which sold for $5.2m, establishing a new world record for the artist. By the night’s end, as the last of the summer’s major contemporary art sales concluded, all but 9 of the 88 works had found buyers.
Read more at The Wall Street Journal.
