(Bloomberg News) A $40.4 million Gustav Klimt painting underpinned a rebound in art auctions as Sotheby's sold $200 million of Impressionist and modern works in New York, beating a sale the previous day by Christie's International.
More than 81 percent of Sotheby's lots sold at last week's auction, compared with 62 percent at Christie's $140.8 million auction, where most of the star items flopped. David Norman, co-chair of Sotheby's Impressionist and modern department, said the auction house lowered reserves, or minimum sale prices, after the Christie's event, which followed a slump in the stock market.
"The art market is really not predictable," said Daniella Luxembourg, a dealer in New York and London. "It's influenced by the nervousness about the financial markets and the political instability around the world."
Christie's Nov. 1 sale missed its low estimate after the Standard & Poor's 500 Index fell 5.2 percent in two days. The index rose 1.6 percent yesterday before Sotheby's auction.
"If ever there was a turnaround, I think it happened tonight," Sotheby's auctioneer, Tobias Meyer, said after the two-hour-plus sale.
The top lot, Klimt's "Litzlberg am Attersee," was stolen by the Nazis from its Jewish owner and recently returned to the woman's grandson. The 1915 work depicts verdant hills above the lake of the title in western Austria.
Earlier this year, the Museum of Modern Art in Salzburg, Austria, returned the work to Georges Jorisch, grandson of Amalie Redlich, who owned it until she was deported to Lodz, a Polish town with a large Jewish ghetto, and never heard from again. The Gestapo sold off her collection.
'A Masterpiece'
"It's a masterpiece and in perfect condition," said David Lachenmann, the 42-year-old, gum-chewing Zurich dealer who bought the 1915 painting for a client he wouldn't identify. Jorisch, 83 and frail, watched the painting's sale from the auction room. Asked how he felt about the result, he said, "Good."
An 1883 landscape by Gustave Caillebotte surged past its presale high estimate of $12 million to fetch $18 million, an auction record for the artist. The painting, depicting a bridge over the Seine, was bought in 2008 for $8.5 million at Christie's in New York. Tamara de Lempicka's 1927 portrait of a voluptuous brunette with bedroom eyes fetched $8.5 million, an auction record for the artist.