Christie’s, €14,693,500 for auction Milan Modern and Contemporary Art

The 6th consecutive Milan Modern and Contemporary art auction has achieved a strong total result of €14,693,500 / £12,809,793 / $18,162,635, selling 91% by lot and 97% by value. Six new auction records for Osvaldo Licini (lot 8), Leoncillo (lot 18), Antonio Donghi (lot 29), Piero Dorazio (lot 32), Fausto Pirandello (lot 43), and Claudio Parmiggiani (lot 56) were set.

A fine selection of figurative Italian art was very well received, as demonstrated by Umberto Boccioni’s Ritratto di giovane, dated 1905/06, which has fetched €379,500. All three private collections on offer have performed extremely well: the Sergio Tomasinelli collection (lots 6-9) from Turin sold for €1,536,250 and was highlighted by Salvatore Scarpitta’s Ammiraglio painted in 1958 which realised for EUR 1,015,000. Two of the top ten lots of the auction, were consigned from an important Milanese private collection (lots 20-23), led a 1966 Lucio Fontana’s Concetto Spaziale which sold for EUR 991,500, while a private collection from Vincenza (lots 30 and 36) also achieved strong results.

“Our tailor-made approach to respond to the ever-growing international as well as national appetite for the best of Italian Art has paid off. With 200 collectors gathering at Palazzo Clerici and many more on the telephones and via the internet, Christie’s Milan sale has showed the strong appeal of Italian Art in the current market. The top 3 private collections on offer performed very well, as further demonstrated by great works sourced privately achieving high prices throughout the sale”, commented Renato Pennisi, Director and Senior Specialist, Head of the Milan sale.

Top Lots

Lot 11 – Piero Manzoni, Achrome, 1958 selling for EUR 2,970,000
It is one of the earliest works of the artist’s series bearing the same name. Never offered before on the art market, in the same collection since 1976 and exhibited in the 2014 retrospective of the artist in Milan, as well as documented in all catalogue raisonnés on the artist, the work attracted international bidding.

Lot 17 – Lucio Fontana, Concetto spaziale, Atesa, 1967 selling for EUR 1,687,500
Showing a single clean slash through the red canvas, it was made in 1967, exactly 10 years after the artist introduced the series of tagli. These works were created during a period of exploration in space with the slash sometimes seen as a reference to the unknown, to the spatial dimension.

Lot 6 – Salvatore Scarpitta, Ammiraglio, 1958, selling for EUR 1,015,500
A pivotal piece of Scarpitta’s ‘wrapped’ or ‘bandaged’ series, where he deconstructed the anatomy of a painting, reconstituting its physical components to create a new and direct means of expression.