At the beginning of the year, the results of the year just ended are always calculated and then the results are compared with the previous year. This operation concerns also, and above all, the art market. A focus on Italy in the ArtEconomy24 column of the Sole 24 Ore, presents a ranking of the main results obtained by 20 most influential auction houses in Italy which attract more and more foreign buyers who enjoy a higher purchasing power than that of Italians. In terms of turnover, the full-year one for 2018 stood at a value of 256,4 million euros, narrowing the gains compared to the previous year when the total turnover amounted to 264 million.
The gold and silver medals are assigned to two Italian auction houses and they are Il Ponte, which specializes in modern and contemporary art, and Pandolfini, which mainly deals with jewellery. The bronze instead goes to the famous Sotheby's auction house with headquarters in New York and many branches around the world. The best result in terms of percentage increase is that of International Art Sale which reaches 95% compared to 2017, followed by Gruppo Finarte with a growth of 49,3%, Bertolami Fine Arts with an increase of 38,6% and Sotheby's with +25,8%.
Who, on the other hand, has obtained lackluster results they were – from the worst – Farsettiarte with a loss of 37,5%, Maison Bibelot with a drop of 32% and Cambi which, although entitled to fourth place in the general classification, lost 21,8% on the previous year.
Out of twenty Italian auction houses, twelve deal with lots of modern and contemporary art which continue to strongly interest collectors, are followed by the sections relating to jewellery, numismatics, ancient paintings, antiques and works dating back to the XNUMXth century.
The attitude of Italian and international collectors is interesting, above all in relation to the tastes of jewels and precious objects: if on the one hand in Italy lovers of family jewels are influenced by current tastes and fashions, European collectors allow themselves to be guided by quality and rarity of the object of interest.
Le online sales they have now entered the routine of the art market: for the Wannenes house they have grown by 2,5% reaching 3,5 million in the last two years. At Cambi, 40% of the lots and 16% of the value for 2018 came from online sales, as many as 80% of the lots and 60% of the value from the Capitoliumart house.
An overview of most expensive works beaten in Italy in 2018 see the 1958 work by Piero Manzoni entitled “Achrome” and estimated at between 1,8 and 2,5 million, sold for around 3 million during a Christie's auction. Second place went to Lucio Fontana's work “Concetto spazio, Attese” from 1967 and sold for 2,4 million after an estimate of 1-1,5 million during the Sotheby's auction. The third most expensive lot is a Fiat 8 V, also called "Ottovù", a sports berlinetta produced in a small number of examples from 1952 to 1954, with chassis no. 106.000052 and engine no. 104.000087 which came to 2,1 million from the Finarte Group.
The long waits for the delivery of the lots are the thorn in the side of many foreign collectors: “Foreign purchases cover just over 20%. There could be more but they are discouraged by the long waiting times for exports and by the uncertainty of the outcome of the procedures and for this reason they prefer to buy works of contemporary art (less than 70 years old), because the export takes place for self-certification”, explained Gabriele Crepaldi of the Farsetti auction house.
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