Vienna auction house Dorotheum and Kinski can look forward to a successful year 2023. Dorotheum said in a press release that it expects the second best result after the record year 2022, when it achieved annual sales of more than 200 million euros at auctions. The Kinski auction house achieved annual sales of 23 million euros, slightly less than the previous year’s figure, but it managed to point to several world records.
At the top of the Dorotheum auction listings is the painting “A Look in the Mirror” by the artist Osman Hamdi Bey, which was sold for 1.275 million euros. In the field of modern and contemporary art, the matte black “Concetto Spaziale” by Lucio Fontana (€875,000) and the four-part ballpoint pen work “Non Parto Non Resto” by Alighiero Boetti (€650,000) were successful. The painting “Judith and Holofernes” by Fedi Galizia, one of the rare women in the world of ancient artists, also caused a stir, as it was considered, according to the auction house, “an important and significant rediscovery of this artist” and was changed. For 624 thousand euros.
An auction record was set for “Burgundy Mouse 2” by Gottfried Helnwein. Never before has a painting by an Austrian fetched 182,000 euros. Other Austrian artists were also in demand. Martha Jungwirth’s cardboard model of earthquake monitoring fetched €202,800. The film “The Magician and the Clown” by director Franz Sedlacek earned 309,400 euros.
Dorotheum said online auctions are very popular again in 2023. Digital activities will continue to expand next year. In all, the works of more than 3,500 artists went under the hammer.
There was also a lot of bidding going on at Kinski Auctions. World records were achieved at auction for the marble “Drunken Silenus” by Alfred Hrdlicka (131 thousand euros) and the painting “Girl with a Carnation in the Landscape” by Franz Weigel (192 thousand euros). There was also a new record for a pastel painting by animal painter Norbertine Preisleren Roth. The painting “Polar Bear” sold for €59,500, making it the most expensive work on paper by the Graz artist ever sold at auction.
Karl Moll’s “Garden in Spring on the Hohe Warte” (€486,000) and Rudolf Wacker’s “Uferlandschaft” (€384,000) both traded for large sums of money. Gustav Klimt’s painting “Lady Standing with Boa from the Front” sold for 307,500 euros, while Egon Schiele’s “Peasant Women” sold for 256,000 euros. Maria Lassnig’s early work “Bright Body” grossed €262,500.
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