NEWS IN BRIEF: Auctions/Exhibitions/Publications...

Christie’s unveiled a press release in which it claims to have reaped in 2011 the best results ever in its 245-year-old history, and the highest figure ever accomplished in the art industry with a staggering 3.3 billion (5.200 million dlls) , up a whopping 53 percent from 2009. The best-paid artworks were Desnudo, Hojas Verdes and Busto by Pablo Picasso (US $106.482.500); Grande tête mince by Alberto Giacometti (US $53.282.500), and Tête vers by Amadeo Modigliani (US $ 52.620.923).

Enlace, a collective exhibition of works by artists represented by Enlace Contemporary Art Gallery will be unveiled the first Tuesday of February at the Gallery’s building: Avenida Pardo y Aliaga 676, San Isidro (Lima). The works of art will be on display until February 28. The exhibition’s name refers to the gallery and the bond between the center and the artists under its sponsorship, as well as the possible stylistic features shared by the artists: Jose Bedia and Luis Enrique Camejo (Cuba); Claudio Roncoli, Claudio Gallina, Martín Riwnyj and Jorge Miño (Argentina), and Peruvians Christian Bendayan, Jorge Cabieses, Jose Luis Carranza, Aaron Lopez, Asad Lopez de Castilla, Cesar Martinez, Renzo Nuñez-Melgar, Pablo Patrucco, William Pinillos, Christian Quijada and Jorge Vigil.

Starting February 9 thru April 6, Argentinean scholars Gabriela Felitto Müller and Kekena Corvalan will teach the course “Heroines. Art by women artists. Polemic, controversial and to the limit,” at the Library of the Museum of Latin American Art of Buenos Aires (MALBA).

Valencian Institute of Modern Art (IVAM) displays Brazil and Beyond, by Bernie DeChant. It is a combination of art, architecture and design on each photographic image of people and places visited by the artist: Brazil, China, Morocco, Japan and United States.

Well-known art collectors Ulla and Heiner Pietzsch donated their Surrealist art collection —ranked as one of the most important ones of the world (valued at 120 million euros)— to the city of Berlin: 150 oils, sketches and sculptures by Max Ernst, Rene Magritte, Joan Miro and Salvador Dalí, among other famed artists. The collection was exhibited last year at the New National Gallery (Neuen Nationalgalerie) and seen by more than 200,000 people.

The Franz Mayer Museum has launched several initiatives to firm up its position as the most important museum of Mexico. These include putting on a traveling exhibition to promote the center’s large collection of Mexico’s decorative arts inside and outside of the country, and build financial support to swell the funds of the institution.

Peruvian sculptor Martin Salazar (Lima, 1964) is participating with one piece at the exhibition of the Edmond de Rothschild collection on display at Peking’s Institute of Fine Arts.

Colombian artist Fernando Botero is working on a painting series about Vía Crucis expected to be unveiled in November, in New York: “a dramatic subject [...] paintings in my style, by made with a lot of respect,” he told the press.

The collection of the new Dali Museum in Florida (designed by architect Yann Weymouth and located close to the former building), is made up of 96 oils and more than 2,000 Salvador Dali originals (Figueras, Girona, 1904-1989), making it the most modern and important museum of the artist outside Spain. Most of the pieces come from private collections of close friends of the artist: philanthropist Reynolds and Eleanor Morses, from Ohio.

Recent Store,the first exhibition in Spain after Simon Starling won the Turner Prize, in 2005, will be taken in February to Tate St Ives thanks to a collaboration agreement penned with Malaga’s Center of Contemporary Art which organized the recently wrapped up display of the prestigious British artist.

Up to February 13, the Prado Museum shows Pasión por Renoir, a monographic by French artist Pierre Auguste Renoir (1841-1919): 31 works of art (portraits, landscape, still life, nudes) from American collector Robert Sterling, founder of Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute.

Contemporary sculpture is the focus of Taxi, a Mexican contemporary art magazine whose first issue features as collaborators: Almudena Alcaide, Diego Barbosa, Isa Carrillo, Dolores Garnica, John Patrick Kirby, Paolo Fusco, Maria Velasquez, among others.

Nine works of art from Frank Batten’s collection ( of great figures of American art such as Winslow Homer, Thomas Hart Benton, William Glackens, Edward Redfield, Bierstadt) were donated by Jane Batten, wife of the late businessman and philanthropist to the Chrysler Museum of Art of Norfolk on long-term loan.