Art Basel in Miami Beach 2015: The Final Sales Report

Por: Eileen Kinsella

"I wish I brought a lot more art," said New York art dealer Sean Kelly toward the end of the latest edition of Art Basel in Miami Beach. "We had a phenomenal fair."

Based on reports from dealers this weekend, the pace of both major and middle market sales continued at the same brisk pace that marked the VIP preview Wednesday, December 2 and continued on the following day.

The first round of major sales was fast and furious. Here are sales that have been reported to artnet News since then.

London-based Lisson Gallery sold Susan Hiller's group of nine new archival dry prints titled Roughs (2015) for between $75,000 to $230,000. The gallery also sold Ai Weiwei's installation Bicycle Basket with Flowers (2014) in the $160,000 to $270,000 range.

Paul Kasmin followed up strong opening day sales with a brilliant blue painting by Robert Motherwell, German Line 6 (1972), with an asking price of $300,000.

After having sold a major Francis Bacon with an asking price of $15 million, New York's Van de Weghe Fine Art continued the blue-chip sales streak with a major Pablo Picasso oil painting, Buste au Chapeau (1971), that had an asking price of $10.5 million; the gallery also sold a Damien Hirst canvas with butterflies, knives, blades, and household glass, titled I Love You But I Don't Like You (2005), for $900,000.

Lehmann Maupin gallery reported final sales of a number of new works, including Mary Corse's 2015 work, Untitled (White, White, Yellow, Beveled), priced around $200,000 to $300,000, and Nari Ward's Breathing Panel #1 (2015) in the range of $50,000 to $100,000. In addition, the gallery sold Do Ho Suh's thread embedded in cotton paper Karma Juggler (2015) priced around $200,000, and Matthias Weischer's Tigerfrau (2015), for about $140,000.

Mitchell-Innes & Nash gallery furnished additional sales to artnet News including this mixed media on paper work by William Pope.L titled Skin set painting: orange people are god when she is shitting (2011-12) in the range of $60,000 and Paul Winstanley's Art School 35 (2014) an oil on panel work, for about $35,000.

Edward Tyler Nahem sold a number of notable works, including the 1989 Alighiero Boetti embroidered tapestry with the lengthy title, Alternating and dividing 625 letters of 100 colors, the colors of the world, to then become only one color, the color of the earth, and then again separating and dispersing in time, the time of becoming, to become wind, for a price in the range of $400,000 to $500,000.

Nahem also sold an enamel on metal by Marilyn Minter including Tender/Much (1992). The gallery also sold works including a Picasso work on paper, and paintings by Cecily Brown, Keith Haring, Alex Katz, Tom Wesselmann, and Robert Rauschenberg.

Mazzoleni gallery of Turin and London, sold three works by Alberto Burri—currently the subject of a well-received retrospective at the Guggenheim— from the 1960s including a “Plastica" series work for $2 million and a “Cellotex" series piece for $500,000. Other works sold by the gallery included an Enrico Castellani from the 1970s, for $650,000 and two works by Agostina Bonalumi from the 1960s for $160,000 and $380,000 respectively.

Jenkins-Johnson of San Francisco reported numerous sales of photographs by Roy DeCarava. These included Count Basie and Lena Horne (1957) and Couple dancing (1956) which sold to an institution for a total of $112,000. A separate group of five photographs including: Dizzy Gillespie, (1960); Langston Hughes, (1965); Coltrane on soprano;(1963); Count Basie and Lena Horne, (1957); and Woman and child at car (1970), sold to a private collector for a total of $310,000.

A UK-based private collector paid $56,000 for Mississippi Freedom Marcher, Washington, DC (1963) while another private collector paid $46,000 for Jimmy Scott Singing, (1956).

Brazilian galleries seemed to have fared particularly well at this year's fair with Mendes Wood DM of São Paulo selling the majority of work on view in its booth for prices ranging from $20,000 to $100,000 for individual works.

 Galeria Nara Roesler, also of São Paulo, provided a lengthy list of sold works. These included; Abraham Palatnik's W-640 (2014), acrylic on wood, for $75,000; Antonio Dias's Bandeira / Trabalho (1981), for $55,000; and Vik Muniz's Postcards from Nowhere: Ipanema (2015), a digital C-Print, for $39,000; José Patrício's Linha de luz (2013) for $25,000; Carlito Carvalhosa's Sem título (P42), 2015 for $15,000; Raul Mourão's Sem título (2015), for $10,000; Artur Lescher's Sem título # 12, da série Afluentes (2015), aluminum on paper, for $7,000; and two works by Virginia de Medeiros, both digital photo-paintings on cotton paper, with sound. De Medeiros's Maria da Penha, da série Fábula do Olhar (2013), and Meiriele, da série Fábula do Olhar (2013), each sold for $5,000.

Source: news.artnet.com