Gerhard Richter became the most expensive Western artist to sell at an Asian auction when his 1987 abstract painting Abstraktes Bild (649-2) sold for HK$214.6 million (US$27.6 million) at Sotheby’s live-streamed Hong Kong sale of contemporary art, which took place on October 6th. The painting, representative of Richter’s textured, multi-colored abstract style, sold to the Pola Museum of Art in Hakone, Japan.
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“The director of one of Poland’s most renowned institutions is under fire for reallocating funds from the country’s national art collecting program.“ […]
“When the ministry only allotted the institution only 1.3 million PLN ($346,000), the CCA followed through on purchasing Fangor’s work for 800,000 PLN ($213,000), but claimed it could not afford the joint Kosuth and Kabakov piece. Instead, the institution said, it would use the leftover 530,000 PLN ($131,000) to acquire several works by artists not included on the initial application: Jacek Adamas, Jerzy Kalina, Ignacy Czwartos, Zenona Cyplik-Olejniczak, and Dominik Lejman.“
Read MoreSince March, Berlin has been comparatively quiet with their nightclubs having been shuttered due to COVID-19. However, one of the city’s best-known clubs, Berghain, will once again welcome visitors into its industrial interior for a different kind of party. Today, “Studio Berlin,” a unique art exhibition, debuts in the nightclub offering a snapshot of the here and now of city’s arts community.
Of the artists included in “Studio Berlin” are younger artists like Anne Imhof, Klara Lidén, and Rirkrit Tiravanija and established artists known internationally like Olafur Eliasson, Rosemarie Trockel, and Isa Genzken. There will even be some familiar faces amongst the artists for Berghain regulars like Sven Marquardt, a Berghain bouncer, who has created video work depicting the quietude of domestic life.
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In mid-August German Minister of State for Culture Monika Grütters visited the exhibition Art 19 Box One at Gallery Mike Karstens in Münster and was enthusiastic about the limited edition portfolio.
Read MoreThe Hong Kong Autumn sales will commence in merely one month and Sotheby’s has finally revealed the highlight lot of their Contemporary Art Evening sale.
Leading the sale is Gerhard Richter’s masterpiece Abstraktes Bild (649-2) which was painted in the 80s. The piece will appear on the auction stage at Sotheby’s Contemporary Art Evening Sale on 6th October with an estimate of HK$120m-140m (US$15m-18m). Given the price point, once sold, the painting will become the most expensive piece of Western art sold in Asia.
Read MoreSeptember 9, 2020—Prominent global artists and authors have united in an impassioned call to free the renowned human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh, who is imprisoned in Iran for her defense of civil and political liberties.
Joining the campaign to free Sotoudeh and the many other political prisoners in Iran are Olivia Colman, J.K. Simmons, Shohreh Aghdashloo, Juliet Stevenson, Nazanin Boniadi, Shirin Neshat, Nina Ansary, Azar Nafisi, Maz Jobrani and Simon Rix.
Read MoreThe Uganda Communications Commission (UCC) on 7 September issued a public notice stating that anyone wishing to publish information online must be licensed ahead of a 5 October deadline.
It is the latest blow to the right to freedom of expression in Uganda ahead of 2021 elections, following guidelines issued in June restricting public gatherings for electoral processes, in compliance with COVID-19 prevention measures. This means that election campaigning will only be allowed through media and social media platforms.
Read MoreNow 88, Richter is one of the world’s most important living artists. A 2019 list of the wealthiest Germans ranked him 230th (tied with over 30 others), with a fortune of €700 million. But back then, Gerd Richter (as he called himself at the time) was completely unknown in West Germany, despite some early successes in Dresden. These hard first months west—during which Richter designed and built carnival floats and Ema sewed children’s clothes to earn their keep—are the subject of a small exhibition mounted by the Gerhard Richter Archive at the Albertinum in Dresden.
Read More“I am constantly reading a rather broad range of material, from history, fiction, to processes of cognition and even news (not the noise on social media!) – I’m curious to understand things from different perspectives. Listening and reading helps decode the complexities of human feelings. I’m interested in how we construct our mental space, what we like to remember and even forget, consciously, unconsciously or by coercion.”
Read MoreFrom August 29 until November 29, 2020 the Gerhard Richter Archiv at the Saxony state museum Albertinum in Dresden showcases Gerd Richter aka Gerhard Richter before he became famous and found his own style(s). The cabinet exhibition Gerd Richter 1961/62. Es ist, wie es ist / It is, as it is and the accompanying publication by Dietmar Elger explore the hitherto largely unkown period in Gerhard Richter’s life from his flight from Dresden in Communist East Germany (GDR) to the Federal Republic of Germany at the end of February 1961 until the beginning of his “official” oeuvre Richter began at the end of 1962 with the painting Tisch, which he designated artwork number one.
Read More“The architectural shape of the boat lets the passengers only move forward. We struggle to define our path, our human condition forces us to look forward searching for a destiny although we have no safe points of orientation, we travel on the open ocean without a sense of direction.“
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David Galperin, a Sotheby’s senior vice president, said the “significant boom in prices for late 1980s abstract works” between 2012 and 2015 was well deserved, given the surge of interest among contemporary collectors. Several experts noted strong demand from Asian collectors in particular during the peak period.
Yet “there isn’t one overall market, but a number of different ones,” for Richter’s work, Galperin says. “He constantly reinvented himself, so there are many discrete bodies of work. Prices at auction reflect that and you see different shifts occurring in submarkets.”
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