Christie's Europe President Johan Pulkkanen, left, shakes hands with Russia's State Library General Director Viktor Fedorov, right, at the exhibition of Russian art to be sold by Christie's. The exhibition was held in the Pashkov House, Moscow.
Photo: Yury Martyanov
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Christie's, Sotheby's Sold Russia’s Art for $ 324.9m
The 2007 Russian sales at Christie's and Sotheby's yielded $324.9 million to these biggest auction houses; the annual growth was 45 percent, Bloomberg reported.
The combined Russian sales of Christie’s and Sotheby’s stood at $223.6 million in 2006. The ten-year leader in Russian art, Sotheby's, grew its 2007 total by 18 percent to $180.9 million, and Christie's that focused on Russian art only a few years ago stepped up the sales by 87 percent to 144 million.
The Rothschild Faberge Egg was the most expensive item that Christie’s sold in 2007. It went for 8.98 million pounds to some private Russian National Museum Gallery. As to Sotheby's, its major attraction past year was the Rostropovich-Vishnevskaya collection of 19th and early 20th centuries. Russia’s businessman Alisher Usmanov bought it three days before the scheduled auction to present it to the state.
Christie's and Sotheby's have planned three Russian auctions for this year; the buyers are either rich Russians or people that left the country after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The sales are generally forecasted to set new records.
www.kommersant.com
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