After a year 2020 marked by the pandemic, the auction house Sotheby's announced on Wednesday that it had reached in 2021 the highest sales figure in its history, at 7.3 billion dollars, in particular thanks to a new audience and to Asian buyers. . This figure of 7.3 billion dollars, constitutes "
the highest total
" of the company in "
277 years of existence
", welcomes the London house now based in New York, bought in 2019 by the French telecoms magnate. Israeli Patrick Drahi. Of this total, auctions totaled $ 6 billion ($ 1.3 billion for private sales), up 71% over 2020, and even 26% compared to 2019, the year before the health crisis. .
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According to experts from auction houses and the art market, the pandemic has not extinguished the appetite and means of collectors, but the year 2020 was characterized by a lower supply, caught up in 2021. Among the iconic auctions, Sotheby's totaled $ 676 million in a single November evening in New York, with the art collection sold after the divorce of the wealthy couple formed by real estate developer Harry Macklowe and his wife Linda Burg, an administrator. honorary from the Met Museum. Symbol of the new profile of collectors, one of the most expensive pieces of the evening,
Alberto Giacometti's
Le Nez
, was purchased for $ 78.4 million by the founder of the cryptocurrency platform Tron, theChinese-American entrepreneur Justin Sun, 31.
Rothko and Banksy gone to Asia
According to Sotheby's, 46% of auctions above $ 5 million in 2021 come from Asian collectors.
It was buyers from this continent who bought the most expensive painting in the Macklowe collection,
N ° 7
by the American abstract expressionist Marc Rothko ($ 82.4 million), or the most expensive Banksy. of the world,
La Fille au ballon
, renamed
Love is in the bin
("
Love is in the bin
") a partially self-destroyed work by the British artist sold in London for 18.6 million pounds, or 25.4 million of dollars.
The pandemic, which made physical sales impossible in 2020, forced auction houses to innovate and become more digital, which "
dramatically expanded access to an unprecedented number of participants in the course. of the last 12 months,
”notes Sotheby's, indicating that 39% of buyers are“
new
”in 2021.