International

THE latest antiquities series at the major rooms in New York produced strong selling rates, a slew of high individual prices and two blockbuster results.

MUNICH saleroom Ketterer Kunst enjoyed a record year in 2010, posting annual sales of €21.6m (€26m including premium).

OFFERED this month at Christie's New York, a copy of Abel Buell's 1784 New and Correct Map of the United States of America... became the most expensive map ever sold at auction.

A SALE at the Hotel Drouot in Paris devoted to minor works by Picasso was called off at the last minute because of controversy over provenance.

THE U.S. Supreme Court in Washington has delivered a significant blow to Tiffany & Co’s bid to stop the sale of counterfeit jewellery on eBay.

CONFIRMING their intentions in the Australian market, Bonhams have launched an Aboriginal art department in Sydney.

TEN leading Parisian Old Master galleries have announced plans to launch a select new fair in the French capital next year.

It could be less than a month until the date is named when antiquities dealer Malcolm Hay will be extradited to serve a four-year jail sentence in Greece – on the strength of no credible evidence.

SOTHEBY’S set a new auction record for a jewel in Geneva when a 24.78-carat fancy intense pink diamond sold to London jeweller Laurence Graff at SFr40.5m (£25.6m) plus premium.

IT measures over 11ft (3.4m) wide and stands 11ft 6in (3.5m) high, was built in Melbourne and is carved over the entire surface with figure and details emblematic of the foundation and history of the state of Victoria.

THE price of $56.5m (£36.9m) seen for Andy Warhol's The Men in Her Life at Phillips de Pury's evening sale, meant that for the first time in a New York Contemporary art auction series the top lot did not come from Sotheby's or Christie's.

NICK Korniloff has exclusively told ATG that the Florida International Fine Art Fair scheduled for a February 2011 launch in Miami is officially postponed for a year.

ALONGSIDE the $65.5m (£42.8m) Modigliani (see story here), the price of the week in New York was the phenomenal $32m (£20.9m) seen for The Finding of Moses by Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema.

RECORD prices for three European artists helped lift the latest round of Impressionist and Modern art sales in New York. With the market much more selective since the downturn two years ago and most of the competition focusing on the biggest trophy lots, the new saleroom highs for Henri Matisse, Juan Gris and Amedeo Modigliani provided further evidence of recovery at the top end.

IN the space of a fortnight, prices at the top end for South African art took a significant leap forward as the auction record for the Grande Dame of the market, Irma Stern (1894-1966), was broken twice, first in Cape Town and then in London.

PARIS furniture dealer Hervé Aaron was removed as President of France’s Syndicat National des Antiquaires (SNA) at its AGM on October 25 – to be replaced by the man he ousted two years ago, Christian Deydier.

PICTURED here is one of more than 100 polychrome Delft tiles, valued at hundreds of thousands of pounds, stolen from a leading collector in the Netherlands.

THREE people have been arrested in Germany in connection with a multi-million pound art fraud involving a number of apparently major 20th century oils sold on the international market in recent years.

THE world auction record for a Chinese ceramic of work of art toppled during Sotheby's latest week-long Asian sales series of classical, modern and contemporary Chinese art, watches, wine and jewellery in Hong Kong.

THE spectre of a nationalised Drouot haunted delegates at the Annual Congress of French auctioneers’ union SYMEV, held at Artcurial’s Champs-Elysées premises earlier this month.