Giacometti's sculpture is most expensive ever! by Barbora Misakova

I was never into names, to be honest. But I always remember faces, shapes, colors and so. I have got visual memory what can be very useful. However when you are interested in art, visual memory is useless if you cannot remember the name of the artist. Anyway, it is still fine if you remember at least something. As for Giacometti’s works there is nothing a man could forget. Works of this Swiss sculptor (and also painter) resist easy categorization. Some see formalism, others expressionism, modernism or existentialism. I think the point is actually in something else – in recognition. When you look at Giacometti’s sculptures you know almost immediately it was! made by his hands. His life-size, stick-thin sculptures of the human form made from bronze carry his handwriting. And even though they look so ordinary, there is something what catches your eye and mind. That is probably a reason why the first of Giacometti’s statue of “Walking man” series was sold for 104.3 million dollars at a Sotheby’s auction in London. It was expected to go for up to 29 million dollars, but one anonymous telephone changed it. Sale opened at 12 million pounds started eight minutes lasting bidding between at least 10 purchasers. Anonymous telephone bidder made offer that beat the others. The buyer paid almost four times that amount what beat the previous record for a work at auction set by Pablo Picasso’s painting “garcon a la Pipe”. It warmed up other buyers so much, they snapped up a string of other sought after art works and brought more than 235 million dollars what is the highest value sale ever staged in L! ondon. As said Helena Newman, of Sotheby’s Impressionis! t and Mo dern Art department: “The price is a reflection of the extraordinary importance of this exceptionally rare work.”

related story (sgx16362): http://www.france24.com/en/20100204-giacometti-smashes-aucti...

by Barbora Misakova for SigEx Ventures (http://sigexventures.com)

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