Auctioned for $107.6 million, the Danaïde by Constantin Brancusi becomes the second most expensive sculpture in the history of auctions. A record sale which shakes up Alberto Giacometti’s domination of the sculptural art market.
A Danaïde by Constantin Brancusi, sold Monday for $107.6 million, became the second most expensive sculpture in the history of auctions, shaking up a hierarchy still dominated by works by Alberto Giacometti, according to a database maintained by AFP.
Before this sale, the three most expensive sculptures in history were all works by Giacometti. Now, only The man with the finger by the Swiss sculptor, sold for $141.3 million at Christie’s in New York in 2015, exceeds the Danaïde by Brancusi, sold on Monday by the same auction house. The walking man I de Giacometti completes the podium (104.3 million in 2010).
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Margit Pogany, a young Hungarian artist met in 1910 in Paris, where the Franco-Romanian sculptor (1876-1957) had his workshop, lends her face to the Danaïde. It is a stylized face gilded with leaf, of which large arcs form the eyes.
“The gold reserved for the face and the black patina on the hair give the face a meditative elegance and refinement close to Far Eastern Buddhist art, admired by Brancusi at the Guimet Museum.”analyzes Marielle Tabart, expert on the sculptor’s work, quoted on the Center Pompidou website.
According to the Parisian museum, which has in its collections a twin sister of the sculpture sold on Monday, Brancusi has multiplied the bronze prints of his Danaïde between 1913 and 1918. Other examples are exhibited at the Tate in London, at the Kunst Museum in Winterthur, near Zurich, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
A value multiplied by six in 24 years
According to Christie’s, the print sold on Monday was the only gilded copy still in private hands. Cast in 1913, it was purchased by the banker Eugene Meyer and his wife Agnes, patrons and friends of Brancusi, during the artist’s first personal exhibition in New York in 1914. The work remained in their family until 2002 and its purchase by media mogul SI Newhouse Jr.
Acquired by the New York collector for $18.2 million, the sculpture had become at the time the most expensive sculpture ever sold at an auction. Its value has multiplied by six in 24 years. On Monday, the work was acquired by an anonymous buyer submitting his offers by telephone.
