The worldwide artwork market should be sluggish, however strong demand for rare pieces by François-Xavier Lalanne helped one signature sculpture promote for $16.422 million at Sotheby’s at this time.
“Even on this horrible local weather, I shall be shocked if this doesn’t do properly,” artwork advisor Laura Lester instructed ARTnews previous to the sale. “There’s all the time trophy hunters on the market.”
Grand Rhinocéros II (2003), a life-size sculptural gold patinated bronze, brass, and leather-based desk within the form of the animal, was the featured lot for Sotheby’s Essential Design day sale in New York on June 11. It measures greater than four-feet broad, 8.5-feet in size, and is 2 ft in peak. The pre-sale estimate was $3 million to $5 million.
The sculpture was the primary version out of eight, and was acquired by the present house owners in 2003 from Galerie Mitterand in Paris. The final time Grand Rhinocéros II appeared at public sale, the seventh edition sold for €5.5 million with charges on a excessive estimate of €3 million at Sotheby’s Paris on Might 22, 2022.
Bidding for Lot 105 at this time began at $2.5 million. After 45 bids positioned on-line and by Sotheby’s specialists on the cellphone over 13 minutes, Grand Rhinocéros II blasted previous its excessive estimate to hammer at $13.75 million, or $16.422 million with charges, to a bidder on the cellphone.
Right this moment’s public sale outcome for Grand Rhinocéros II is the second-highest for François-Xavier Lalanne. The artist’s document is held by Rhinocrétaire I, which offered for $19.4 million with charges, properly previous its excessive estimate of $6.4 million, at Christie’s Paris in October 2023.
The value for Grand Rhinocéros II additionally exceeds final month’s sale of François-Xavier Lalanne’s Bar aux Autruches (1967-1968) for €11.1 million ($12 million) after an 11-minute bidding conflict at Sotheby’s Paris on Might 20. The bar within the form of two life-size ostriches and a big egg had an estimate of €3 million to €4 million.
The outcomes are additional proof of ongoing, sturdy demand for works by François-Xavier and his wife Claude Lalanne by collectors throughout the classes of design, wonderful artwork, post-war and up to date, impressionist and fashionable artwork. “If there was the Venn diagram of all of these collectors, Lalanne is like that little, tiny place the place all of them meet within the center,” Lester stated. “You simply have such a broad cross part of collectors who could be excited about one thing like this, they usually’re very arduous to come back by.”
It’s value noting the decline within the artists’ main market after the sale of greater than 700 items from the non-public collections of Les Lalanne and their two daughters, Dorothée and Marie by Sotheby’s and Christie’s throughout numerous gross sales in Paris and New York between 2019 and 2024.
“Now that the whole lot has been dispersed and [François-Xavier and Claude are] each gone, it’s similar to you must anticipate them to come back up at public sale. You actually, actually do,” stated Lester, who had labored with the Lalanne property when she was a director at Kasmin gallery. “Regardless of the value tag, regardless of what a monumental merchandise that is, there’s going to be somebody for it.”
