AMSTERDAM.- Christie’s Amsterdam wrote history this week with the auction of 280 post-war and contemporary works of art achieving 11 million euro – almost doubling the expectations and making it the best sale of Christie’s in the Netherlands in 25 years.

Evening sale 4 November - The 74 works of art in the evening sale exceeded 6 million euro. Bidders from 24 countries including Lebanon, South-America, North-America, France, Germany, Belgium, Italy and the Netherlands entered into competitive bidding for important works by Jan Schoonhoven, Otto Piene, Dan Flavin, Josef Albers, Joseph Beuys and René Daniels, part of which were offered in the collections of Maximilian Schell, Emiel de Hantsetters and Peter Bendixen. Strong results were seen for ZERO artists Piene, Klein, Mack and Schoonhoven as well as for CoBrA artists, a monumental work by Karel Appel from the nude series of 1963 sold for almost €200,000 to a Dutch collector, and a 1969 painting by Asger Jorn, with the appropriate title Offer and Demand, was acquired for €313,500 by a European museum.

Day sale 5 November - The 200 works of art in the day sale totaled an additional 5 million euro, highlighted by fierce bidding between two parties for a still work by Jef Verheyen, it was eventually won by Axel Vervoordt, setting an auction world record for the artist.

Peter van der Graaf, Head of Post-War and Contemporary Art: “We are thrilled with the overwhelming international interest for this sale , demonstrating the overall strength of the market. The interest for our classics such as the CoBrA artists continues to be solid and the results for Zero even exceeded our expectations. The multiple highlights in this sale makes it difficult to choose a specific work, but if we have to: the result for the work by Dutch artist René Daniels proves that he finally receives the well-deserved international recognition.”