LONDON.- The sale of one of the most extraordinary collections of our time concluded with a total of £36,124,636 / $54,530,138 / €50,679,038, exceeding all pre-sale expectations (est. £24.7 – 35.2m).

Following a week-long exhibition which drew a record 7,600 visitors to Sotheby’s New Bond Street galleries, over 1,000 collectors participated in three days of sales – over 25% of which were new to the company. Altogether the collection attracted bids from 50 countries across the world. A quarter of all registrants opted to bid online.

Alongside countless bear and skull-themed artefacts, curiosities and objets d’art, the ‘Bear Witness’ collection included 284 works of Contemporary Art, which together realised £34,567,188. This brings the total value of Contemporary Art sold at Sotheby’s London auctions so far in 2015 to a record £177.4 million.

“We’ve seen a bullish market for bears, while the market for skulls is alive and kicking. This was a collection unlike any other offered before, a modern day Wunderkammer, featuring everything from Rothko and Rembrandt Bugatti to crystal skulls and Coca-Cola. Almost every department in Sotheby’s was represented, and in every category we saw remarkable results, with all three sales surpassing their high estimate.” - Alex Branczik, Head of Contemporary Art at Sotheby’s London

THIS WEEK AT A GLANCE

• Nearly all of the lots offered this week found homes, with over 80% sold by lot and 60% selling above top estimate

• Prices ranged from just £53 for a wooden child’s toy (lot 516) to £3,397,000 for a late work on paper by Mark Rothko (lot 10)

• No fewer than 180 different contemporary artists featured in the sale, ranging from works by Gerhard Richter, Lucio Fontana and Andy Warhol, to a feather-clad polar bear by Paola Pivi (lot 7) and Maurizio Cattelan’s granite monument to England’s footballing failure, listing every national defeat since 1874 (lot 49)

• Warhol reigned supreme this week, as all 21 of his works which offered for sale found buyers, led by an untitled colourful silkscreen from 1979 that nearly doubled the pre-sale estimate to sell for £581,000 (lot 20).

• Italian sculptor Rembrant Bugatti led ‘Bear Witness Part 3’, Sotheby’s first (and probably only) auction dedicated to bears and skulls. A bronze brown bear by the sculptor more than tripled the pre-sale top estimate to sell for £269,000 (lot 447)

• Altogether, 81 skulls and 153 bears were sold in Sotheby’s salesrooms this week

FACT & FIGURES

• Bear Witness Part 1 (10 March 2015) Total £26,511,500 / $40,019,109 / €37,192,826 (est. £18.5- 26.3m) Lots sold 44 (lots offered 50)

• Bear Witness Part 2 (11 March 2015) Total £ 8,934,626 / $13,486,818 / €12,534,334 (est. £ 8.4 – 12m) Lots sold 191 (lots offered 244)

• Bear Witness Part 3 (12 March 2015) Total £672,260 / $1,014,776 / €943,110 (est. £317,475- 467,178) Lots sold 205 (lots offered 248)