LONDON.- This evening’s combined total brings Sotheby’s sales of Contemporary Art in London this year to £402.2m – over £100 million more than the same period last year.

“Over 10,000 visitors crowded our galleries for our Frieze Week exhibitions - and this excitement carried through into a packed saleroom. When we first introduced a dedicated Italian Sale to London in 1999, the entire sale made £5.2m, tonight we’ve seen a single work make three times this amount. The energy we saw in the room for both sales; the bidding from every corner of the globe; the appetite for both young and established artists - it all came together here in London tonight.” -Alex Branczik, Head of Contemporary Art, Sotheby’s London.

THE ITALIAN SALE
Sotheby’s Italian Art sale realised £40,397,150 / $62,534,788 / €54,612,674 (est. £35.2 – 48.6m) - just shy of Sotheby’s £41.4m record-breaking Italian sale last year.

· Over 80% of The Italian Sale had never been offered at auction before

· 78% sold by lot

· 15 years after Sotheby’s introduced dedicated sales of 20th century Italian Art in 1999, auction sales have grown eight-fold from £5.2m.

The evening was led by Fontana’s La Fine di Dio which sold for £15.9m / $24.7m / €21.6m (est. £15-20m)

· Establishing a new auction record for the artist (previous record: £13.1m / $20.9m, set in November 2013). 10 years ago, Fontana’s record stood at just $2.3m.

· Last exhibited over 30 years ago, the work had never been offered at auction before

· This was one of 10 works by Fontana sold in our rooms tonight. Quick-fire bids from seven collectors drove the golden Concetto Spaziale, Attese (1963-4) from the collection of Japanese artist Yoshihara Jiro (founder of the avant-garde Gutai group) to nearly £1 million (est. £250,000-350,000)

The sale also saw strong prices for four works by Alberto Burri, currently in the spotlight at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum – the artist’s first major U.S. retrospective in over 35 years. The number of US buyers in our Italian sales has more than doubled in the past 5 years.

· Lot 6, a 1956 ‘Combustione’ sold for £1 million over the pre-estimate; three bidders drove the work to £1.8m / $2.8m / €2.4m (est. £600,000-800,000)

· 5 bidders competed for lot 14 from the collection of Alessandro Passaré, ‘The Doctor of Artists’ who famously treated artists free of charge in Milan in the 1960s. The work finally sold over high estimate for £2.6m / $4.1m / €3.6m (est. £1.5-2m)

CONTEMPORARY ART EVENING SALE
Totalled £36,351,250 / $56,271,735 / €49,143,045 (est. £32.9 – 46.2m) and 72% sold by lot

· Nearly 70% of the Contemporary Art Evening sale had never been offered at auction before

· The artists offered this evening hail from 14 different countries, participants came from six continents

Rising Stars Redefining the Market
· Latvian-born artist Ella Kruglyanskaya, never previously offered at auction, opened tonight’s sale with Swordfish Picnic fetching £81,250 / $125,775 / €109,841 (est. £40,000-60,000) – a new benchmark for the artist

· Following the record price established for Michaël Borremans at Sotheby’s in October 2014, his record was broken again tonight when Girl With Duck sold for a record £2m / $3.2m / €2.8m (est. £600,000-1,000,000) in his first appearance at a Sotheby’s Evening Sale

· Hotly contested artists – all children of the 1970s & 1980s - sold over estimate tonight including Jonas Wood (b. 1977), Cory Arcangel (b. 1978), Oscar Murillo (b. 1986) and Brent Wadden (b. 1979)

Stand-out results
· Auerbach’s E.O.W On Her Blue Eiderdown IV from 1963 (est.£500,000-700,000), a portrait of the artist’s lover of 25 years, Estella Olive West, soared over double the estimate to realise £1.3m / $2m / €1.7m. The artist is currently the subject of a major retrospective at Tate Britain

· No fewer than 10 bidders drove Isa Genzken’s Fenster to £677,000 / $1,047,996 / €915,232 (est. £100,000-150,000).

· The five works from the eclectic collection of the Italian shoe designer and collector Ernesto Esposito all sold over estimate. The collection was led by Warhol’s imposing Vesuvius which realised £1.4m / $2.2m / €2m (est. £800,000 – 1.2m). More than 40 further works will be offered in our Contemporary Art Day Sale tomorrow

Seven Auction Records Established

The Italian Sale
Lucio Fontana (lot 17), Medardo Rosso (lot 28), Vincenzo Agnetti (lot 41)

Contemporary Evening
Ella Kruglyanskaya (lot 1), Isa Genzken (lot 8), Günther Förg (lot 9), Michaël Borremans (lot 15)