LONDON.- Bonhams broke no fewer than ten world records at its Middle Eastern and Lebanese Modern and Contemporary art sales. Bonhams is the first international auction house to hold an exclusively Lebanese art sale, which smashed world records for seven artists. The sale has also highlighted an ever-increasing global demand for Middle Eastern modern and contemporary art.

• The combined sales broke 10 world records for 7 artists from the Art of the Lebanon sale and 3 from the Middle Eastern Modern and Contemporary Art sale.

• The top-selling lot, Nubian House by Hussein Bicar, sold for £319,300, achieving the record price for a modern Arab painting sold in London.

• Kahlil Gibran’s painting Portrait of Mrs Alexander Morten sold for almost ten times its estimate, at £182,500

The top lot in the Lebanese sale was the Portrait of Mrs Alexander Morten by Kahlil Gibran, a towering figure in 20th century art and literature. It featured in his first exhibition in New York in 1914, but then remained unseen for 100 years. It is the first painting by the poet and artist ever to be auctioned, and it sold for £182,500, almost ten times the original estimate of £20,000-30,000. It was bought by a Lebanese institution, and after over a century in the West, will return to the country where Gibran was born.

Opera Garnier by Farid Aouad sold for £74,500, far surpassing its pre-sale estimate of £40,000-60,000. One of the largest and most prominent works by a Lebanese artist, unappreciated in his lifetime, Aouad’s work has since been shown in museums across Lebanon and Europe. Opera Garnier was exhibited at one of the most important retrospectives of Lebanese Art to date, Art From Lebanon, at the Beirut Exhibition Centre in 2012.

Another leading work in the sale was The Beirut City Centre Egg by Ayman Baalbaki (born 1975), which sold for £86,500. At 41, Baalbaki has achieved the highest price at auction for a contemporary Lebanese artist. The ‘Egg’ – as it is fondly referred to by the people of Beirut – is a partially destroyed cinema complex built in the Brutalist style. The bombed-out building has become a monument of the civil war and a historic landmark in its own right. Baalbaki’s subjects are often war-torn buildings, and his painting of the instantly recognisable Egg is one of his largest and most iconic pieces.

In the Middle Eastern sale, the top selling lot was Nubian House, the largest work ever to come to auction by Hussein Bicar, a pioneering Egyptian artist, illustrator, painter and poet. Estimated at £70,000- £100,000, it sold for £319,300 achieving the record price for a modern Arab painting sold in London.

‘It’s been a ground-breaking sale,’ said Nima Sagarchi, head of Modern and Contemporary Middle Eastern art at Bonhams. ‘Despite the fact that many of the artists are well-established, both in Lebanon and elsewhere, this is the first time that many of them have come to the market. A number of pieces have been purchased by Lebanese buyers and in many ways it’s a great homecoming for the country’s modern and contemporary masterpieces. But it also marks a turning point in the importance of Middle Eastern art on an international stage.’