VIENNA.- After a painting by the Belgian painter James Ensor sold for over €1,000,000 on 31st May 2016, the initial success of Dorotheum’s auction week continued on 1st June 2016: the auction house once again demonstrated its strength in contemporary art, achieving world records and top prices. Active participation by bidders in the brimming auction hall and on the telephones saw prices soar.

Lucio Fontana’s philosophical spatial concept in the form of a single-slash blue “picture object”, “Concetto Spaziale, Attesa”, 1967/1968, realised the highest price in the auction with an outstanding €735,000.

Three World Records
The poetic picture object created by Carla Accardi in 1966, “Biancobianco”, realised €234,800, the highest price to date for a work by this significant artist.

Carla Accardi was a key figure in the Italian avant-garde of the 1960s and a pioneer of abstract art in Italy. Together with Lucio Fontana, she led the radical departure from conventional canvas painting and promoted a three-dimensional pictorial concept.

Further world-record prices were achieved with a piece by Fabio Mauri (€125,000), and a piece by Rodolfo Aricó (€87,500).

American Art in Demand
U.S. artists were in high demand, including pop-artist Tom Wesselmann (“Nancy Scribble”, €350,508), the eminent abstract expressionist Richard Pousette-Dart, (“Suspended light”, €256,901), Robert Rauschenberg and Frank Stella.

German art was well-represented, with a nail picture by Günter Uecker reaching a top price of €344,600; a bidder in the auction hall snatched up Georg Baselitz’s floral-and-female-figure-motif painting “Hinterglas” for €259,200.

The bidding war for the fibre-glass sculpture “Pouch” by Anish Kapoor was won via the telephone for €337,136.

Dorotheum once again did honour to Maria Lassnig, realising high prices for her works. Her painting “Hitze der Geschwindigkeit” (“The heat of speed”) was sold for €259,200, a price far greater than its estimate. All works by Austrian artists were successfully sold at this auction.