The art market in 2023 was even weaker than the previous year, when all 10 of the top works sold at auction sold for more than $50 million.
This year, four of the top 10 works sold for less than $50 million, and even the best-selling painting sold for less than the most expensive painting of 2022.
Last year, Pablo Picasso's 1932 painting “Femme à la Montre” (Woman with a Watch) was sold as part of Sotheby's $400 million sale of works from the collection of the late philanthropist Emily Fisher Landau. was sold for $139.4 million. The painting depicts Picasso's mistress, Marie-Thérèse Walter, wearing a watch and sitting in a chair in front of a blue background. The painting was the second most expensive Picasso painting ever sold at auction, after “The Women of Algiers,'' which sold for $179.4 million in 2015.
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However, the most expensive work sold at auction in 2022 was Andy Warhol's “Marilyn,” which sold for $195 million, according to ARTnews.
The top 100 lots sold at auction last year totaled $2.4 billion, down from $4.1 billion in 2022.
Here are the best-selling artworks of 2023:
1. “Femme à la Montre” by Picasso, $139 million
2. “Dam mit Facher” by Gustav Klimt, $108 million
3. “Le Bassin aux Nympheas” by Claude Monte, $74 million
4. “El Gran Espectaculo” by Jean-Michel Basquiat, $67 million
5. Klimt's “Inside the Attersee”, $53 million
6. “Figure in Movement” by Francis Bacon, $52 million
7. “Reminiscences of a Visit to Leningrad” by Richard Diebenkorn, $46.4 million
8. Untitled (Yellow, Orange, Yellow, Light Orange) by Mark Rothko, $46.4 million
9. Murnau mit Kirche II by Wassily Kandinsky, $44.8 million
10. “Les Flamants” by Henri Rousseau, $43.5 million
Art as an investment comes with risks and challenges, but a growing number of success stories suggest there are tangible and intangible rewards for those willing to navigate the market.
Beyond gallery walls and auction houses, new canvases are emerging as a lucrative investment opportunity for people who can't afford to pay high prices for works of art like those painted by Picasso. Masterworks allows investors to buy fractional shares of multi-million dollar blueprint titles.
The company sold 20 paintings by various artists, returning more than $51 million to investors. For example, a work by British painter Cecily Brown was originally listed for $1.27 million, and sold 259 days later for $2.1 million. His net profit from a $10,000 investment was $5,000.
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This article, “Brushstrokes of Wealth: The Art of Investing in Creativity” was originally published on Benzinga.com
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