sotheby’s One of the best-selling lots at the Sotheby’s sale was Erik Bulatov’s ‘Revolution-Perestroika.’

With its first sale last week of modern and contemporary Russian art, which followed a unique sale in Moscow in 1988 that introduced Soviet-era unofficial art to the world, auction house Sotheby’s marked another turning point in the Russian art market.

The Feb. 25 sale in London achieved total sales of $5.1 million and beat the $4.0 million record of its legendary Moscow forerunner.

“We are thrilled with the results of this landmark sale,” Joanna Vickery, Senior Director and Head of Sotheby’s Russian department said. “This sale has now brought Russian contemporary art onto the international stage for the first time ever and the overall result of 80 percent of the lots being sold provides a strong springboard for future growth in this area.”

Sotheby’s runs twice-yearly Russian sales in London and New York, but these have mostly featured icons, and painting, sculpture, porcelain, jewellery, furniture and arms from the 18th century to the beginning of the 20th century.

However, last year Sotheby’s sensationally sold Vladimir Nemukhin’s “Unfinished Game of Patience” (1966) for $240,000 and Dmitry Krasnopevtsev’s “Still Life With Three Jugs” (1976) for $1 million, seemingly stimulating the market for post-1960 art and leading to last week’s dedicated auction

Although the sale offered lots covering diverse Moscow and Leningrad artistic groups from abstract experiments to works by artists of the Moscow Conceptualist School and Sots Art movements, all were in artistic opposition to official Soviet mainstream art.

A major surprise was the top lot — Yevgeny Chubarov’s work “Untitled” — which sold for $560,000, more than four times its high estimate of $116, 000. The mature work surprised experts by its popularity since it seems derivative of American Abstract Expressionist art of the 1950s.

However, the other top lots such as Erik Bulatov’s “Revolution-Perestroika,” Mikhail Shvartsman’s “Paternal Structure,” Vladimir Weisberg’s “Nude,” Oleg Vasiliev’s “Landscape and Space,” Oleg Tselkov’s “Acrobat with Portrait of Acrobats,” and Victor Pivovarov’s “Eros” were predictably desirable and subject to the most intense bidding, according to auction officials.

The sale featured almost all the significant figures of the underground scene, including such names as Vladimir Yankilevsky, Vitaly Komar, Grisha Bruskin, Dmitry Prigov, Vadim Zakharov, Alexander Kosolapov, Leonid Sokov, Eduard Gorokhovsky, Francisco Infante, Ivan Chuikov, Boris Mikhailov and others.

According to Vickery, there was also a strong taste for works from the 1990s; there were noticeable purchases of works by Aidan Salakhova, Valery Koshlyakov, Alexei Kostroma and Arsen Savadov.

Two pieces by the prominent St. Petersburg artist Timur Novikov from a remarkable cycle employing his “semantic perspective” principle were also sold. One of them, “White Night,” was used to illustrate the auction’s catalogue.

At the Moscow sale in 1988, the art was purchased by Western collectors who were attracted by its novelty and relative cheapness, as well as its significance. At Sotheby’s sale last week, many works came from foreign collections and the major buyers were Russian.

“In staging this historic and pioneering sale, Sotheby’s has established beyond doubt that there is now a burgeoning market for Russian Contemporary Art,” Vickery said.

According to Aidan Salakhova, director of Moscow’s Aidan Gallery, there are about 200-300 serious art collectors in Russia and the scene is growing.

“There was extremely competitive bidding for top names, producing 22 world auction record prices and bidding came from over 150 international buyers, a truly staggering phenomenon for a new sale,” Vickery said. “The room was packed and applause broke out at the end of the sale as recognized the historic importance and achievement of the sale.”

Sotheby’s is planning another sale of modern and contemporary Russian art in 2008.

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