“Russian auctions are also beginning to sum up the results of the year” – Kommersant FM

Kommersant FM columnist Dmitry Butkevich talks about the record sales recorded by the auction house.

Russian auctions are also beginning to sum up the results of the year. On the one hand, they were left without worthy competitors in the form of global players, because previously the British four – Sotheby’s, Christie’s, Bonhams and MacDougall’s – held “Russian auctions” in London twice a year, at which the “cream” of Russian art was exhibited, including (and for the most part) found by the representative offices of these houses in Russia. Prices have always been higher than those of Russian houses, but they also have more prestige.

Everything changed significantly during the pandemic with the transition to online mode and with great forced trust in this system. But just a couple of years ago it was difficult to imagine that multimillion-dollar record sales of works by Russian artists would take place at a Russian auction house, and even online.

ARTinvestment.ru – our well-known and oldest resource on the economics of art in Russia and the CIS countries, which has the world’s largest database of auction sales for Russian authors – began its activities as an auction 10 years ago.

Says the head of the ARTinvestment portal and auction, Egor Molchanov: “The new format “First Names,” which launched in November last year, aroused exceptional interest among buyers, collectors, and sellers. This year we have held three major auctions with works of exceptional museum quality and significance, which are not inferior in level to the “Russian auction” previously held by Sotheby’s and Christie’s.”

Well, and several record prices that were set at such “masterpiece auctions” by ARTinvestment this year. Ilya Repin, “Naturist”, sold for 48.9 million rubles. “Moonlight night. Fog” by Isaac Levitan went for 28.3 million rubles.

The painting by Vasily Vereshchagin “Grand Duchess Sofya Vitovtovna at the wedding of Grand Duke Vasily the Dark in 1433 tears off the belt that once belonged to Dmitry Donskoy from Prince Vasily Kosoy” sold for 39.5 million rubles. At the 500th anniversary auction in October, Konstantin Yuon’s landscape “Trinity Cathedral in Pskov” was sold for 29.5 million rubles.