Loïc Gouzer, Christie’s Co-Chairman of Post-War and Contemporary Art, has announced that he will be selling the painting “Suprematist Composition” (Kazimir Malevich, oil on canvas, 1916) in May. Estimate: $70 million.
“Suprematist Composition” was last sold at Sotheby’s on 3 November 2008 by the heirs of the artist (after being in the collection of the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam for several decades). Art dealer David Nahmad purchased the painting for US $60,002,500.
Mr. Gouzer is confident of the art historic, and current market, value of this work. “‘A work like this one should be the corner stone of every major collection or museum and if the market was indexed to the art historical importance of works, then this should be a billion $ painting (although we as specialists have to sadly take into account the laws of gravity and the estimate will be in the region of $70m).'”
Sixth sense matters. “’I relate it a lot to my spearfishing—you don’t know why, but you know that if you dive now the big fish is going to come. When you’re at the surface, you don’t see anything, but you just have this instinct that it is going to happen. In art, it is the same thing—this instinct sometimes that I know a painting is going to move.’”
Company matters too. “’If you start putting works around another work, they give each other meaning. Each of the works are in dialogue, and they help each other.'”
See:
“Loïc Gouzer’s $70m Malevich for May,” Marion Maneker, Art Market Monitor, 10 April 2018
“The Daredevil of the Auction World,” Rebecca Mead, The New Yorker, 4 July 2016
Sotheby’s “Impressionist & Modern Art Evening Sale,” Lot No. 6, Kazimir Malevich, “Suprematist Composition,” 3 November 2008, New York
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