This is a presentation of the most valuable African Arts bought and sold as part of promoting the role of culture in Sustainable Development and globalization of cultural trade – Spirit of Peace Conference Promotional Document
Presents: The most valuable African Arts ever bought and sold
The Senufo Female Statue, carved by an artist known as the Master of Sikasso, is a Cote d’Ivoiran rare piece that sold for a record $12 million last November. It was owned by Myron Kunin, an African art collector who sold $41.6 million worth of his collection at Sotheby’s in New York.
David Hammons is an American artist especially known for his works in and around New York City and Los Angeles during the 1970s and 1980s. This work is unique from a series of 3. Estimate $5,000,000 - 7,000,000 SOLD FOR $8,005,000
A celebrated 19th century mask by the Gabonese Fang people garnered more than $7.5 million at auction in Paris in 2006. The Ngil masks (sometimes referred to as the gorilla mask) were worn by men of the same name during the initiation of new members and the persecution of wrong-doers. The mask, which is said to have inspired artist Pablo Picasso, brought in four times its estimated price of $1.9 million.
AT PHILLIPS LONDON’s Contemporary Art Evening Sale on Oct. 14, Mark Bradford’s “Constitution IV” set a new record for the Los Angeles artist. Created in 2013, the mixed-media painting sold for 3,778,500 pounds ($5,848,796, including fees) nearly twice the high estimate of more than 4 million pounds. Bradford’s abstract mixed-media paintings are layered canvases that reflect his own experience and reference issues of social justice.
The ‘Fang Mabea’ statue, owned by two art collectors, Felix Feneon and Jacques Kerchache, who were fighting for better recognition of African art in Europe, was sold for $5.17 million in 2014. The statue that produced in Cameroon in the early 19th century.
The ‘Arab Priest’ by the South African artist Irma Stern is most expensive African art painting ever sold at an auction to date. It was purchased by a museum in the Middle East for £3.1 million ($4.8 million) in March 2011.
The Retopistics: A Renegade Excavation (2001), an art painting by Ethiopian-born artist Julie Mehretu who was best known for her densely layered abstract paintings, sold for $4.6 million at Christie’s New York in 2013.
The “Holy Virgin Mary,” 1996 (acrylic, oil, polyester resin, paper collage, glitter, map pins and elephant dung on linen) is a painting created by Chris Ofili in 1996. More than 15 years after it raised a ruckus in New York, Chris Ofili’s mixed-media painting depicting a black Madonna decorated with elephant manure sold at auction at Christie’s on June 30th, 2015 for $4,522,643 (including fees)This is a record for its artist, who surpassed his previous auction record of 1.9 million pounds.
The Muninia mask, a previously unseen masterpiece, was auctioned off at Sotheby’s France for about $4.4 million, the second highest price in history for an African mask.
IT WAS THE FIRST LOT OF THE NIGHT, a white-onwhite text painting by Glenn Ligon detail of “Untitled (I Was Somebody),” 1990, 2003 (oilstick, graphite and gesso on panel) | Estimate $1 million – $1.5 million. Sold for $3,973,000 including fees. Originally executed in 1990 and repainted in 2003, “Untitled (I Was Somebody)” The price was well over twice the estimate of $1 million to $1.5 million and set a record for Ligon.
The ‘Bahora Girl’, also by Irma Stern, is second most expensive African art ever sold. It was bought by a private South African art collector for £2.4 million ($3.6 million) in October 2010 at Bonhams auction house in London.
In 2012, a Jean Willy Mestach wooden African sculpture from the northwest Mbandaka region of the Democratic Republic of Congo sold for $3.5 million at the Christie’s auction house in Paris.
This portrait taken from a class picture from Marlene Dumas’ childhood in South Africa sold for $3.3 million in 2005. It is a provocative piece by the 60-year-old inspired by the politics of her apartheid upbringing.
“Afrosheen,” 2009 (oil on canvas) is the work of Hurvin Anderson is a British painter. | Estimate $510,900 – $681,200. Sold for $2,246,481 (including fees) Hurvin Anderson’s paintings flirt between abstraction and figuration, their tranquil scenes merging unstable ideas of memory, conjoined histories, and crossculturalism. Peter’s Sitter’s 3 imagines a home barbershop, a cottage industry taken up by many newly arrived Caribbean immigrants in the 1950s. Rendered in a reduced palette of blue, white, and red, the scene conveys the experience of freshly acquired British identity, its aspirations and hard realities.
‘Les Chadoufs’, a painting by Mahmoud Said, which acts as a powerful metaphor for an Egyptian Renaissance, sold for $2 million in 2010. It became the most expensive piece of art made by an Arab artist ever to be auctioned by Christie’s Dubai.
The highest price of 2014 was another Irma Stern painting, ‘Zanzibar Woman’, which Bonhams London sold for £1,082,500 ($1.8million).
Martin Puryear, “Untitled,� 1989 (red cedar and pine ). | Estimate $600,000$800,000. Sold for $1,805,000 (including fees). Martin Puryear is an American artist known for his devotion to traditional craft. Working in wood and bronze, among other media, his reductive technique and meditative approach challenge the physical and poetic boundaries of his materials.
In 2011, Stern’s sold another painting titled Two Arabs for about $1.8 million in South Africa. The next year she sold yet another painting of a distinguished Arab man titled Arab for nearly $1.5 million..
"Paths to the Okro Farm," by El Anatsui, aluminum and copper wire, 96 by 136 inches, 2006 Lot 432 is a larger aluminum and copper wire work by El Anatsui (b. 1944) entitled "Paths to the Okro Farm. It measures 96 by 136 inches and was painted in 2006. It has an estimate of $700,000 to $1,000,000. It sold for $1,445,000.
Kerry James Marshall, “Vignette,” 2003 Sold for $1,025,000 (including fees) on Nov. 13, 2014 at Christies’s New York. In describing “Vignette,” Christie’s says Marshall “inflects a social realist style with hints of Pop and Surrealist aesthetics to represent his black protagonists. The figures, reminiscent of Grant Wood characters, are both romanticized and slightly flattened. The work suggest ideals of a better future even while it reminds us of stereotypes of Black identity and the way the media presents them.”
Spirit of Congo Square (2010). 7ft. x 13ft. High Relief Cast Bronze sculpture by Adéwálé (‘Wálé) S. Adénlé's. Commissioned by the City of New Orleans, LA. (Installed in the Congo Square in the Tremé neighborhood of Louis Armstrong Park, New Orleans. His work continue to influence sociopolitical discourse in his homeland (Nigeria) and intertwined with policies in the US. He explores dual realities and logics in political constructs and systems, arriving at a threedimensional work that vastly engages the viewer to unload and search for multiple logics in its interpretation.
Jean-Michel Basquiat was born in Brooklyn to a Haitian father and Puerto Rican mother. He was an informal graffiti duo who wrote enigmatic epigrams in the cultural hotbed of the Lower East Side of Manhattan during the late 1970s where the hip hop, post-punk, and street art movements had coalesced. Record-His work, Untitled sold for $110.5 Million making it the most expensive painting ever by an American Artist Sold at Auction. The painting achieved the highest auction price in history for a work by an American artist and reached a number of other milestones: • Most expensive work by an American artist sold at auction • Most expensive work by an artist of African descent sold at auction • Most expensive work made since 1980 sold at auction • Sixth most expensive work ever sold at auction
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