Brâncuşi sculpture leads ranking of top-selling works by Romanian artists

Constantin Brâncuşi leads a recent ranking of Romanian artists compiled by auction house Artmark by taking into account the artworks’ selling price at international and local auctions.

Brâncuși’s sculpture La Jeune fille sophistiquée sold for EUR 52.9 million in 2018, at a Christie’s auction held in New York.

Second in the ranking is Adrian Ghenie, whose work Nickelodeon sold for GBP 7.1 million at a 2016 auction organized by organized by Christie’s in London. This October, another work by Ghenie, from the Lidless Eye series, sold at a Sotheby’s auction in Hong Kong for HKD 54.92 million (some EUR 6 million).

Third comes an artwork by Romanian-born Surrealist painter Victor Brauner, as The strange case of Mr. K sold for EUR 700,000 in 2003 in Paris.

On the fourth place is Carol Popp Szathmari with his work Tipologii și costume (Typologies and costumes), sold for more than EUR 624,000 at Sotheby’s in London in 1999. Dimitrie Chipăruș’ Les girls comes next, after selling for more than EUR 590,000 at a 2007 Sotheby’s auction in New York. Sixth is Reuven Rubin’s The Road to Meron, which sold for EUR 475,592 at a Sotheby’s auction in New York in 2015, Artmark said. Andrei Cădere was ranked seventh after his work Untitled (A1200030) was sold for EUR 420,000 last year by auction house De Vuyst in Lokeren, in Belgium.

On the local market, Nicolae Grigorescu, Ștefan Luchian, and Nicolae Tonitza lead the top of the transactions. Nicolae Grigorescu’s Țărăncuță cu basma albă (Peasant girl with white headscarf) sold in October 2018 for EUR 340,000 at Artmark, the transaction with the highest value so far on the local market.

The full ranking is available here.

(Illustration courtesy of Artmark)