The troubled international auction house Sotheby’s, now backed by the Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund ADQ, is seeking to make history with a first international sale in Saudi Arabia this weekend.
Sotheby’s will offer a mix of Western masters and Arab artists, from Picasso to Banksy, in a high profile auction in Diriyah, a Unesco World Heritage site, on Saturday under the title “Origins”. The outcome will be an indicator of the strength of the Gulf’s art market.
ADQ agreed to invest $1 billion in Sotheby’s in August, alongside Patrick Drahy, a French billionaire, after the auction side of the business made a substantial loss in the first half of the year.
Sotheby’s has now officially been incorporated in Saudi Arabia. According to the Artnet paper, the auction house plans to open an office in Riyadh’s financial district, within the Norman Foster-designed Al Faisaliah Tower.
The kingdom’s first international auction adds to a recent wave of arts-related momentum in the region. In Abu Dhabi a long-awaited Guggenheim museum is due to open its doors on Saadiyat Island this year, while the Abu Dhabi Art Fair is reportedly being taken over by the world’s largest fair, Art Basel of Switzerland.
In Saudi Arabia the two-part Sotheby’s auction will feature around 150 lots of works by artists such as René Magritte, Kandinsky, Fernando Botero, Andy Warhol, Damien Hirst and Refik Anadol. These premium lots may attract prices ranging from several hundred thousand to over a million dollars.
The show’s star is Magritte’s L’État de veille (1958), a gouache estimated at $1 million to $1.5 million. Refik Anadol’s Machine Hallucinations is estimated to be likely to attract between $800,000 and $1.2 million, bringing the most sought-after AI-gen artist into the limelight.
Additional highlights include works by artists such as Giorgio de Chirico’s Due cavalli in riva al mare ($350,000–$450,000), George Condo’s Blue Portrait Composition ($350,000–$450,000), and Louay Kayyali’s Then What? (1965), expected to break records, with an estimated price of $500,000 to $700,000.
The auction will also spotlight modern Arab artists. Blue Trap, a work by the Palestinian-American abstract artist Samia Halaby, will be offered at $150,000 to $200,000.
The second part of the auction will merge art with other Saudi interests: sports and luxury. Memorabilia, including Michael Jordan’s 1998 NBA playoffs “Last Dance” jersey (estimated at $800,000 to $1.2 million) and Cristiano Ronaldo’s signed boots (estimated at $30,000 to $50,000), are likely to spark fierce competition among collectors.
Investors in luxury goods will be drawn to pieces from Cartier, Chopard, Bulgari and Patek Philippe. The auction is due to close with a collection of 17 Birkin and Kelly Hermès bags, items coveted across the Middle East.
Gulf countries have historically featured among Sotheby’s most significant clients. As the Middle East’s tech-savvy population grows, Sotheby’s, too, has embraced cryptocurrency, so that all successful bids on Saturday can be paid in bitcoin or similar.
Adeline Pilon is founder of Happening Technologies, co-founder of the Elyx Foundation and was named in 2023 as one of the top 100 cultural influencers in France
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