The Tamesis
Just less than a year ago, Sotheby’s held its first auction in Saudi Arabia, its largest sale to date in the Gulf. The sale, titled “Origins,” featured 117 works of art and luxury goods, and brought in $17.3 million with commissions, well within the presale estimate of $14 million to $20 million. It’s not a spectacular result, but it’s not a disaster either.
Over the weekend, the brand held its second such auction, titled “Origins II,” which saw even stronger results. The sale netted $19.6 million from just 61 lots, well above its presale estimate of $11.7 million to $16.6 million.
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The house even boasts an artist record worth bragging about: Safeya Binzagr’s Coffee shop on Medina Road The sale price, including commission, was $2.1 million, more than ten times the high estimate of $200,000. The auction result nearly doubles the previous auction record for a Saudi artist, which was set in 2023 when a work by Mohammed Al Saleem fetched $1.2 million.
The auction featured 9 works by Saudi artists, with a total transaction price of US$4.3 million, against a high estimate of US$1.1 million. Two of the works were by Al Saleem, both of which sold for more than three times their high estimates. By comparison, the first “Origins” sale included only four works by Saudi artists, for a total of $1.1 million.
The biggest difference between this year’s sale and last, however, is the expanded presence of Western masters, perhaps a sign of the auction house’s growing confidence in its relationship with Saudi collectors. The sale included three works by Picasso, including a painting valued at $1.6 million; seven works by Roy Lichtenstein drawn from the personal collection of the artist and his wife; an Andy Warhol painting that sold for just over $1 million; a set of four screen prints of Warhol’s Muhammad Ali that sold for $352,000; and works by Anish Kapoor and James Turrell. (Last year’s sale included three small works by Warhol and one by Picasso, and while works by Fernando Botero, Banksy and Rene Magritte each sold for more than $1 million, none exceeded $250,000.)
About a third of the evening’s lots (about 20 works) were sold to buyers in Saudi Arabia.
While attention may be focused on the launch of Art Basel Qatar this week, Saudi Arabia’s results make it clear that it won’t be the only Gulf state to have a significant presence in the art market.
