White hot at Sotheby's: Records tumble, highest price of Frieze Week achieved

LONDON.- Moments ago at Sotheby’s London, Italian art took the market by storm, with a succession of new records set, and a key new benchmark price achieved as eight bidders drove Piero Manzoni’s monumental Achrome well beyond pre-sale expectations to £12,626,500 / $20,249,118 / €15,872,822 (est. £5-7m) – establishing the highest price across all the Frieze auctions this week.*

The Manzoni was the top lot in a ‘white hot’ evening sale in which collectors battled for a series of luminous white works, smashing records in the process. Alongside Manzoni, works by Castellani, Bonalumi and Simeti (all of them white) nearly doubled the previous records for the artists.

Appearing tonight at auction for the first time ever, Manzoni’s Achrome (1958-59) represents the apogee of the artist’s ground-breaking Achrome series, considered one of the most revolutionary and profound artistic contributions to the post-war age. Last exhibited at the Tate Modern’s Beyond Painting exhibition in 2005/2006, this exceptional painting is one of only nine Achromes that Manzoni created in this large scale (110 x 150 cm), three of which are held in museum collections.

The painting was the star lot at Sotheby’s auction of Italian Art this evening which established a grand total of £41,406,650 / $66,403,845 / €52,052,461 – the highest ever total for an auction of 20th century Italian Art.

*Previous record for any post-war Italian work of art: Fontana, Concetto spaziale, La fine de Dio (1963) sold for $20.9m /£13.2 m in November 2013.