Tranquillity of Sufism

By Staff Reporter, *Sotheby's Second Contemporary Art: Turkish Sale Achieves 2.4 Million Pounds* - Art Daily - Spain

Friday, April 16, 2010

London: Sotheby’s second sale of Contemporary Art: Turkish achieved a total of £2,436,850/ $3,779,067/ 5,577,465 TRY, comfortably within its pre-sale estimate of £1.9-2.9 million.

The Thursday's April 15th sale established 16 new artist records for artists including Fahrelnissa Zeid, Taner Ceylan, Haluk Akakçe and Canan Tolon, and was 78.4% sold-by-value.

Bidding was international, and buyers came from across the globe. Of the buyers in the auction, a significant 32% were new to Sotheby’s.

Specialists in charge of the Contemporary Art: Turkish Sale, Ali Can Ertuğ, Sotheby’s Senior Vice President and Dalya Islam, Deputy Director, commented after the sale:

“The strong performance of Contemporary Turkish art in today’s sale demonstrates its growing presence on the international auction scene. The demand for Turkish Contemporary Art, from both Turkish and international collectors, today proved extremely high and ratifies Sotheby’s decision to hold its auctions in this category in London, one of the company’s three most important international selling centres. We are thrilled by the success of this auction and the number of new artist records achieved – it marks another important step in the development of this exciting and fast-growing market. The record achieved for Fahrelnissa Zeid effectively becomes the first modern Turkish work to exceed the $1m mark in an international auction with international bidding.”

Applause erupted in the saleroom as Fahrelnissa Zeid’s Untitled, 1954, (lot 66) sold for £657,250/$1,019,263/ 1,504,314 TRY after seven minutes of frenzied bidding, establishing a new record for the artist at auction.

Surpassing the pre-sale high estimate of £500,000 Untitled, 1954, which saw bidding from no less than four clients, was the highest selling lot of the auction.

The doyenne of Turkish art and one of the first female artists to exhibit at the ICA in the 1950s; Zeid is not only one of the most important Turkish artists, but is arguably one of the most important female artists of the 20th Century.

Her work Untitled was created at the beginning of an era in the artist’s oeuvre, when she began experimenting with abstraction; the colour asserts itself with brilliancy under an influence of Byzantine art, the tranquillity of Sufism and in this particular instance, Africa and its totems.

Picture: Applause erupted in the saleroom as Fahrelnissa Zeid's Untitled, 1954 , sold for £657,250/$1,019,263/ 1,504,314 TRY after seven minutes of frenzied bidding. Photo: Courtesy of Sotheby's.