118th Art Auction: Bidders Take Bruno GIRONCOLI to a New Level

return to overview

Contemporary Art, 21 June, 3 p.m. and 6 p.m.

€ 100,000 (SP € 126,000) for the sculpture Hutnadel II [Hatpin II] by Bruno Gironcoli established an entirely new price level for a vigorous maverick with an enigmatic pictorial language. This monumental sculpture of gilded cast aluminium housed in a black display cabinet is the first of altogether four versions and enjoys one-of-a-kind status as an artist’s proof. With this sale, the Carinthian sculptor has most certainly now joined the top ranks of Austrian artists in terms of price, as well.

An impressive upward leap from previous auction results was also taken by the artist’s monumental late-1980s works on paper, in which he dealt with the surreal nature of dreams as well as the theme of fertility, birth, and life. € 70,000 (SP € 88,200) set an absolute record for a work on paper by Gironcoli.

With the works by Hans Bischoffshausen that came up for bid, the impressive performance by Carinthian artists continued. A long list of artworks from his oeuvre sparked consistently great interest and witnessed some remarkable rises in price, and even the nearly square-format representative of his series Champ d’energie—(developed in Paris during the 1960s) managed—as it had one year ago—to confirm its market value of € 100,000 (SP € 126,000)!

Unbroken interest was likewise enjoyed by the works on paper and egg tempera paintings of Max Weiler. His painting Tree, with its energetically dancing symphony of colours, was the most hotly contested, climbing to € 70,000 (SP € 88.200) before the hammer went down!

Alle images available as highres download: Press Downloads