NEW YORK: A dream-like painting of children releasing kites by Brazil’s Candido Portinari sold for $1.4m at Christie’s Latin American art sale and set a world auction record for the artist.
Portinari’s 1941 Meninos Soltando Pipas was the top seller at the Wednesday evening sale, which totalled $16m and set benchmarks for other Latin American artists. “The strength of the Brazilian market reigned supreme,” said Virgilio Garza, Christie’s Latin American art chief.
Portinari, who died in 1962, left a prolific legacy including monumental murals for the US Library of Congress and the United Nations headquarters in New York.
Colombian Fernando Botero’s 2000 bronze Dancers, which fetched $1.14m, was another top seller. The work, coated in brown patina, shows a heavily muscled nude man and a woman, her left hand on his right shoulder.
Mexican Alfredo Ramos Martinez’s Mujeres con Frutas (Women with Fruit), a portrait of two young Mexican Indian women, sold for $1.07m.
Ramos Martinez created the piece shortly after relocating to Los Angeles in the late 1920s to obtain expert medical care for his daughter. Hollywood luminaries of the time collected his work.
Art experts had high hopes going into the Latin American art sales amid a buoyant market, sparked by a record-breaking sale of contemporary art earlier this month.
Reuters
