Czech art goes international

The days of Czech modern art being a quiet discovery on the international art market seemed to end quite definitively on June 13 following the auction of the Hascoe Family Collection at Sotheby’s in London. Initial estimates of around £5 million were shattered by overall sales of over £11.1 million. Tessa Kostrzewa, deputy director of European paintings at Sotheby’s in London, spoke to Czech Position about the milestone auction and the particular artists involved.

“The market for Czech art has really appreciated over the last year,” Kostrzewa said, adding that the quality and comprehensiveness of the Hascoe collection played a major role in the auction’s remarkable success. “Collections like this are very rare. You will have collections like this in the Czech Republic, but they are unlikely to come onto the international market.”

Since the auction Kostrzewa says that Sotheby’s has already been approached by owners of Czech art that likely were not previously aware of the value of the works in their possession. She says this is particularly the case for people outside the Czech Republic that might have inherited a painting by Kupka or Filla and have no idea that the nice painting on their wall is actually worth a fortune. “They don’t realize the value of Czech art and that the market has moved on,” she said.
Market movement

Not only was his work the headline sale in the auction, but Kostrzewa says that František Kupka was the key artist in the sale. There was a major price difference between the £1.5 million paid for “Movement” and a wide range of other Kupka works sold — a difference that comes down to the medium the artist worked in.

“From a collector’s point of view you have a vast difference between oil and works on paper,” Kostrzewa said. Then there are differences between varieties of works on paper, a drawing tending to be worth less than a pastel, for example. Then the question of the work’s condition comes into play as well. According to Kostrzewa, collectors of works on paper insist on very good condition.

Another artist whose works sold for considerably higher amounts than the estimates was Emil Filla, though Kostrzewa says this was less of a surprise than the record-high prices achieved in sales of paintings by Josef Čapek, whose works are extremely hard to come by on the international market.

A bright spot was Sotheby’s first time sale of works by František Foltýn, whose two top-selling paintings were estimated at between £120,000 and £180,000. In the end Foltýn’s “Imperialism” sold for £433,250 and his “Portrait of Dostoevsky” sold for £337,250.

Bohumír Matal’s painting “The Lovers” was estimated to sell at between £12,000 and £18,000, but ended up going for over £100,000. According to Kostrzewa there was no question of underestimating the artistic value of the painting, particularly considering the scarcity of his work available to collectors, but the lower estimate was due to the size of the canvas itself.

“As a rule of thumb with a four-meter long painting you are worried about finding a buyer with the necessary space to hang it in their home,” Kostrzewa said.

Another significant feature of the auction was the composition of buyers both in the room and on the phones. While a strong Czech element can be expected when a collection of this caliber like this becomes available Kostrzewa found the widespread international interest a vital signpost to how Czech art is looked at these days.

“There were a lot of Czech-speaking people in the room, but not only. It was truly international, at about 50/50. In a way it’s a landmark sale because it put Czech art in a very international setting” Kostrzewa said.