Salvador Dali auction results

With Top Quality Offerings, Sotheby's Nets $181 Million

NEW YORK — The stunning performance of Impressionist and Modern art in Sotheby’s Wednesday sale where 56 paintings, drawings and sculptures brought just over $181 million can leave no one in doubt that the art market is as vigorous as it ever was before last year’s financial troubles.


For the first time since the autumn of 2008, an auction house was offering a significant number of top quality paintings and sculptures in one of the two areas that matter most in the art market.


“Girafe en feu” (Giraffe on Fire), a large gouache on paper signed by Salvador Dalí in 1937 belongs to the early phase of Surrealism, rarely seen at auction these days. Sotheby’s gave the rare work a $150,000 to $200,000 estimate. Obviously too low, it could easily have been doubled. But the best specialists never imagined that it might end up at $1.87 million, and set an auction record for any work on paper by Dalí.