Christie’s Dubai Exceeds Sale Estimates by $4 Million at Last Night’s Auction

At last night’s sale of Modern and Contemporary Arab, Iranian and Turkish Art at Christie’s Dubai, works from leading private collections and artists’ estates contributed to $12.5 million in sales. The auction exceeded its high estimate by $4 million and was 95 percent sold with 19 new auction records.

The sale was spurred by works from eight important family collections from across the region and around the world drove the total for yesterday’s sale above the $8.5 million high estimate to $12,510,875 / AED 45,939,933. The highest sale total for the category since 2010, the sale was 95 percent sold by value, an indication of the continuing strength of the market and the demand from collectors around the world for top quality works by Middle Eastern artists. Among the 121 lots in the sale, 19 new artist records were set including for works by Hamed Ewais, Shafic Abboud, Bahman Mohassess, Koorosh Shishegaran and Samia Halaby.

The leading private collections in the sale were 90 percent sold by lot and contributed $4.8 million. One of the other highlights was a rare Untitled oil on canvas work by Iranian artist Parviz Tanavoli. It was painted in Minneapolis where he was working as an art teacher in 1962. It depicts geometric figures and was sold for $365,000, six times the low estimate – a world record for a painting by an artist who holds the current record for any work of art from the Middle East.

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