2024-04-23
Art auctions in Poland - coronavirus its own and the art market its own! The Polish art market recorded very good results in the first quarter of 2020.
When the epidemic goes crazy, the whole economy trembles. Even cultural institutions cannot guard against the consequences of the plague. As many as 34% of global galleries forecast that they won't survive the current crisis. And one could certainly assume that art auctions won't be able to withstand such a shock, especially on such a young market as it operates in Poland. Well, reality turns out to be very surprising.
The first quarter of this year is behind us. That is why on April 23 the Artinfo.pl portal published a summary of this period for the art market in Poland and, as he writes: "The results seem sensational".
At the very beginning, let's look at the value of sales in the auction market after the first quarter. They increased by 23% compared to the first quarter of the previous year (in 2019 they amounted to PLN 52.2 million - in 2020 they reached PLN 64.4 million)! It is worth recalling that the first 3 months of last year were also record-breaking.
Further along the path of growth, the number of auctions increased by 4.3%, and the number of works that entered the auction as well as the number of objects actually auctioned increased by 12%. Sales of young and contemporary art are also steadily growing, but old art (which has seen sales declines relative to modern art over the past three years) has won almost half of the entire market.
And someone would want to undermine the strength of the Polish art market, saying that quarantine began in the last month of this quarter, and the first two months guaranteed the entire increase. The argument against such an accusation is the fact that the three most expensive art auctions have already been carried out during national isolation, when all auctions take place without an audience and can be participated by phone or via the Internet. The third place was the collection of 5 figures of Magdalena Abakanowicz, auctioned for 2.36 million (March 26), the rest of the podium belongs to Jacek Malczewski and his two paintings - "Vision of Ezekiel" (March 17) and the famous "Artist and Chimera" (March 22), which was auctioned for 3.06 million and 3.65 million.
The art market in Poland presents a surprisingly good market situation for the current economic conditions. If the dynamics and development of the art market remain at the current level, it can be safely said that this year's art auctions will guarantee us many records. May it happen!
The entire artinfo.pl report is available at this link: https://artinfo.pl/artinformacje/rynek-aukcyjny-w-i-kwartale-2020.