Poles invest in art in times of crisis
As every year, a team of experts from the largest and most opinion-forming portal about the art market in Poland, Artinfo.pl, has prepared the report based on thousands of statistical data from all auction houses in Poland. Collectors and art lovers will find here numerous summaries, statements and expert comments. The rankings are usually the most exciting, due to clearly presented numbers, among others the prices of the most expensive objects sold, the market position of each of the auction houses and the names of artists considered to be the most "hot" on the market.
The main part of the current edition of the report is a summary of the turnover on the auction market in 2019. In addition, a lot of space is devoted to the chapter about the situation in the first half of 2020, i.e. the time when the coronavirus pandemic appeared. The conclusions that can be drawn from reading the report are quite surprising.
"Over the last few years, we have witnessed the constant breaking of records. In 2019, the art market in Poland again achieved the highest turnover, we approached PLN 300 million. A record number of 337 auctions was also held, and one of the auction houses exceeded PLN 150 million in turnover and won more than half of the market. In the first half of 2020, the period when the pandemic caused a storm in almost every industry, art sales increased by almost 30 percent compared to the first half of the previous year. If this trend continues, we will achieve a historic result at the end of this year,” Rafał Kamecki, President of Artinfo.pl, said.
Rafał Kamecki also noted that although in 2019 the interest of collectors in contemporary art continued to grow, there was also a visible return to old art, which in the previous years was clearly losing to modern classics. Moreover, for the first time in the 30-year history of the domestic auction market, sculptural work opens the ranking of the most expensive transactions. More than PLN 8 million was paid for the group of characters ‘Caminando’ by Magdalena Abakanowicz.
(WBJ)
