Christie's has recently fulfilled a private sale for a Mark Rothko painting amounting to over $100 million that was officially kept "under the wraps," obscuring information about the buyer, the seller, and even the painting itself.
Behind Christie's Secret Sale
According to CNBC's report, art dealers privy to information about the secret deal said that the piece was the American painter's "No. 6 (Violet, Green, and Red)," which is dated 1951.
It was reportedly sold by Russian billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev, who was also recently a plaintiff against Sotheby's in one of the art world's highest-profile art fraud cases in recent years. As for the painting, Ryboloblev purportedly bought it for €140 million or over $151 million in 2014.
The buyer was believed to be the Citadel Hedge Fund's founder and CEO, Kenneth Griffin, who bought the painting around January.
In line with this, Christie's CEO Guillaume Cerutti said in a recent interview with the American business publication that it had sold a painting "in excess of $100 million" in the same month, however, he and the auction house refused to divulge any further information about this particular sale.
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The Upward Trend of Private Sales in the Art Market
A market insistence for private sales has recently reared its head as an upcoming trend, with Christie's acting as one of its forerunners as the auction house reported a huge 49% increase in private sales in contrast to pre-pandemic numbers.
This upward trend is mainly due to the appeal of confidentiality that private sales offer, especially away from the exhaustive and very publicized bidding wars that await in a live auction.
This particular type of art deal is particularly beneficial for high-value art pieces, with the private sale of said masterpieces typically overshadowing the final hammer price of publicly sold pieces that are held to a similar degree.
In Christie's 2023 year-end report, Cerutti also cited the art market uncertainties that spawned in recent times as one of the pushing factors behind private sales' popularity because of its "predictable" and dependable outcomes, specifically for worried consignors who are on the fence about selling their art.
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