Press release -
Great Bids on Modern Art
Four works of art, in particular, helped ensure an evening of excitement, as Bruun Rasmussen began the second week of this summer's Live Auction with the sale of modern art.
Henri Hayden's cubist work "Bretonne" from 1920, which transports us right back to the heart of the Parisian avant-garde art scene at the time, was sold for DKK 1,950,000 million (€ 340,000 including buyer’s premium). "Bretonne" is a rare work on the auction market, not least because Henri Hayden's cubist period was very brief. From 1922, he devoted himself to landscape painting instead.
The Chinese born Xie "Lalan" Jinglan's "Le Combat était il égal?" (Was this a fair fight?) was sold for DKK 1.5 million (€ 260,000 including buyer’s premium). Lalan originally composed electronic music and also studied modern dance. You can clearly sense her musicality in the paintings, which in recent years have been in great international demand.
The German André Butzer, known for his semi-abstract paintings with cartoon-like characters and objects, was represented at the auction with the painting "Herr Haxe als Limonadenmann". It went for DKK 580,000 (€ 100,000 including buyer’s premium). And finally, Butzer’s countryman, the photographer Thomas Ruff, sold a more than two and a half meter high and colourful photographic piece of art for DKK 330,000 (€ 58,000 including buyer’s premium). This is the highest price ever achieved for a photographic work of art at Bruun Rasmussen. The work was sold to Arken Museum of Modern Art.
The sale marked the first time any of these four artists had been up for auction at Bruun Rasmussen.
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Bruun Rasmussen Auctioneers is one of Scandinavia’s leading international auction houses, and one of Denmark’s oldest. It all started on 6 October 1948, when Arne Bruun Rasmussen conducted the first traditional auction in the saleroom at Bredgade 33 in Copenhagen. Today, Jesper Bruun Rasmussen stands at the helm of the family-run business together with the third generation of the family, his son Frederik and daughter Alexa, and the company’s CEO Jakob Dupont.
In 2004, the first online auction was launched, and today the auction house has expanded to include departments in Copenhagen and Aarhus and representations in Sweden, Germany, England, France, Belgium, Luxemburg, Spain, Italy, Thailand and the US. About 100,000 lots are put up for auction each year at the traditional auctions, the daily online auctions and - the latest edition - direct auctions. Here you can bid on everything from art, antiques, modern design and jewellery to books, coins, stamps, wine and weaponry.
