Major art auction raises 11 million francs
A painting by Bernese artist Ferdinand Hodler sold for SFr2.6 million ($2.2 million) at auction in Zurich on Monday night. The auction raised SFr11 million in total.
Hodler’s Lake Geneva with Jura (1911) was estimated at between SFr2.5 and SFr3.5 million. It was bought by a private Swiss collection, according to auction house Christie’s.
Christie’s said a work by Giovanni Giacometti broke new records as The Walnut Tree (1908) was sold for SFr2.28 million. It had been estimated to fetch SFr1.2-1.8 million.
This painting, which shows Giacometti’s wife and her cousin sitting under a walnut tree in their Stampa garden, was exhibited alongside a few of Vincent Van Gogh’s works in Zurich in the same year it was painted.
The Ticino painter’s Mother and Child (1911) fetched SFr720,000, more than twice the highest estimate of SFr350,000.
A total of 226 works, ranging from Swiss classics to modern art, came under the hammer. Christie’s said 70 per cent of them found a buyer.
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