Takeaways from Sloart Gallery's first public auction

On Saturday, December 7th, 2024, the first public auction of the Sloart gallery and auction house took place at the Grand Plaza Hotel in Ljubljana. The auction had been predicted to fetch very high prices in the last month before the event, which is why everyone who makes up our art market was talking about it.

Based on the sum of the estimated values ​​of the 38 works of art offered at the event by the organizer of Sloart, the gallery expected approximately 1.3 million euros. After the end of the event, the estimate turned out to be much exaggerated. The realized sum of the prices achieved was around 179,000 euros, including a 20% auction markup. One could say that the art market has grounded the overly high expectations of the organizer or the owners, who decided to sell their works through the auction house. Of the works offered, only 10 were sold, and not a single one of them reached the valuation prescribed in the previously published catalog.

The final proceeds of the auction were improved by the sale of a pastel portrait by Ivana Kobilca, Portrait of Mary Paumgarten and Josipina Wenckheim, née Baumgartner, for which, after initially rejecting an offer of 90,000 euros, the director of Sloart, Damjan Kosec, finally accepted the offer. Among the highest-priced works were also works by Gabrijel Stupica and Mario Pregl, but there was no interest in any of them. In addition to Ivana Kobilca, works by France Kralj, Fran Tratnik, Hinko Smrekar, Matija Jama, Matija Strnen, Ivan Grohaj and Silvester Komel also found new owners, and among sculptors, works by Ivan Napotnik and Zdenko Kalin.

The auction result does not only tell us that the organizers aimed too high. The Impressionist group is still strong on the Slovenian market – who in Slovenia does not know the names Grohar or Sternen? After reviewing the works selected for auction, we notice a trend of the Impressionists, their contemporaries and successors, who, despite the experimentation typical of the 20th century, use traditional media. If we compare this with trends on the global art market, where, for example, Cattelan's Comedian is breaking records, the difference and audacity of investors is obvious. On the other hand, we cannot blame the Slovenian market for being cautious. Among the most expensive works sold on a global level, there are also very few new names, the greater value is attributed to more or less old masters of art history - Leonardo da Vinci, Kooning, Picasso, Rembrandt. Despite the record of Cattelan's banana, which reached as much as 6 million dollars, a painting by the famous surrealist René Magritte was recently sold for a record 121 million dollars. While the medium of the artwork may no longer be so important, the name behind it certainly is.

Sales records are not only broken by unique or art-historically important works, but also by contemporary art. Ross Bleckner, one of the artists whose works are also represented in our gallery's offer, for example, achieved a personal sales record in 2022. His work Untitled from 1988 exceeded the expected price of $50-70,000 by 362 percent at Christie's auction. At Stoja Art Collection Gallery, we have six of Bleckner's works on display, available for viewing. The pieces evoke both aesthetic pleasure and investment opportunity.

For more information, please visit our gallery, by prior arrangement.

Author of the article: Špela R.

Photo sources: Delo, Voranc Vogel, Stoja Art Collection Gallery