NEW YORK (Reuters) – Red and white wooden mazes sculpted by Brazilian artist Sergio Camargo topped Sotheby’s Latin American art sale in New York on Wednesday, selling for $2.1 million and setting a record for the artist.
Camargo’s 1964 “Untitled (Relief No. 21/52),” a labyrinth of white cylinders with their tips slanting in different directions, fetched more than five times its pre-sale low estimate.
“This was a night for Latin American abstraction,” Axel Stein, Sotheby’s head of Latin American art, said about the auction, whose proceeds totaled $17 million.
“Camargo rightfully took his place at the top,” he said of the artist, who died in 1990. “It’s a highly animated piece.”
A similar Camargo sculpture, painted in 1970 called “Untitled (Relief No 289),” brought in $1.3 million, the second highest price of the sale, underscoring the appeal of his works.
Sotheby’s auction followed one by Christie’s the previous evening when auction records were set for abstract works by two living Brazilian artists, Abraham Palatnik and Tomie Ohtake.
Last May in New York, Phillips sold a geometric sculpture by Lygia Clark for $2.2 million, a price that it said was the highest price ever for a work by a Brazilian artist.
Chilean Roberto Matta’s 1939 “Morphologie Psychologique (Fleureur),” or Psychological Morphology (Fleurer), which brought in $995,000, was another top seller at the Sotheby’s sale.
The work was painted with a spatula on a black and deep blue background and features red, yellow, green and orange in a burst of colors.
“It was an exploration of the mysteries of the mind,” said Stein. “He was wondering how our thoughts translated into colors and forms.”
The turbulence in the painting recalls the upheaval in Europe, he added about the work, which was done in France at the start of World War Two.
“You have to think of what happened in 1939. It was a dark world,” said Stein. “It was a reflection of what was happening around him, which is chaos.”
Chilean artist Claudio Bravo’s “Khabyas,” a 2002 painting of pottery that sold for $665,000, was another standout piece at the auction.
Mexican Rufino Tamayo’s 1971 painting “Personajes cogidos de la mano, (Characters holding hands)” went for $665,000 and his 1947 “Aviones de Paso,” (Passing Airplanes) sold for $635,000.
(Editing by Patricia Reaney and Steve Orlofsky)
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