Botero's Strip-Poker Scene Leads $14 Million Latin Art Auction

Friday - November 24, 2006

(Bloomberg) -- Fernando Botero's painting of a strip-poker game, ``Card Players II,'' sold for $1.7 million last night at Sotheby's New York, headlining an auction of Latin American artworks. The sale totaled $14 million, just below the $14.4 million presale high estimate.

``If not extravagantly high, it has been a solid sale,'' said Pablo Vallecilla, a sales director at Marlborough Gallery, which represents Colombia's Botero.

Christie's Latin art auction tonight in New York is estimated to bring in as much as $16.7 million.

The results, while strong for a Latin auction, were modest compared with the recent New York sales of impressionist, modern and contemporary art from the U.S. and Europe that brought in over a billion dollars in four evening sales over a two-week period. Last night, nearly a quarter of the lots failed to sell, a fairly typical percentage for Latin American art.

For the tight-knit community of Latin art lovers who descend on New York for the semiannual auctions, however, it's a much- anticipated and festive event. While attire at most evening sales tends toward staid business dress, there were plenty of thigh- skimming miniskirts and rhinestone-encrusted bustiers.

The health of the Latin art trade used to be inextricably bound to the health of Latin American economies. ``As time has gone by,'' said Vallecilla, ``more and more non-Latins are buying Latin.'' Still, the region was well represented. Dealers in the room spotted collectors from Brazil, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Panama and Venezuela.

Boteros Prevail

Four of last night's 10 most expensive artworks were Boteros. The 1989 ``Card Players II,'' a 5-foot-tall canvas of four pudgy figures seated around a wooden table clutching cards, includes references to the Colombian flag. The two pink, fleshy women are nude while the men are fully dressed. All appear to be engaged in some sort of cheating, a hint of guilt suggested by shifty eyes and pursed lips. The painting is said to have been inspired by Paul Cezanne's famous ``The Card Players.''

In May, two Botero paintings of musicians sold on consecutive nights at Christie's and Sotheby's for a record $2 million each. The 74-year-old artist's grim paintings depicting the torture of prisoners at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison are on view through today at Marlborough in New York. They are not for sale.

Marlborough Gallery artists, all highly recognizable (and some say highly commercial), consistently perform well at auction. In addition to Botero, Marlborough's Chilean painter Claudio Bravo and Cuban painters Julio Larraz and Tomas Sanchez fetched some of the evening's biggest prices.

Zuniga Sculptures

Sculptor Francisco Zuniga also achieved strong prices last night. ``Three Walking Women,'' a towering bronze from 1981 sold for $1.02 million, while a sensuous 1977 polished onyx nude of a lithe woman curled in a ball sold for $688,000, well above the $120,000 high estimate.

Gunther Gerzso's 1957 abstract landscape of fractured shapes in rich, translucent layers of green and blue fetched $620,800, setting an auction record. It was more than four times the previous mark set when the same painting was sold in the same auction room in May 1995.

Works by the Cuban modernist Wifredo Lam also found bidders with deep pockets. The most popular Lam of the night was a stark, surrealist 1955 painting with sharp lines conjuring an imaginary creature -- part woman, part horse. ``Five Centimeters Over the Ground'' includes Afro-Cuban and religious imagery and is a dramatic and heroic composition. The painting more than doubled its high estimate, selling for $688,000 to an anonymous phone bidder.

Eskil Lam, the late artist's son, stood in the back of the salesroom, watching his father's artworks spin on the turntable.

``I disconnect myself a little bit,'' said Eskil, who lives in Paris and manages his father's estate. ``The first time I saw his work at auction was really tense.''