Strauss & co - 2016 Mid-year Review

Strauss & Co leads the local art market Strauss & Co’s mid-year results for 2016 reaffirm the company’s position as the global leader for South African art with a consolidated turnover of R90 736 710 and a sell-through rate over 80%. These impressive results are in keeping with the company’s robust performance. Last year Strauss & Co achieved its highest turnover in its eight-year history, setting 21 new artists’ records and showing depth in the South African market with impressive sales across all departments. While 2015 ended on a sad note with the loss of Stephan Welz, the company’s founding Managing Director, Strauss & Co’s mid-year results are testimony to the resilience of this specialist auction company and the confidence that clients have in the expertise and integrity of its staff. “Our market-related estimates remain at the core of our practice and are substantiated by our consistently high sell-through rate,” says Bina Genovese, joint Managing Director. Strauss & Co’s Cape Town auction in March included three impressive works by artist Robert Hodgins, which also ranked amongst the top ten selling lots. The highlight was undoubtedly Hodgins’ roguish Bad Man with Great Threads, an important work that sold for R2,4 million, tripling the pre-sale estimate. Strauss & Co holds all the records for this pioneering figure in contemporary South African painting, including the R2,6 million achieved for J’Accuse in March 2015. A further highlight was Walter Battiss’s Red Rock from 1949, a seminal work in the artist’s oeuvre, which sold for R1,8 million. Birds and Boats by Maggie Laubser, one of the most appealing paintings by Laubser to appear at auction in recent years, sold for R1,5 million. The Laubser market is primed for growth. On a recent series of valuations in the Eastern Cape, Strauss & Co specialists consigned Laubser works of similar quality for the company’s Cape Town sale later this year. Vanessa Phillips, Joint Managing Director, commented: “We are excited by the works consigned as they are fresh to the market and have excellent provenance”. While South Africa’s weaker currency and other external economic factors might have been expected to dampen the market, exchange rates favouring international buyers resulted in an increased interest from abroad. An astonishing ten international bidders vied on telephones at Strauss & Co’s March sale in Cape Town for a group of Persian-style 4