A 1955 bronze bust by Alberto Giacometti that carried a $70 million failed to find a buyer at Sotheby’s modern evening auction in New York on Tuesday.
The cover lot for the sale’s online page, the Giacometti reportedly came from the estate of real estate magnate Sheldon Solow, who died in 2020. Shown at the 1956 Venice Biennale, the sculpture was previously owned by Marguerite and Aimé Maeght, who had it on view in their eponymous foundation in southern France.
Auctioneer Oliver Barker started the bidding for the work, which was offered without a guarantee, at $59 million, but no collectors put up a bid. After four minutes, the lot was pulled.
“Sales are often managed and orchestrated but this was an organic auction moment,” Sotheby’s CEO Charles Stewart told the Wall Street Journal. “But we stand by the importance of the work.”
Works by Giacometti have long been seen as the most blue-chip of trophy pieces for collectors, regularly selling for eight figures or more. The artist’s auction record currently stands at $141.3 million, more than double the bust’s estimate; that price was achieved in 2015 when ARTnews Top 200 Collector Steven A. Cohen bought Pointing Man (1947).
Another work by Giacometti has also recently been in the news, as part of a legal dispute between collectors David Geffen and Justin Sun. According to the lawsuit, Le Nez, which Sun bought for $78.4 million at Sotheby’s in 2021, was sold without his knowledge to Geffen. Geffen has responded by saying that the lawsuit constitutes nothing more than “seller’s remorse” on Sun’s part.
Ahead of Tuesday’s sale, Sotheby’s said of the work in its catalog essay for the sale, “Grande tête mince is Alberto Giacometti’s masterpiece.” Made as a tribute to the artist’s brother, Diego, the work shows “the definitive expression of his quest for a new sculptural language, one that captures the artist at his most evocative and haunting.”
That pre-sale buzz, however, didn’t seem to convince any buyers.
