Madrid (EFE) Contemporary Art (ARCO) inaugurated this Wednesday in Madrid.
It is a sculpture made in 1998 and weighs 1.5 tons, so it was necessary to bring a special crane to be able to move it, in addition to reinforcing the base of the structure to support the weight, according to Ignacio Múgica, one of the owners of the Carreras Múgica gallery in Bilbao (Spain), who bring this piece to the fair.
It belongs to a private collector and will probably go to another collector, said the gallery owner, since museums have tighter budgets.
“The arrival of private collectors to the market has caused prices to skyrocket,” said Múgica.
The artist probably sold it at the time for approximately half a million euros and since then auctions, private collectors and the popularity of his work have done the rest.
Will the most expensive work of ARCO 2023 be sold?
However, Múgica does not know if she will be able to sell the piece: “I have been a gallery owner for 25 years and I cannot make forecasts. What should go very well sometimes doesn’t work and other things are sometimes surprising. It’s a very strange world.”
Another piece by the artist is sold for 2.4 million euros at the Guillermo de Osma Gallery in Madrid, also made of corten steel, but much smaller, just 80 kilos.
Throughout his life, Chillida received numerous awards in different countries for his works, many of them large in metal and concrete installed in both urban and natural spaces, with an abstract style.
ARCO 2023 is held until next Sunday, surrounded by expectation and with a large influx of public, with the presence of 218 galleries, 66 percent foreign, and with the Mediterranean and its common culture as the main theme.
