Olive Oil, Lemon And A Whole Lot Of Cash

by Deidre Woollard (RSS feed)
Nov 20th 2009 at 1:35AM

Much of the time it's easy to predict the top lot in an auction, one of the highest estimated pieces usually claims the honor. But that's not always the case. How's this for an exuberant art market moment, Emil Filla's "Still life with a Lemon, Bottle of Olive Oil, Bell Peppers and a Bowl of Vegetables", 1925, sold for $266,000 against a pre-auction estimate of just $15,000-20,000 on November 17 at an auction at Bonhams & Butterfields in Los Angeles. The auction set a new world record for the artist at auction. The auction was simulcast to the firm's San Francisco auction rooms.

This auction also included the unused Beatles album art created in 1968 by Jim Dine we discussed earlier this week. The collection of five graphite and watercolor works on vellum sold for $51,850 against an estimate of $25,000-35,000.

Tags: art, art auction, ArtAuction, bonhams, emil filla, EmilFilla, jim dine, JimDine