FAB Market Insights

An important part of our role as art advisors and brokers is to advise our clients on selling single artworks or their complete collection. There are many reasons collectors want to sell certain pieces – a change of taste, moving home, taking advantage of market conditions, or the dreaded death and divorce – and most owners find the selling process fraught with difficulty and time consuming. Our team at Fine Art Brokers advises clients on works at all values, from $10,000 to $20 million, we outline all the appropriate options and discuss values, and we then either negotiate sales ourselves or arrange consignments to trusted colleagues and auction houses. We also handle all logistics, admin and insurance.

When entrusting your artworks for sale, clearly confidence in the honesty and market knowledge and experience of your advisor is crucial. Your broker needs to have good contacts with private clients, relevant dealers, and also auction specialists. And to be a good negotiator. It is also important to have a carefully worded consignment agreement which covers your interests. Fine Art Brokers can provide many genuine testimonials and references from collectors for whom we have sold art.

How Fine Art Brokers can help

Three collections we are currently working with illustrate different ways we are selling art for collectors.

A successful interior designer has sold her New York apartment and has asked us to sell certain pieces from her fabulous art collection which won’t suit her other homes. We had many discussions about value, and after agreement we have been able to sell two pieces quickly and at good prices (in the $100,000 to $300,000 range), and we are now offering the other works. This client appreciates our discreet sales approach and management of every aspect of the sale, including arranging photography and professional art handling.

Another current project began when a Floridian living in Spain contacted us after he had inherited a large art collection from his father. Our client was candid about his ignorance of the art market and how to sell the collection well. We flew to review the artworks in person and submitted a detailed report with photographs to the new owner. We explained that the collection contained many valuable pieces but also works worth less than $10,000. After arranging insurance and a consignment agreement, we coordinated with our trusted art handlers to transport the works to New York, where they were professionally photographed, catalogued, and prepared for sale. Within a month we have been able to sell works by Joan Miró, Fernando Botero, and Alexander Calder – and paid our client of course. We will be slowly offering other significant works ourselves, and also consigning lesser works to various auctions.

We are also acting currently for an Asian client with an extraordinary collection of international contemporary art worth over $10 million, including works by Kusama, Murakami and KAWS. As proof of our commitment, we flew at our expense to view certain works and paid for their export to New York – with some of our costs to be deducted from sale proceeds. We have sold four works to date.

We’re currently working with a prominent art collector in Florida, who has entrusted us to sell select pieces from his collection, including works by two significant artists: Michelangelo Pistoletto and Sherrie Levine.

Some examples of how we have previously advised and negotiated for collectors and estates:

• Negotiating the auction and guarantee of a Matisse painting at $ 21.8 million, which we had helped our client purchase 6 years before for $7.5 million.

  

• Arranging the sale of an entire collection of Post-War American art, inherited by two sisters in San Francisco, which included works by Kenneth Noland and Frank Stella.

  

• Managing the sale of a large collection of American art taken against a bad debt by a corporate client. The collection included paintings by Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Agnes Martin, and most importantly a Mark Rothko. We sold some pieces privately, and some through auction.

  

• After one of our major clients passed away, we helped the estate sell paintings by Degas, Renoir and Modigliani. We sold the Degas below to The Museum of Western Art in Tokyo.