An auction at the DESA Unicum auction house has set a record in the history of the Polish art market. Almost 200 works from the Grażyna Kulczyk collection were sold for PLN 37.4 million. The most expensive work sold was Tadeusz Kantor’s 1988 painting ‘One night the Infanta Valezquez entered my room’. The painting was auctioned for more than PLN 5 million.

Divided into 5 thematic sections, the auctions achieved turnover in the following order: Avant-garde – 16.8 million, Classics. Tadeusz Kantor – 16.3 million, Passion. Markowski. Chlanda. Szewczyk – 1.6 million, Magnification – 1.3 million, Discoveries – 1.4 million.

The auctions held 14 records for the most expensive works of artists sold, including Teresa Tyszkiewicz, Teresa Murak, Jerzy Kujawski, Ernst Benkert, Edwin Mieczkowski, Jerzy Ryszard Zieliński, Bronisław Kierzkowski, Eugeniusz Markowski or Marek Chlanda.

The monographic auction devoted to Tadeusz Kantor was the first auction on the Polish market to feature the highest average price of a work in the history of the Polish market – PLN 1 million – and also saw the highest bid placed over the Internet – PLN 4 million.

Many of Kantor’s works were purchased for amounts above the upper estimates, such as ‘Monsieur Exotique’ – PLN 3,840,000 or the work on paper ‘Beastia domestica’ – sold for PLN 36,000. The price for Roman Opałka’s ‘Nude with Orange’ exceeded the limit of the estimated price tenfold – the work was eventually sold for almost PLN 650 000.

Listed as one of the Top 200 Collectors by the prestigious Artnews magazine for many years, Grażyna Kulczyk continues to develop her collection and, in line with her announcement, will now devote herself primarily to promoting both contemporary and historical female artists. The collector is working on new art initiatives at the Susch museum in Switzerland, which she opened in 2019.

Arkadiusz Slomczynski