Sales at Polish art auctions reached their highest ever level of 380 million zloty (€84 million) in 2020, up 29% from a year earlier. Experts believe that the pandemic may have helped accelerate longer-term growth in the market.
Last year also saw a record high price for a single painting in Poland, 7.3 million zloty, as well as the highest ever fee, 7 million zloty, for an Old Master’s piece.
According to an annual round-up by Artinfo.pl, an industry website, 21,942 pieces of art were auctioned off in total last year, marking a rise from 16,149 in 2019. The number of auctions has also been growing, from 55 in 2000, to 148 in 2010 and now to the highest ever number, 467, in 2020.
Sources: Desa Unicum, Artinfo.pl
The pandemic may have further spurred this growth. “This year, the usually slower holiday season turned out to be as intense as the other months,” said Rafał Kamecki of Artinfo. “One reason could be customers forgoing travel plans, as well as additional free time.”
Moreover, by moving sales online, auction houses have widened their audience beyond traditional bidders. For example, book auctions have seen customer registrations more than double.
“A new generation of customers has entered the art market. Young people buy everything online. They don’t run around galleries,” said Andrzej Koźmiński, a scholar and art collector quoted by Rzeczpospolita.
Auctioneers have also ramped up their online marketing. “In 2019, the numismatic [coin collecting] industry began to intensively promote valuable objects on YouTube,” said Damian Marciniak, an antique seller. “The impact of these films is enormous.”
“Numismatics popularises the history of Poland. We sold an Order of Virtuti Militari from 1792 for a record 270,000 zloty. There was huge interest in the history of the order itself,” Marciniak told Rzeczpospolita.
Moreover, with interest rates reaching historical lows, making depositing cash with banks less enticing, Professor Koźmiński adds that “there is the view that financial surpluses are best stored in paintings”.
Poland’s market remains largely in the hands of three auction houses, which together generated 80% of sales value in 2020: Desa Unicum (51.6%), Polswiss Art (18.3%) and Agra-Art (9.3%).
Art auctioned in Poland is also becoming pricier. This year 228 new pieces entered Artinfo.pl’s ranking of the thousand highest valued pieces to be sold in Poland since 1989.
The most expensive artwork sold last year was Wojciech Fangor’s M 22 (pictured at the top of this article) which went for 7.32 million zloty, including the auction fee. That is the most that any individual painting has ever been sold for in Poland.
The highest price paid in the Old Masters category was for the Portrait of Professor Karol Gilewski, M.D. painted by Jan Matejko in 1872, which reached 6.96 million zloty. The sale also marked a new record for this segment.
However, the all-time record for any works of art still belongs to Caminando, a set of 20 statues by Magdalena Abakanowicz sold in October 2019 for over 8 million zloty. The statues previously belonged to the late actor and comedian Robin Williams and his wife Marsha, but in 2018 they were sold off to a private collector, who auctioned them in Warsaw in 2019.
Main image credit: Desa Unicum/Facebook
Maria Wilczek is deputy editor of Notes from Poland. She is a regular writer for The Times, The Economist and Al Jazeera English, and has also featured in Foreign Policy, Politico Europe, The Spectator and Gazeta Wyborcza.
