Art sparkles at auction

In terms of exhibitions and collections, once you have loosened the knot around the concept of art and the system that gives it value, the route leading to auction houses and the investments that they guarantee offers prolific returns for potential purchasers.Therefore, as seen in examples such as "Superficie Nera" (1963) by Enrico Castellani, in acrylic on a shaped canvas as a sign of dematerialisation and intangibility (sold for €280,900), and "Campbell’s Noodle Soup Box", 1986, synthetic polymer and silk-screen printed ink on canvas by Andy Warhol, a radical example of Pop Art depicting the interdependency between everyday objects and life stages (€122,300), and Günther Uecker, with his nails on canvas fastened to a board in the work "Feldschlacht", 1982, 80x80 cm, price achieved €122,300, which recalls another of his works, a rotating tactile structure fixed by nails to a plate and mounted on a board (graphite on wooden board covered in jute) €253,330, which creates a symbiosis with kinetic art and the changing refractions of light and resulting shadows, the works proposed by Dorotheum, the largest auction house in continental Europe, which closed 2012 with record figures (the best in its history), confirms the preference for modern and contemporary art. High value trends are also seen in Bonhams, which during the week of sales of contemporary art in London, proposed "Head of Lucian Freud" (who passed away in 2011), painted by his friend Frank Auerbach in 1960 (£488,500), precisely while Pandolfini Casa d'Aste (in Palazzo Ramirez Montalvo in Florence) offered Piero Dorazio, "Cercablu", 60x50 cm, oil on canvas, which then sold for €75,000, and Christie’s, in the most expensive auction of all time at $412,3 million, rewarded (with a starting price of 4 million dollars) art lovers with the soft and hazy colours of South California in "Ocean Park # 92" by Richard Diebenkorn, an iconic twentieth-century American painter. This had a decidedly different impact compared to the décollage, 132x135 cm. "Cleopatra Liz", 1963 (sold in auction by Porro & C. Art Consulting for €62,000), in which the highly rated Mimmo Rotella, well within his personal journey between “segno e sogno” along the route of Italian art and design, admirably illustrates the seductive communicative and postmodern power of advertising. Therefore, following in the wake of “legend of the artist”, the multiform versatility of Mario Schifano is intent on searching for the multiple languages of modernity, as seen in the proposal of Sotheby’s Milan in "When I remember Giacomo Balla" enamel, pastel and graphite on packing paper collage applied to canvas (1964), sold for € 112.500. This trend seems to be continuing, thanks to the invitation of Farsetti Arte in Prato, in the timeless space suspended in mid-air of "Piazza d’Italia con Arianna" (Italian Square with Arianne) tempera paint on cardboard, 36.5x51 cm, by Giorgio De Chirico in 1972, sold for €87,150. With the confident expectations of Ariadne before reaching her future spouse Dionysus, we find refuge, metaphorically, from the reality of a today gripped by an all-consuming crisis in the dimension of pensive silence, and discover the lost “thread” in the values of Art, through the sharing of elements of beauty, history and real possibilities of profit in so-called investment pieces.