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Thursday, December 13, 2012

Buhl Collection Evening Auction Soars Over High Estimate



Tonight at Sotheby’s New York the Evening Sale of A Show Of Hands: Photographs From The Collection of Henry Buhl totaled $10,368,688, comfortably beating the high estimate for the session of $9 million with 79% of lots sold. The Buhl Collection, one of the world’s most significant privately owned photograph collections, was made up of images exploring the theme of the human hand and had been put together by the visionary philanthropist and collector Henry M. Buhl. The majority of the proceeds will benefit The Buhl Foundation. The sale continues tomorrow at 10am.



The auction was led by Lonely Metropolitan by Herbert Bayer and Fotogramm by László Moholy-Nagy, each of which sold for $1,482,500. These two results, which now tie as the third highest price for a classic photograph at auction, mean that Sotheby’s has sold eight of the top ten and all of the top six classic photographs at auction. Other highlights included Rayograph with Hand, Lens, and Egg by Man Ray which fetched $866,500, well over the $250/350,000 estimate and Alfred Stieglitz’s Hands and Thimble which sold for $770,500. Artists’ Records were set for Herbert Bayer, El Lissitzky, Lee Miller, Peter Hujar, and Helen Levitt, and for Photographs by Man Ray and Gabriel Orozco.








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