The art market has reached a billion turnover in 25 years

Prague - One of the areas that re-emerged in free Czechoslovakia after 1989, after a long interruption of continuity, is the art market. Its beginnings are not precisely documented anywhere; what is certain is that within a quarter of a century of a free market, the turnover of Czech auctions has climbed to nearly one billion crowns. The first official auction of fine arts and antiques in Prague took place as early as October 1989, and more than a business opportunity, it was a form of resistance against the regime.
    "If something was traded before 1989, paintings were at the very bottom; jewelry, watches, porcelain, furniture were sold instead..." says Martin Kodl, the owner of the Kodl Gallery auction house, who organized the first auction in Prague since 1957, 25 years ago. He was assisted at the time by friends and especially his father, a continuation of the family tradition of art collectors that dates back to the 19th century. "We had more courage than sense," he says of the auction that his firm organized as the trading cooperative Antikva Nova Praga.
    The auction met with enormous success. "Representatives of the First Republic collecting scene gathered there, dressed in suits they hadn't worn in years, and after each sale, they stood and applauded. It wasn't applause for the achieved sale; at that time, items sold for hundreds of crowns; it was applause for the fact that a group of young people did something that didn't fit into the context of socialist rules," said Kodl, whose auction house now leads the domestic auction market in terms of turnover. The auction took place at Žofín, a few hundred meters from where, three weeks later, the Velvet Revolution began.
    The development of the art market until 1989 is not documented, nor is it in the 1990s. Basic aspects are described in a study "Art Market" from 2010 by Jan Skřivánek, editor-in-chief of the magazine Art&Antiques. He reminds us that in socialism, the art market was partially pushed into illegality. Living authors had to sell in shops of the Czech Fund for Fine Arts Dílo, and in the case of sales abroad, through the Art Center. The state enterprise Antikva had a monopoly on the trade of antiques. Collectors most often purchased works directly from artists. Trade in older art often bordered on black market activities.
    At the beginning of the 1990s, a number of new exhibition halls, sales galleries, and auction houses were established, and the market's focus was mainly on works from restitutions. "There are many top works of old art and classic modernity for sale, but prices remain relatively low. In the environment of a transforming economy, many other investment opportunities present themselves rather than spending hundreds of thousands on paintings," wrote Skřivánek. He identifies the entry of then-owner of TV Nova Vladimír Železného into the market in 1997 as an important moment.
    Železný started building a collection of Czech modern art and had incomparably higher resources than others. His purchases drove up prices and attracted the attention of other investors. At the turn of the millennium, the most expensive works were auctioned for several million crowns. In 1998, the cubist painting "Still Life with a Lute, Jug, and Fruit" by Fill sold for 2.9 million crowns, a record that stood for two years until June 2000, when the "Goldfish" by the same author was auctioned at Galerie Kodl for 7.3 million. Records held for six years. The company 1. Art Consulting held the first online auction in 2000.
    From 2003 to 2005, the market stagnated - partly due to the exhaustion of restitutions. Revitalization occurred in 2006, when the aforementioned six-year auction record was also surpassed, with a painting by Russian painter Ivan Ivanovich Shishkin breaking it by just 200,000 crowns. Records then came quickly one after another; a month later, the painting "Circus Simonette" by Jindřich Štyrský sold for 8.6 million crowns, half a year later, Josef Čapek's painting "Footbath" sold for 9.3 million, when its starting price was ten times lower.
    The market continued to experience dynamic growth in the following years, despite the economic crisis. Data on sales volumes has been available since 2003. Since 2012, the record for domestic auctions belongs to the painting "Shape of Blue" by František Kupka, which was auctioned for 55.75 million without the auction surcharge. Following "Shape of Blue" in the top ten are works auctioned for between 16 and 22 million crowns.