14.03.2006  Picasso, Warhol Top List of 2005`s Actively Traded Artists

• By Linda Sandler March 14 (Bloomberg) -- Pablo Picasso, who painted the world`s most expensive picture, held his place as 2005`s most actively traded artist, and Andy Warhol bumped Claude Monet from No. 2, said Artprice.com, a French data service. Canaletto`s Venetian views propelled him to fourth place from 239th. Picasso collectors raised $153.2 million last year from 1,409 works sold at auction, Artprice said. Owners of Warhols realized $86.7 million from 660 images, while 22 Monets took $61.5 million and 18 Canalettos $55.5 million, it said. Auction volumes are a guide to which works are becoming more liquid or expensive and which may be harder to buy and sell over time. Three Chinese painters, including Zao Wou-Ki, born in 1921, jumped onto Artprice`s top 50 as Christie`s International and Sotheby`s Holdings Inc. expanded Asian auctions. Henri Matisse fell to 13th from sixth as his best bright-patterned works became scarcer. Artprice published its ranking of artists by auction volume on its Web site as part of a survey of market trends in 2005. Fine-art auctions last year raised $4.2 billion, an increase of 15 percent from 2004, as the hammer came down on 477 lots priced at $1 million or more. Artprice excludes cars, furniture and collectibles that make up $2 billion of auction sales. About a third of fine-art lots failed to sell in 2005, including Monet`s ``Waterloo Bridge,`` valued at as much as $6 million. New York, where the billionaire Eli Broad paid $23.8 million for David Smith`s ``Cubi XXVIII`` sculpture at Sotheby`s in November, was expensive in 2005. Values swelled 35 percent in the biggest market. Art prices in London increased 4.8 percent. New York Gains The U.S. was catching up with an earlier surge in the No.2 market, Artprice said. From 2002 to 2004, London auction prices shot up 87 percent, dwarfing New York`s gains of 28 percent. Prices in Paris, the No. 3 market, were little changed last year. For Hong Kong, which has overtaken Germany to become the fourth-largest market, Artprice said there`s insufficient monthly data to provide comparable numbers. However, China`s economic boom propelled indexes of the country`s contemporary artists and old masters about 80 percent higher at auctions worldwide, it said. Fine-art auction prices worldwide last year rose 10 percent, slowing from a 19 percent run-up in 2004. The hottest art movement in 2005 was Dada, an early-20th century group whose best-known work is Marcel Duchamp`s urinal, ``Fountain.`` An Artprice index of Dada works rose 137 percent. Italian futurists including Gino Severini added 93 percent. London Bombings New York took a 44 percent share of fine-art auctions. London`s auction totals swelled by one fifth, giving the U.K. capital 28 percent of the pie. A Canaletto painting of Venice took $32.6 million in a packed Sotheby`s London auction room after a day of bombings on July 7, making the 18th-century Italian artist the most expensive of the year. Hong Kong, which contributed more of Christie`s 2005 auction totals than Paris, had a 3.7 percent market share, while Paris took 6.6 percent. Publicly traded Artprice has headquarters in Saint-Romain- au-Mont-d`Or, France. *T Here are Artprice`s 10 most actively traded artists: Pablo Picasso Andy Warhol Claude Monet Canaletto Mark Rothko Marc Chagall Willem de Kooning Fernand Leger Jean-Michel Basquiat Lucian Freud *T