CoBrA on the crest of a wave

  The price of paintings by artists belonging to the Cobra movement has risen by 50% in the last six months in what clearly amounts to a significant revaluation of their work.
The appreciable dip in unsold lots from 35.2% to 31.1% in January-May underlines the current enthusiasm for these artists. Price-rises of this order are often accompanied by new top prices.
By way of illustration, the price of the group’s leader Asger JORN‘s has just shot up. His painting In the beginning was the Image passed the USD1 million dollar mark with a hammer price of over twice the low estimate. This recent top price of USD1.9 million in New York on 14 May at Christie’s came soon after another exceptional price paid at auction for a work by a Cobra artist: a large-scale Karel APPEL canvas which sold for USD680,000. Both pieces were outstanding and came from the Lars Ulrich collection.
These events are likely to have implications for the already rising prices of other members of the group. Art lovers will be able to view top quality works at Sotheby’s in London on 26 June and at Christie’s the next day. Christie’s will have three large format paintings by Asger JORN on auction. Public auction houses in Scandinavia such as Stockholm’s Auktionsverk or Bruun Rasmussen are packed with less expensive works. Investors with smaller budgets might consider some of the many lithographs that come up for sale throughout the year. Price index for
the CoBrA group paintings’
base 100 in june 1997