The Evening Standard the Meteoric Rise of African Art

Driven by a growing market of ethnic investors, African art is commanding increasingly high prices at the world's auction houses. Will McBain investigates this new frontier in a globe previously dominated past investors from established economies.

Inorth what's likely to be remembered as a stiff year for African art, the Ghanaian Pavilion shook upward the Venice Art Biennale, crowds packed London's contemporary African art fair, one:54, and Lagos closed a vibrant season with the acclaimed Fine art 10, West Africa's outset international fair.

For the second successive yr, a painting by the late Ben Enwonwu, widely considered the father of Nigerian modernism, fetched the equivalent of over a million dollars at auction, with his portrait Christine selling for £ane.1m ($1.4m) at Sotheby'south, London. In 2018, after decades spent furnishing the wall of a north London flat, Enwonwu's masterpiece Tutu was auctioned at Bonhams for £one.2m, a figure manner beyond its pre-sale estimate of £300,000.

"I recollect we're finally seeing some recognition for artists from the continent that were previously overlooked past the international art globe," says Hannah O'Leary, caput of modern and contemporary African fine art at Sotheby'due south. "I think we should exist set up for paintings from Africa making six, seven figures as standard, whereas 12 months agone or 24 months ago, those prices were actually very exceptional. I call back that's a really heady breakthrough – to bring the market away from being low to middle market, from being very affordable, to right upwards in line with the regional markets in the rest of the world."

Since Sotheby's successful countdown £2.26m sale of modern and contemporary African fine art in May 2017, its auction houses have introduced two auctions per year, with sales in 2022 coming in at £5.1m, according to auction analysis by the ArtTactic website.

The sales of Enwonwu's pieces have acted as a bellwether for the marketplace, highlighting a vigorous arts scene in Africa that had previously been viewed as provincial by the wider international community.

"Once you start understanding these artists, their life, their piece of work, the circumstances in which they were working under, you lot cannot help but realise that these were important artists of the 20th century," says O'Leary.

S African Gerard Sekoto's Cyclists in Sophiatown, which visualises the economic hardship faced by black South Africans in pre-Apartheid Johannesburg, was sold at Sotheby's for £362,500 in October, the second highest auction of an African slice in 2019.

Noting the meteoric ascension in mod and gimmicky fine art from Africa, collectors are increasingly aware of the investment value of works. An internet-driven marketplace has transformed expectations and enabled the works of established names and up-and-coming artists to be disseminated and discussed. A burgeoning collector class, bolstered by bankers and industrialists from Africa's biggest economy, Nigeria, and from the rapidly growing economies of Ghana and Senegal, are pushing the marketplace further.

Photographers – epitomised by Ivorian Joana Choumali, the beginning African artist to win the prestigious Prix Pictet photography contest in November – and sculptors and painters, have helped shift conceptions about the value of contemporary fine art.

Nigerian and Due south African investment funds are acquiring works and betting on ascension demand in the decades to come. An increasing number of loftier net worth individuals located in Nigeria – the country with the fasting growing number of individuals with a cyberspace worth of $1m to $30m in the globe co-ordinate to Wealth-X's Loftier Net Worth Handbook 2019 – are eyeing up investments in painting or sculpture at auctions in London, New York or Due south Africa. In 2017, 90% of the value and 64% of the volume of the sales at African Art auctions at Bonhams came from works by Nigerian artists, according to the Nigerian Art Market Report.

Other African collectors are investing equally a style to connect with their culture. Over 70% of buyers at Bonhams' contempo designated auctions were African, while Enwonwu's Tutu was purchased by a Nigerian and is reportedly back in the West African nation.

Co-ordinate to Giles Peppiatt, manager of modern and contemporary African art at Bonhams, information technology's a meaning change from where the market was 10 years ago, when the auction house decided to aggrandize and enter into the wider sub-Saharan market place outside of South Africa but didn't have a unmarried list of buyers to send their Africa catalogue to.

"Information technology took well-nigh 2 years for the marketplace to sympathize what we were doing, and it took about three or four years for the collectors and museums to sympathise and say that 'aye, this is a market that nosotros should be taking part in'. Certainly the major museums are now very active because they all recollect that this is a marketplace of the future, and they plain want to acquire works while the prices are nevertheless relatively minor for them," Peppitt says.

The S African market remains firmly established; the Investec Cape Town Fine art Fair is one of Africa's largest, and FNB Art Joburg draws pregnant crowds. An established gallery system puts the nation at the centre of the art marketplace on the continent.

In Senegal, the opening of the huge Museum of Black Civilisations in Dakar, in late 2018, is driving renewed involvement in fine art. In Ghana, the market place is benefiting from having i of Africa's all-time art schools located in the town of Kumasi and a government actively invested in art promotion.

"The authorities and leadership there are realising that art can be a coin spinner through tourism, and through the soft ability you can apply with art," says Peppiatt.

Powering the scene in Accra is Gallery 1957 – named subsequently the year Republic of ghana won independence. Director Victoria Alice Cooke says the market has been boosted past the Year of Render, Ghana 2019, a authorities-sponsored plan of events marking the 400th ceremony of the inflow of the get-go slaves in Jamestown, Virginia, which has precipitated a significant increase in visitors to the country.

"This has increasingly helped put Ghana on the map, with so much more than footfall, and then much more talk of what'due south going on hither. It's generated a lot of hype at the moment with social media showing the artists talent to a wider audience."

New frontier

With global art sales reaching an estimated $67.4bn in 2018, co-ordinate to figures from a study by Art Basel and UBS Bank, the growth of an African market represents a new frontier for an industry previously dominated by established economies.

Nevertheless, like other luxury sectors, the African marketplace remains vulnerable to the vagaries of economic growth. International African sales in the starting time half of 2019 by Christie'south, Sotheby'southward, Philips, Bonhams, Piasa, Strauss and ArtHouse Nigeria generated a full of $25.3m, 11.3% less than in the kickoff one-half of 2018, co-ordinate to ArtTactic.

Yet the long-term trends remain strong, co-ordinate to experts.

"Rome was never built in a day," says Giles Peppiatt, "but one has to await at how far the marketplace has come from ten years agone, when there was nothing. And at present nosotros have this very strong, large market place, that's one of the fastest growing in the art world, then you accept to exist pretty optimistic on the whole."

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Source: https://african.business/2020/01/economy/art-market-takes-off-as-investors-pile-in/

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