Buyers defy economy at Sotheby's NY art auction

By Michelle Nichols

NEW YORK (Reuters) - American art collectors defied a sinking economy on Wednesday, making up nearly 70 percent of buyers at a Sotheby's New York sale that saw records smashed for work by artists Edvard Munch and Fernand Leger.

American buyers made up 67 percent of buyers at the Sotheby's Impressionist and modern art auction, double the number of U.S. buyers who were successful as Christie's rival sale on Tuesday.

"It shows any attempt to draw a facile relationship between what's happening in the financial markets and what's happening in the art auction market is irrelevant," said Simon Shaw, head of Sotheby's Impressionist and modern art department.

"While stock markets are turbulent. For every bidder that we lose because their portfolio has gone down we typically gain another who doesn't see an interesting return -- interest rates are pretty hopeless, stock markets not looking very exciting -- so we pick up new people like that," he added.

But he said the state of the U.S. economy had certainly influenced the type of sale Sotheby's put together.

"I would be lying if is said we didn't feel a responsibility to produce a small, tightly edited carefully curated sale. We certainly did," Shaw said. "We didn't feel that this was a moment to be having long flabby sales with overpriced material."

The sale made a total of $233.3 million, meeting Sotheby's estimates, with an average lot value of $5.7 million, up from $3.5 million six months ago, the auction house said.

Leger's "Etude pour La Femm en Bleu" (1912-13) sold for $39.2 million, almost double the previous $22.4 million record, while Munch's "Girls on a Bridge" (1902) fetched $30.8 million, nearly triple the former record for the artist's work.

"In both cases these were works that in terms of their quality and their rarity were far more significant than any Leger or Munch we have seen on the market in recent times," Shaw said.

The surprise of the evening came when Henri Matisse's "Le Geranium" sparked frenzied bidding and sold for nearly triple the Sotheby's high estimate of $3.5 million, prompting a round of applause from the audience.

"What was proven tonight was the quality of the works transcend that other (economic) stuff," he said.

Sotheby's Impressionist and modern art sale fell short in November, sending its share price tumbling. It bounced back with a spectacular contemporary sale the following week as well as strong results in London in February. Fourth-quarter profit last year rose nearly 50 percent.

The Impressionist and modern art sales by the archrivals of high-stakes art auctions kicked off a fortnight of sales during which further records could be set and the likely total is expected to be more than $1 billion.

The top-priced lot is Bacon's "Triptych, 1976," which is expected to command in the neighborhood of $70 million at Sotheby's. Christie's has its own Bacon Triptych, "Three Studies for Self-Portrait," bearing a pre-sale estimate of more than $30 million.

(Editing by Todd Eastham)