“ART is PLEASURE and Generally APPRECIATES in VALUE” many a rich people heard and quoted saying.
Greek Art appeared as an entity on the scene of auction and investment in Athens some twenty years ago. After a few years of excellent upward prices achieved at a local auction, the major auction houses of the world, Christies, since 1992, and then Sotheby’s and Bonham’s since 2000, took the market over and turned it into one of the best investment sections of the international art market. Annual sales of just under one million pounds have become routine sales of fifteen to twenty-five million pounds in the last three years. Sotheby’s report increased sales by volume and value of over 1000% since 2001. We estimate this market to be closer to thirty million pounds turnover by 2015.
The market never looked back even during very testing times such as the latest financial crisis. The latest stats in our possession point to prices of the same works or similar to appreciation of between 300% and 1000% in the last eight years by individual works and artists. The whole Greek market does seem to point out a similar fact. The market is expanding, it is attracting serious financial institutions and routinely the Greek sales in London are achieving selling rates of around 80% . That is a record in itself.
The sceptics about art investments have been quiet of late because art, even though it lost some ground due to the credit crunch, it maintained its robustness and level of prices in comparison to stocks and houses. The Greek Art Market not only maintained its price levels but the recent May auctions by Sotheby’s and Bonham’s in London underlined the ascending trend in prices achieved. The autumn sales verified the same trend and facts. The upward price trends, the good health and continued investment in the Greek art make it an absolute necessity to invest in Greek Art whether one is a collector, investor or art lover byuing for pleasure.
Why is that?
As Art Price index reports the art market contracted by about 30% during the last fifteen months. However it rebounded with a nearly 5% upward trend in the first two quarters of this year. That was the analysis pointing to all sections of the market. Unfortunately, that was not maintained in the autumn.
Furthermore and of greater importance to investors and collectors of Greek Art, our stats point to a general drop in prices to the tune of 10% over the last two sessions of sales by lot, November 2008 and May 2009 months, whereas the earlier stats indicated an improvement of 40% in the six months from November 2007 to May 2008. The market in general, we estimate to have expanded by about 25% in the last two years, thus outperforming the rest of the art market considerably.
