Christie’s sales in 2021 totaled $ 7.1 billion

The auction house Christie’s has released a report saying it sold art and other collectibles totaling $7.1 billion in 2021, an increase of 54 percent from a year earlier and 22 percent from 2019, the year before the pandemic.

According to the auction house’s report, these are the highest sales in five years. The industry’s recovery and a surge in prices for individual works of art have contributed to this performance.

This year the auction house Christie’s has set several records, in particular the highest selling price for artworks. Picasso’s “Woman Sitting by the Window” sold for $103.4 million and was the only piece in 2021 sold for more than $100 million, while a painting by the American neo-expressionist Jean-Michel Basquiat “In This Case” sold for a record $93.1 million.

In addition, in the current year Christie’s has sold more than 100 works of digital art (NFT, non-mutually exchangeable tokens) for a total of about $ 150 million. In the auction house noted that 75% of buyers who buy works of digital art, participate in auctions for the first time, and their average age is 42 years.

Earlier on the auction houses Sotheby `s and Phillips reported record sales for the results of the current year. At Sotheby’s sold works of art for $ 7.3 billion, at Phillips – $ 1.2 billion.