Nobody really knew how much demand there would be for an original Gérald Genta drawing of Audemars Piguet’s Royal Oak when it was put up for auction yesterday.
The answer is becoming clear.
Just a few days into a Sotheby’s online auction that will run for a fortnight, bidding for the drawing and its NFT has reached CHF 65,000.
How high the price will go is anybody’s guess, but these types of auctions typically simmer along until the very last seconds when experts file their final bids.
The Royal Oak drawing is arguably the second most desirable lot in a series of three online auctions selling the Gérald Genta back catalogue.
His design for Patek Philippe’s Nautilus will be in a second auction hosted in Hong Kong that starts on March 10 and is likely to be more expensive than the art for AP.
This got me thinking about how Gérald Genta art might be valued in comparison to another 20th century genius, Pablo Picasso.
Thirty seconds on google unearthed that the cheapest original Picasso painting, Nature Morte, sold at auction for $118,000.
Of course, most Picassos sell for millions, but I will be keeping my eye on whether the Royal Oak or Nautilus art achieve prices that place Mr Genta among the great artists of the past century.
