Phillips auction house (Russian-owned) donates €7m to Ukrainian Red Cross

An important gesture by the British (but Russian-owned) auction house Phillips, which has decided to donate the proceeds from its March 3 auction to the Ukrainian Red Cross: it is 100 percent of premium buyers and commissions, which will thus be entirely donated to humanitarian operations in the theater of conflict. The sum amounts to 5.8 million pounds (compared to 30 million raised from sales), or just over 7 million euros, in an auction that saw works such as David Hockney’s Self-Portrait on the Terrace (5.8 million euros), Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity Nets (1.5 million euros), Claude Monet’s Le Golfe Juan (1.4 million euros), Daniel Buren’s Peinture aux formes variables (1 million euros), and Anselm Kiefer’s Freia’s Garden (1 million euros) sold.

“The Ukrainian Red Cross Society,” said Stephen Brooks, CEO of Phillips, “is doing incredible work to support and protect people in the region, and it is our hope that the £5.8 million in premium buyers and commissions from our evening sale will help this extraordinary charity as they continue their life-saving mission.”

The sale total of £30 million," says Olivia Thornton, head of 20th century and contemporary art for Europe, “falls firmly within the pre-sale estimate, with sales of 95 percent of lots and 91 percent of value. Tonight’s sale was truly international, with bidders from 40 countries participating, including a significant effort from across Asia. Iconic and blue-chip artists shared the stage with a carefully curated selection of cutting-edge contemporary names. The sale opened with spirited bidding for the auction debut of Lauren Quin and Doron Langberg, and we continued by achieving a new world record for Issy Wood. British art triumphed, with seminal works by David Hockney, Cecily Brown, and Hurvin Anderson. It was exciting to open the week with the unveiling in London of our next Basquiat masterpiece from the collection of Yusaku Maezawa, which is expected to realize about $70 million when it is offered in New York in the spring.”

Phillips’ gesture is all the more important because the auction house’s ownership is Russian: in fact, the company is owned by Mercury Group, founded in 1993 by luxury entrepreneurs Leonid Fridlyand Leonid Strunin, who acquired the auction house in 2008. In the early days of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict Phillips had received several pressures (and some went so far as to call for a boycott of sales) that the house took a stand with a statement in which CEO Brooks declared that “we unequivocally condemn the invasion of Ukraine. Together with the rest of the art world, we are shocked and saddened by the tragic events taking place in the region. We call for an immediate cessation of all hostilities in the strongest possible terms.”

Haydon Perrior photo: Thomas De Cruz Media

Phillips auction house (Russian-owned) donates €7m to Ukrainian Red Cross

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