Booming sales in first auction of East African art

Nairobi (AFP) - Buyers snapped up works for more than $200,000 at east Africa's first commercial art auction, organisers said Wednesday, hailing the success of an event that highlighted the rise of the region's art scene.

With around 90 percent of the 47 works sold, the result of the auction in Kenya's capital Nairobi was beyond expectations, said Danda Jaroljmek of Circle Art, the agency that organised Tuesday's sale.

"It was a real success... I can't believe it," Jaroljmek said, noting that the most expensive piece sold for almost $20,000 (1.7 million Kenya shillings, 14,700 euros), a painting entitled "Celebration" by the late Ugandan artist Geoffrey Mukasa.

The oil on canvas painting, showing a lively party scene of drums and dancing, went for almost double its catalogue price.

Held in a ballroom-sized venue at a five-star Nairobi hotel, the auction was packed to capacity with several hundred excited potential buyers, including scores forced to stand at the back.

"Two or three works were unsold, but many went for way higher (than estimated)", Jaroljmek said, adding that the works sold totalled 18.5 million shillings ($217,000, 160,000 euros).

Kenyan artists predominated in the sale but Ethiopia, Tanzania, Uganda and Sudan were also represented.

More than half of works sold were to local collectors, with many Kenyans using absentee bidders to buy the art. Some pieces went for three or four times their catalogue price.

The auction is the latest sign of a growing interest in east African art, which has until recently taken a back seat to west and southern African works.

'It's great for the artists'

London auction house Bonhams earlier this year sold the work of eight leading Kenyan artists on the eve of its "Africa Now" sale of contemporary African art, meaning that works that would previously have been seen only in Nairobi were shown in London.

Wanyu Brush, a grey dreadlocked artist in his mid-60s, said the auction had "gone well".

Brush, who was born John Kamau, saw his watercolour on paper "Christ in the Manger", the first lot, sold for just over the upper range of its estimate, $2,050 (1,515 euros).

Sane Wadu, who co-founded the Ngecha Artists' Association along with Brush, saw his six-part acrylic on paper "World Trade Centre", painted 25 years ago during a visit to New York, go for 1.3 million shillings ($15,200, 11,250 euros), double the upper end of its catalogue estimate.

"It's great for the artists," Junho Lee, a South Korean businessman who has a collection of more than 400 pieces of African art, told AFP.

Auctioneer Dendy Easton sparked laughter when he occasionally mixed up pounds sterling and Kenyan shillings, in which the works were priced.

He said he had "never seen so many people at once in a room at an auction."

"In England we don't get this," Easton said.

Eria Sane Nsubuga, a Ugandan-born artist, saw his "Christ at Golgotha", an acrylic on canvas representation of a non-European Christ on the cross, sell for 480,000 shillings ($5,600, 4,150 euros), four times the upper end of the range.

The final lot on sale was "Auction", Michael Soi's two-metre (nearly seven foot) long acrylic on canvas, a pop-art style take on an art auction, and featuring a young red-headed auctioneer.

"That was me with hair," quipped Easton.

To the satisfaction of its creator, who has long complained that Kenyans do not buy his work, Soi's "Auction" was bought by a Kenyan lawyer living in London.