Value of the global art market hits record €51bn in 2014

When Pablo Picasso's "Women of Algiers (Version O)" fetched $179.4m at Christie's on Monday it became the most expensive artwork to be sold at auction.

In the same sale, Alberto Giacometti's life-sized sculpture "Pointing Man" sold for $141.3m making it the most expensive sculpture sold at auction.

These sales eclipsed the previous record holders: "Three Studies of Lucian Freud", a triptych which sold for $142.4m at Christie's in November 2013, and Giacometti's "Walking Man I", a sculpture that sold for $106.5m in 2010.

This surge in prices for art under the hammer is reflective of a broader trend in the market.

The art market is known to be opaque, with many sales conducted in private. But the total value of the global art market surpassed €51bn in 2014, a 7 per cent increase on the previous year and its highest ever level, according to estimates in the 2015 Art Market Report published by the European Fine Art Foundation. Lots sold for more than €1m accounted for 48 per cent of the value of the fine art market.

The volume of sales also rose 6 per cent in 2014, with 39m works sold. This, however, was less than the peak reached in 2007. About 1,530 lots worth more than €1m were sold at auction, a rise of more than 16 per cent on 2013.

The 2014 distribution of sales by value in the global art market was dominated by three centres - the US, China and the UK. China accounted for less than 5 per cent of the market in 2006, but had risen to 22 per cent by 2014. The Chinese art market grew substantially in 2009-11 at a time when other markets were weak, but growth has been much more subdued since then.

Analysis of the fine art auction market sales by volume shows that the US and China have the largest share in 2014, with France once again seeing a higher volume of lots sold than the UK. In China, Chinese painting and calligraphy make up more than half of the auctions market by value. Globally, only 8 per cent of artists whose works were sold at auction reached prices above €50,000, according to the European Fine Art Foundation.

Sales of post-second world war and contemporary art make up the largest sector of the market, representing 48 per cent of all fine art sales by value in 2014.

Despite the clamour to invest in art, most dealers' inventories tend to be very slow moving - only 3 per cent of dealers reported that they sold works within an average of less than one month.

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