Commenting on the results of today’s sale, Tessa Kostrzewa, Deputy Director of European Paintings at Sotheby’s London, and Filip Marco, Head of Sotheby’s Prague Office, said: “Today’s sale brought a landmark auction of Czech art to an international audience and succeeded brilliantly. Norman and Suzanne Hascoe assembled one of the most important private collections of Czech modernist art in existence and the market has responded with extraordinary enthusiasm. Today’s sale will be remembered for many years to come, with records set for many of the most important Czech artists of the 20th century.”

Headlining the auction was František Kupkaʹs oil on canvas Movement. This museum quality painting witnessed intense competition from a number of buyers in the saleroom and on the telephone banks. Setting a new record for the artist at auction, the work finally sold to a round of applause to an anonymous buyer on the telephone for £1,497,250 ($2,431,534 / 40,900,488 CZK), doubling its pre‐sale high estimate (est. £500,000‐700,000). Painted between 1913 and 1919, the work is one of the finest examples of Kupka’s paintings from this key period in his artistic career, when his interest in cosmology and the interplay between the pictorial arts and music was at its strongest. The price more than doubled the previous record for the artist at auction. Today’s sale offered 20 works by Kupka, and five of these featured in the top 10 prices in the auction. The sale brought five of the six highest prices for Kupka at auction, including the top two.

Emil Filla’s Sculptress in the Studio soared above its pre‐sale estimate of £100,000‐150,000, to sell for £623,650 / $1,012,808 / 17,036,293 CZK. Another top‐selling lot of today’s sale was Josef Čapek’s double‐sided work Sailor and Phantomas, painted between 1917 and 1920, which sold for £565,250 / $917,966 / 15,440,976 CZK (estimate: £150,000‐200,000). The price achieved established a record for the artist at auction.