Despite the pandemic, auction sales set to exceed 2019 results: In total, 6 artworks are coming up at Sotheby’s, Christie’s and Phillips over the coming weeks. Auction sales after the first 10 months of 2020 are set to exceed that of full year 2019, by 7% based on the low pre-sale estimate, and places Damien Hirst among the few artists that is bucking the negative trend in the current market.

The market turns its attention to early works by Damien Hirst:  We have started to see increasing demand for works from his early period (1990s). Early this month, a Visual Candy painting Happy [dappy] (1993) sold for a $1,050,000 hammer price against the pre-sale estimate of $250,000 to $350,000. Three out of the Top 10 works sold in the period 2015 to October 2020 has been established this year. The renewed interest is coinciding with the current exhibition End of a Century at Hirst’s Newport Street Gallery, an exhibition focusing on his early works spanning Hirst’s formative years as a student in the 1980s to becoming one of Britain’s leading contemporary artists during the 1990s. There will be no works from the 1990s offered at auction this month, all the art works will be from the 2005-2010 period.