A six month overview: African Art auction results, Europe & Africa

The two new reports, African Contemporary and African Modern due to be released next week measure the temperature of the secondary market in 2021 largely by comparing it to the first six months of 2020. With online art trading being more successfully realised through auctions than online art fairs, the conditions in the secondary market have become more important as markers of confidence or revealing of patterns. As such we have been keeping close tabs on what has been transpiring in all the dedicated African auctions that have taken place this year. In these reports we dig into the data of all the auctions that took place between January 2020 and June 2021, of which 45 took place in the various art capitals were African art sells well - Johannesburg, Cape Town, Marrakesh, Casablanca, Lagos, London, Paris and New York. Some of the findings are positive; the value of contemporary and modern African art is increasing.

What follows below are some of the events and records that caught our attention this year.

The secondary market for African art used to kick off in February with two sales in Cape Town intended to tie in with the Investec Cape Town Art Fair. Due to the cancellation of that annual event, it wasn't until March that the veritable season began with four major auctions taking place in; South Africa, Paris and two in London.