Italy’s art market, the world’s sixth-largest behind Switzerland, posted 40,000 transactions and total sales of $212M in 2021, according to a recent Artprice report.
Italy’s art market has fully recovered from the effects of the Covid pandemic. Works by its leading artists—Lucio Fontana, Giorgio Morandi, Mario Schifano, Alighiero Boetti, Gino Severini and Alberto Burri—have regained their ranks at national auctions. Values rose 55% for Severini and 404% for Fontana, but those figures pale in comparison to the prices for Alighiero Boetti (1940-1994) and Paolo Scheggi (1940-1971), which skyrocketed by 1,231% and 3,130%, respectively. In 2021, a 1982 embroidery on canvas by Boetti fetched $4.6M at Christie’s New York, a new record for the artist.
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