AUCTION ZONE

Sandorfi's works have seldom but regularly appeared in auction rooms since 1975. These are mostly paintings of the seventies, with morbid subjects and glacial colors, going in auctions, mainly in Paris. This leads auction-sale amateurs to definitely associate Sandorfi's name with the grimacing self-portraits from his first period. It is thus difficult to speak of a quoted value, as, to 2001, only one painting of the period after 1990 is known to have been offered at an auction (" Saba ", 1992, sold on the 21st of March 2001 in Drouot Montaigne - See picture). It reached an unprecedented price, causing the consternation of experts and speculators who wish to ignore that that price was near to those practised by galleries and art dealers over the last fifteen years for recent works of the artist, and that those prices are constantly rising. " The more expensive my works become, the more time I take to work on them, so as never to make myself rich ", says Sandorfi.

It is thus very rare to see an important work of Sandorfi in an auction room in Paris or elsewhere. The attachment of collectors to his recent works, with a perfectionist workmanship and more sensual subjects, does not encourage their resale. It should be noted that all the important paintings of the period prior to 1990, that is to say more than a hundred of them, are in the possession of a single collector and unfortunately never appear on the market.
In the eighties, some of Sandorfi's works were already sold for more than 15.000 $ in auction sales, but the amounts have remained quite irregular with these former periods. These sales cannot constitute a reference for posterior works, much more polished, which, apart from a few exceptions, have not appeared in auction sales.