Art splurge: $1m Olsen

Financial Review (page 26, Saleroom) 19th October 2006

Katrina Strickland

Melbourne property developers Lustig & Moar appear intent on paying record prices for the paintings they want in their new contemporary art collection. After paying $2.04 million last month for Brett Whiteley’s Frangipani and Hummingbird: Japanese Summer, setting a new record for the sale of a Whiteley at auction, L&M has paid $1.09 million for John Olsen’s 1969 painting Love in the Kitchen, a record for the sale of a work by a living Australian artist.

This was nearly double Olsen’s previous auction record and well above the $400,000 to $600,000 estimate put on the painting by Paul Sumner, whose Mossgreen Auctions sold the work in Tasmania on Sunday as part of the collection of local dealer Nevin Hurst. Former Metro 5 Gallery director Brian Kino bid on behalf of L&M. The vendors – who included Hurst and fellow dealers Lauraine Diggins and Christopher Day – paid $486,000 for the work in June 2003.

The Hurst collection fetched $1.8 million with the total rising to $1.9 million including post-auction sales.

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