London auction house Christie's is to auction the Miró works after all, having pulled the sale earlier this month due to legal problems in Portugal as to whether the works could legally be sold or not.
Christie's said on Thursday that the sale of 85 works by Spanish artist Joan Miró will be rescheduled for June but declined to give more details on the date, or the decision to finally sell the paintings.
The works were owned by BPN bank, a deeply corrupt financial business that was conveniently nationalised with Troika money in 2008. PM Pedro Passos Coelho has been insistent that the works are sold off to reduce the bank’s debt to the state.
The Socialist opposition of course disagreed, as did the arts community which argued that the works could enrich the cultural heritage of the country is they were removed from a bank vault and put on public display.
The Lisbon Administrative Court which initially decided to suspend the sale of the works is still studying the latest appeal but at a hearing in parliament yesterday, the president of the public company that 'owns' the works and is managing the sale, Francisco Nogueira Leite, confirmed that the art would return to Portugal at the end of the month "without cost to the taxpayer" and that the auction house has pencilled in a new date for the sale, back in London.
The paintings and sculptures have an estimated value of €36.4 million, many tens of millions lower than pre-crisis valuations, but one unforeseen result of the worldwide media coverage may be that the art realises a higher price then expected.
