Gertu Leppik von Wirén

• Art auctions in Estonian art market, between the years 2018-2022
• Tutor: dr Kristina Jõekalda, mag Triin Metsla

This thesis looks at the results of continuous Estonian art auctions, between the years 2018-2022 and gives an overview of why and under which conditions did the Estonian art auctions begun to take place. Next to the auctions’ final prices analysis, I discuss the topic of meaning of artwork’s price, leaning on the thoughts of sociologist Olav Velthuis, on artworks’ price as a subjective fact and social construct. 

The aim of my research was to have an overview of the current state of Etsonian auction market. In order to do that I compiled a database of the sales results of 77 continious auctions between the research period (one-time-only special auctions are not included in the database), total 3609 sold artworks’ prices (in the thesis I included the first 1000 sales from the database). The analysis of the auction results confirmed my hypothesis, that the volume and sales of art auctions have increased significantly during the last five years. If in 2018 eight auctions took place, in which 333 artworks were sold with total sales revenue 1,1 million euros, then in 2022 already 25 auctions took place, with 1725 artworks sold, bringing the total sales revenue to 6,2 million euros.