Most valuable sculpture

Alberto Giacometti

Alberto Giacometti

Alberto Giacometti was a Swiss sculptor, painter, draughtsman, and printmaker.Alberto Giacometti was born in the canton Graubünden's southerly alpine valley Val Bregaglia and came from an artistic background; his father, Giovanni, was a well-known post-Impressionist painter...

's L'Homme qui marche I

L'Homme qui marche I

L’Homme qui marche I is the name of any one of the cast bronze sculptures that comprise six numbered editions plus four artist proofs created by Swiss sculptor Alberto Giacometti in 1961...

achieved the highest price of any sculpture ever sold when it was auctioned by Sotheby's

Sotheby's

Sotheby's is the world's fourth oldest auction house in continuous operation.-History:The oldest auction house in operation is the Stockholms Auktionsverk founded in 1674, the second oldest is Göteborgs Auktionsverk founded in 1681 and third oldest being founded in 1731, all Swedish...

 in February 2010. Selling for US$ 104.3 million, it ranks amongst the most valuable works of art.

In 2005 Constantin Brâncuși

Constantin Brancusi

Constantin Brâncuşi was a Romanian-born sculptor who made his career in France. As a child he displayed an aptitude for carving wooden farm tools. Formal studies took him first to Bucharest, then to Munich, then to the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris...

's Bird in Space

Bird in Space

Bird in Space is a series of sculptures by Constantin Brâncuşi, a Romanian sculptor. The original work was created in 1923...

broke records when it sold for $27.5 million. The record stood for two years until a highly-regarded work of antiquity surpassed the price. Artemis and the Stag

Artemis and the Stag

Artemis and the Stag is an early Roman Imperial or Hellenistic bronze sculpture of the ancient Greek goddess Artemis. In June 2007 the Albright-Knox Art Gallery placed the statue into auction; it fetched $28.6 million, the highest sale price of any sculpture at the time.-Description:The statue...

, found in the 1920s at a Roman construction site, fetched $28.6 million in June 2007. The new record would only stand for a few months with a work by Pablo Picasso

Pablo Picasso

Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso known as Pablo Ruiz Picasso was a Spanish expatriate painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer, one of the greatest and most influential artists of the...

's Tete de femme (Dora Maar)

Tete de femme (Dora Maar)

Tete de femme is a plaster-modelled, bronze-cast sculpture by Pablo Picasso. Dora Maar, Picasso's lover at the time, was the subject of the work which was originally conceived in 1941...

surpassing it by half a million US dollars in November 2007.

In December 2007 the sale of the Guennol Lioness

Guennol Lioness

The Guennol Lioness is a 5,000-year-old Mesopotamian statue found near Baghdad, Iraq. Depicting a well-muscled anthropomorphic lioness, it sold for $57.2 million at Sotheby's auction house on December 5, 2007...

, a statue from around 3000 BC, nearly doubled the previous record price when it sold for $57.2 million. It remains the second most valuable sculpture and the most valuable piece from antiquity.

Damien Hirst

Damien Hirst

Damien Steven Hirst is an English artist, entrepreneur and art collector. He is the most prominent member of the group known as the Young British Artists , who dominated the art scene in Britain during the 1990s. He is internationally renowned, and is reportedly Britain's richest living artist,...

 has claimed that his sculpture For the Love of God

For the Love of God

For the Love of God is a sculpture by artist Damien Hirst produced in 2007. It consists of a platinum cast of a human skull encrusted with 8,601 flawless diamonds, including a pear-shaped pink diamond located in the forehead...

, which consists of a platinum

Platinum

Platinum is a chemical element with the chemical symbol Pt and an atomic number of 78. Its name is derived from the Spanish term platina del Pinto, which is literally translated into "little silver of the Pinto River." It is a dense, malleable, ductile, precious, gray-white transition metal...

 cast of a human skull encrusted with 8,601 flawless diamond

Diamond

In mineralogy, diamond is an allotrope of carbon, where the carbon atoms are arranged in a variation of the face-centered cubic crystal structure called a diamond lattice. Diamond is less stable than graphite, but the conversion rate from diamond to graphite is negligible at ambient conditions...

s, was sold for £50 million (around US$75 million) in August 2007. The truth of this private sale, which was to an unknown consortium, has been called into question. David Lee

David Lee (art critic)

David Lee is an outspoken, English, contemporary, art critic—condemning conceptual art in general and the Turner Prize in particular...

, editor of The Jackdaw, commented "Everyone in the art world knows Hirst hasn't sold the skull. It's clearly just an elaborate ruse to drum up publicity and rewrite the book value of all his other work." If the sale did take place For the Love of God would become the second most expensive sculpture ever sold and would have fetched the highest price for a sculpture by a living artist.

2010 was a good year for record-breaking sculpture prices but it did not continue into 2011. Jeff Koons

Jeff Koons

Jeffrey "Jeff" Koons is an American artist known for his reproductions of banal objects—such as balloon animals produced in stainless steel with mirror finish surfaces....

' porcelain Pink Panther was estimated to fetch a value of up to $30 million but could only achieve just over half that.

Auction details

All of the most expensive sculptures have been sold by one of two auction

Auction

An auction is a process of buying and selling goods or services by offering them up for bid, taking bids, and then selling the item to the highest bidder...

 houses: Sotheby's and Christie's

Christie's

Christie's is an art business and a fine arts auction house.- History :The official company literature states that founder James Christie conducted the first sale in London, England, on 5 December 1766, and the earliest auction catalogue the company retains is from December 1766...

. Sotheby's has hosted the auctions of the two works that reached the highest price, one in London and the other in New York. Only three of the top ten have auctioned outside of New York: one in London and two in Paris. Four of the top five sales occurred in 2010 with the most recent being in November 2010. The most modern sculpture out of the top ten is also the most valuable, while the oldest is the second most expensive.

The top ten highest value sculptures were made by seven different people, two of whom are unknown and will never be identified. Alberto Giacometti

Alberto Giacometti

Alberto Giacometti was a Swiss sculptor, painter, draughtsman, and printmaker.Alberto Giacometti was born in the canton Graubünden's southerly alpine valley Val Bregaglia and came from an artistic background; his father, Giovanni, was a well-known post-Impressionist painter...

's sculptures are the two most valuable modern works and he has a third entry in the top ten. Constantin Brâncuși

Constantin Brancusi

Constantin Brâncuşi was a Romanian-born sculptor who made his career in France. As a child he displayed an aptitude for carving wooden farm tools. Formal studies took him first to Bucharest, then to Munich, then to the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris...

 is the only other artist to feature twice in the list. Though Pablo Picasso

Pablo Picasso

Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso known as Pablo Ruiz Picasso was a Spanish expatriate painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer, one of the greatest and most influential artists of the...

 only appears once he features numerous times in the list of most expensive paintings.

Several buyers have chosen to remain anonymous while others publicly celebrate their purchases.

Ten highest prices paid

The ten highest prices paid for sculptures :

Sale price (in millions US)	Sculpture	Artist	Year	Date of sale	Seller	Buyer	Auction house	Refs
$104.3	L'Homme qui marche I L'Homme qui marche I L’Homme qui marche I is the name of any one of the cast bronze sculptures that comprise six numbered editions plus four artist proofs created by Swiss sculptor Alberto Giacometti in 1961...		1961		Commerzbank Commerzbank Commerzbank AG is the second-largest bank in Germany, after Deutsche Bank, headquartered in Frankfurt am Main.-Activities:Commerzbank is mainly active in commercial bank, retail banking and mortgaging. It suffered reversals in investment banking in early 2000s and scaled back its Securities unit...		Sotheby's Sotheby's Sotheby's is the world's fourth oldest auction house in continuous operation.-History:The oldest auction house in operation is the Stockholms Auktionsverk founded in 1674, the second oldest is Göteborgs Auktionsverk founded in 1681 and third oldest being founded in 1731, all Swedish... , London
$57.2	Guennol Lioness Guennol Lioness The Guennol Lioness is a 5,000-year-old Mesopotamian statue found near Baghdad, Iraq. Depicting a well-muscled anthropomorphic lioness, it sold for $57.2 million at Sotheby's auction house on December 5, 2007...	Unknown	c.3000 BC		Unknown		Sotheby's Sotheby's Sotheby's is the world's fourth oldest auction house in continuous operation.-History:The oldest auction house in operation is the Stockholms Auktionsverk founded in 1674, the second oldest is Göteborgs Auktionsverk founded in 1681 and third oldest being founded in 1731, all Swedish... , New York
$53.3	Grande tête mince Grande tête mince Grande tête mince is a bronze sculpture by Alberto Giacometti. The work was conceived in 1954 and cast the following year. Auctioned in 2010, Grande tête mince became one of the most valuable sculptures ever sold when it fetched $53.3 million....		1955			Unknown	Christie's Christie's Christie's is an art business and a fine arts auction house.- History :The official company literature states that founder James Christie conducted the first sale in London, England, on 5 December 1766, and the earliest auction catalogue the company retains is from December 1766... , New York
$52.6	Tête Tête (sculpture) Tête is a limestone sculpture by Amedeo Modigliani and is amongst the most expensive works of art ever sold. In 2010 an anonymous telephone bidder purchased Tête for €43.2 million at Christie's in Paris. The sale was a record at a French auction and placed the sculpture amongst the most expensive...		1910–1912			Unknown	Christie's Christie's Christie's is an art business and a fine arts auction house.- History :The official company literature states that founder James Christie conducted the first sale in London, England, on 5 December 1766, and the earliest auction catalogue the company retains is from December 1766... , Paris
$48.8	Nu de dos, 4 état (Back IV)		1958		Unknown	Unknown	Christie's Christie's Christie's is an art business and a fine arts auction house.- History :The official company literature states that founder James Christie conducted the first sale in London, England, on 5 December 1766, and the earliest auction catalogue the company retains is from December 1766... , New York
$37.6	Madame LR (Portrait de Mme LR)		1914–17		Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé Pierre Bergé Pierre Bergé is a French industrialist and patron. He is perhaps best known as the co-founder of Yves Saint Laurent Couture House and former partner of fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent.-Early life:...	Unknown	Christie's Christie's Christie's is an art business and a fine arts auction house.- History :The official company literature states that founder James Christie conducted the first sale in London, England, on 5 December 1766, and the earliest auction catalogue the company retains is from December 1766... , Paris
$29.1	Tete de femme (Dora Maar) Tete de femme (Dora Maar) Tete de femme is a plaster-modelled, bronze-cast sculpture by Pablo Picasso. Dora Maar, Picasso's lover at the time, was the subject of the work which was originally conceived in 1941...		1941		Unknown		Sotheby's Sotheby's Sotheby's is the world's fourth oldest auction house in continuous operation.-History:The oldest auction house in operation is the Stockholms Auktionsverk founded in 1674, the second oldest is Göteborgs Auktionsverk founded in 1681 and third oldest being founded in 1731, all Swedish... , New York
$28.6	Artemis and the Stag Artemis and the Stag Artemis and the Stag is an early Roman Imperial or Hellenistic bronze sculpture of the ancient Greek goddess Artemis. In June 2007 the Albright-Knox Art Gallery placed the statue into auction; it fetched $28.6 million, the highest sale price of any sculpture at the time.-Description:The statue...	Unknown	c.100 BC – 100 AD		Albright-Knox Art Gallery Albright-Knox Art Gallery The Albright-Knox Art Gallery is an art museum located in Delaware Park in Buffalo, New York. The gallery is a major showplace for modern art and contemporary art. It is located directly across the street from Buffalo State College.-History:...	Unknown	Sotheby's Sotheby's Sotheby's is the world's fourth oldest auction house in continuous operation.-History:The oldest auction house in operation is the Stockholms Auktionsverk founded in 1674, the second oldest is Göteborgs Auktionsverk founded in 1681 and third oldest being founded in 1731, all Swedish... , New York
$27.5	Bird in Space Bird in Space Bird in Space is a series of sculptures by Constantin Brâncuşi, a Romanian sculptor. The original work was created in 1923...		1922–1923		Unknown	Unknown	Christie's Christie's Christie's is an art business and a fine arts auction house.- History :The official company literature states that founder James Christie conducted the first sale in London, England, on 5 December 1766, and the earliest auction catalogue the company retains is from December 1766... , New York
$27.4	Grande Femme Debout II		1959–1960		Unknown	Gagosian Gallery Gagosian Gallery Gagosian Gallery is a contemporary art gallery owned and directed by Larry Gagosian. There are currently eleven gallery spaces: three in New York; two in London; one in each of Beverly Hills, Rome, Athens, Paris, Geneva, Hong Kong and Moscow.-1980s:...	Christie's Christie's Christie's is an art business and a fine arts auction house.- History :The official company literature states that founder James Christie conducted the first sale in London, England, on 5 December 1766, and the earliest auction catalogue the company retains is from December 1766... , New York