The Line Between NFTs and Fine Art Gets Even Blurrier in New Auction
The family of Russian modernist Wladimir Baranoff-Rossiné is auctioning off a non-fungible token that happens to come with a 100-year-old painting.
Source: Mintable
The art market has not been kind to the late Wladimir Baranoff-Rossiné (1888-1944), an avant-garde artist whose sculpture sits in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Since June 2011, art by Baranoff-Rossiné has come to auction 100 times; about 60% of it didn’t sell, according to data from Artnet’s price database.
This is a stark contrast from his marketability just 13 years ago, when a painting of his sold for £2.7 million (roughly $5 million at the time) at Christie’s in London. “The bottom has totally fallen out of his market,” says James Butterwick, a dealer in Russian paintings based in London. “I’ve had access to serious works by Baranoff, and I could offer, and did offer, them to serious collectors. They weren’t interested.”