'Unprecedented bidding' sees Sotheby's record broken - 09/03/2010

A Sotheby's auction has broken the record for the largest sum of money taken for a fine art sale in the Netherlands.

The auctioning of more than 160 works of post-war and contemporary art from the Peter Stuyvesant Collection made 13.6 million euros, far exceeding the 6.3 million euros organisers had anticipated.

Deputy director of Sotheby's Amsterdam Bert-Jan Van Egteren said the activity seen at the auction was a rarity for that particular venue, particularly the range of international interest displayed.

He told Reuters: "We witnessed a truly remarkable depth of bidding from Europe, North and South America and Asia, almost unprecedented in a Sotheby's Amsterdam auction."

The highest-priced piece was Martin Kippenberger's Dinosaurierei, which was completed in 1996, a year before the artist's death. The piece went for 1.1 million euros.

The collection was the largest of its kind to ever be put up for sale in the Netherlands.