Auctioning with Christie’s

Ending a month of consistent fundraising and awareness activities, Basma had one last ace up its sleeve, its charity dinner and auction at the Four Seasons Hotel Damascus.

The event was cosponsored by the hotel and Ayyam Gallery, with the hotel offering its halls and dining services to the charity at no charge, and the gallery going above and beyond providing 15 of its artists’ pieces for the auction and 4 more for the raffle by inviting an auctioneer from Christie’s to head the sale.“Christie’s itself has a long history of helping charity auctions,” explains William Lawrie, head of sale for modern and contemporary Arab and Iranian art at Christie’s Dubai.

“We’ve helped charities in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Beirut, Kuwait, and Egypt. It makes us particularly happy to help with the Basma auction, an excellent cause that has always emphasized that it doesn’t seek only financial support, but support from volunteers as well, which is more sustainable. We ourselves are volunteering our services, as we do with every charity auction.

”Many in the Syrian art community are eager for this event particularly because it is reintroducing the concept of the auction to the country. Auctioneering has long been a way of appraising the value and historyof antiques, and providing an otherwise unavailable launch pad for modern and contemporary artists.“Our online and print catalogues are really becoming a window for what’s available in the region,” says Lawrie. “We’ve become a valuable resource for art academics, offering documentation to Arab, Iranian, and recently Turkish art.”

As the market reopened to the world, Syria was once again recognized as a source of high-standard regional art, rejoining the ranks of Egypt, Lebanon, and Iran as an important figure artistically, with the potential to host internal art collectors. “Our auction house in Dubai is constantly selling pieces to Europeans, Americans East Asians, and more and more Syrians,” says Lawrie.

“Four paintings that should be of particular interest to Syrians, and that we’re especially proud to bring back to the Middle East, are the four Moudarres pieces that were purchased by the German Ambassador to Syria in the 1960s, Rudolf Fechter. These pieces have really traveled, and we had to get in contact with South Africans, Canadians, Americans, and Germans just to retrieve them for the auction.

”Ayyam Gallery have long partnered with the auction house to feature many of its pieces in Dubai and London, gaining international recognition for their artists. “I’ve known the gallery since before it opened up, and I knew it was a great place before the floorboards and fittings of the showroom were fully set,” says Lawrie.“It has been wonderful, observing their progress, from 6 - 8 artists initially and now representing 25 full-time.

We know we’re working with a gallery that is going places.”Expectations are high for the evening: with 7.5 million SP expected from the ticket sales alone, the 15 pieces from artists such as Fadi Yazigi, Leila Nseir, Samia Halaby, Asaad Arabi, Tammam Azzam, and Mustapha Fathi are sure to bring that number to astonishingly greater heights. It is especially poignant when considering that the last of those artists, Fathi, recently passed away from cancer, and Safwan Dahoul, who has a piece in the raffle, also lost his wife to the disease.

“We’re sure to find a lot of enthusiasm among the bidders,” says Lawrie. “They’re not just buying a work of art, but giving all the proceeds to Basma as well, and that is sure to bring a smile back on the faces of those afflicted children.”