Antique shops can offer a treasure to anyone with a keen eye, but rarely do you find objects as undervalued as a rare chandelier by Alberto Giacometti, which caught British painter John Craxton's eye through a shop window in the 1960s. distinct from the artist, Craxton bought the collectible for just £250 ($700).
Some six decades later, the work sold for a whopping price, fetching £2.4 million ($2.9 million) at Christie's 20th/21st Century.
Although he made his name as a sculptor, Giacometti made no distinction between art and decorative design, producing a wide range of furniture and other functional objects, much like his equally creative but lesser-known younger brother, Diego.
To make Craxton's chance encounter with the chandelier even more incredible, he recognized it as a special commission by his late friend Peter Watson, an art collector with a particular passion for surrealism. Watson had destined it for the offices of the literary magazine Horizon, of which he was a founding editor, and the chandelier was passed to one of its co-founders, Cyril Connolly, after his death in 1956. It is not known how an unnamed chandelier ended up in an antique shop. common on Marylebone Road in London.
Once in Craxton's hands, the candelabrum became a centerpiece of the music room in his private home in Hampstead, London. It has belonged to the artist's estate since his death in 2009 and, although he himself never had doubts about its provenance, it was sent to the Fondation Giacometti in Paris for authentication in 2015.
Source: Artnet News