The first Romanian auction of art in NFT format is to be held on July 6 in Bucharest. As the A10 by Artmark auction house has recently announced, this is going to be the first auction to include a section of digital art created by contemporary Romanian artists in NFT format and which accepts payments in cryptocurrency as well. NFT is an acronym for non-fungible token, which is a unit of data stored on a digital ledger, called a blockchain. This certifies a digital asset as unique and therefore not interchangeable. NFTs can be used to represent items such as photos, videos, audio and many other types of digital files.
Artmark is also the first auction house in Eastern Europe to organize a postmodern and contemporary art auction that includes a section dedicated to digital art in NFT format, the ziare.com news portal wrote.
The international art market specialized in digital art erupted a few months ago, so to say, when Christie’s sold a batch of digital art in NFT format for more than USD 60 million. The precedent was soon followed by other big auction houses, like Sotheby’s and Phillips, which also organized auctions or had art sections in their auctions dedicated to young digital artists, many of whom came from Eastern Europe, ziare.com noted.
The Romanian auction planned for July 6 will be held online on the Artmark Live platform, and it will also take place physically, in the auction room of the Cesianu-Racoviţă Palace in Bucharest. As Artmark announced, if mandated so by the artist, the auction house accepts payment for the batches of digital art lots in cryptocurrency; more specifically, in Ethereum, the most popular electronic currency used in the international digital art market, but also in Bitcoin, the most capitalized electronic currency at the moment. Nevertheless, according to the special auction rules referring to the digital art section, when cashed in, cryptocurrency is converted into classical currency, and the artist will be paid in the latter.
Digital art makes up 10 lots in the auction, and the works have been created by the most famous young artists specialized in digital techniques. The starting price of each of the 10 lots is EUR 100. The works of artists such as Eurosadboy or Victor Fota are presently being sold for significant sums in the emerging international digital art market.
The Bucharest auction also premieres the first batch of digital church art, encrypted in NFT, belonging to painter Daniel Codrescu, who had worked on the decorations – mosaics, paintings, icons – of the Peoples’ Salvation Cathedral (Catedrala Mântuirii Neamului) in Bucharest.
The digital art lot entitled “The one higher than the Heavens (Mother of God and the Infant Christ – Platytera”) contains unique photography of the altar painting in the Bucharest cathedral. This painting, reproduced in this batch of digital art, is the largest representation of the Mother of God in Romania and one of the largest in the Orthodox world. According to Artmark, the artist’s specific request is that all funds collected following the sale of this NFT lot are donated to the fund for the completion of the construction of the Cathedral.
Another impressive batch in the digital art section in NFT format is entitled “Dragoste,” which means “Love” in Romanian. This is a composite batch, signed by the creator of the popular T-shirts bearing the same inscription, an artist from Nagyszeben (Sibiu, Hermannstadt), Dan Raul Pintea.
The works of the digital art section in NFT format, and the approximately 200 works presented in the postmodern and contemporary art section of the auction, can be viewed at artmark.ro or at the Cesianu-Racoviţă Palace, free of charge, from Monday to Sunday, between 10:00 a.m. and 8:00 p.m.
Among the most notable artworks of the July 6 auction, Artmark mentions: the painting called “Architectures” by Andrei Cădere, estimated at EUR 18,000- 25,000; the painting entitled “Girl with curtain” by Ştefan Câlţia, estimated at EUR 9,000-15,000; and “Plane” by Constantin Brâncuşi, estimated at EUR 3,000-5,000.
Title image: The batches of digital artworks in NFT format can be paid for with Ethereum or Bitcoin as well at Artmark’s July 6 auction
Source: entrepreneur.com
