The Part I sale at Christie’s October auction of 'Modern and Contemporary Arab, Iranian and Turkish Art' featured 29 lots and totalled $3,640,100/AED 13,370,087 in sales, with 96% sold. The works of art represented eight different nations of the Middle East and new records were set for five artists, Gazbia Sirry, Hayv Kahraman, Ramazan Bayrakoglu, Shirazeh Houshiary and Timo Nasseri with 50% of lots sold above their high estimate. The low estimate for this first part of the two-part sale was $2.6 million. The sales continue tomorrow evening with Part II.

The top lot of the sale was 'Pecheurs à Rosette' by Mahmoud Saïd which sold for $818,500 /AED 3,006,350 (estimate $400,000-600,000). 'Pêcheurs à Rosette', painted in 1941 is one of the artist’s most comprehensive works, showing a richly detailed Egyptian scene beside the Nile with fishermen unloading their catch, a perfect expression of national Egyptian identity.

Michael Jeha, Managing Director of Christie’s Middle East, commented “We are delighted by the strong results that were witnessed in the saleroom today and the market reacted extremely positively to the masters of Middle Eastern art and attracted a lot of interest,which resulted in 50% of the lots selling above high estimate. Dubai has been very busy over the last weeks from the buzz which began at Art Nights @ Gate Village held at the DIFC last week, to the numerous gallery openings and all of these events have culminated in a highly successful sale tonight. It was also encouraging to see interest from international and national buyers evenly balanced.”