Sotheby's to Auction for Generative NFT Arts

Sotheby's is a legacy auction house set to auction generative works of art spanning both old and contemporary pieces.

As announced by the company, the auction will run from April 18 to 24th and to feature the works of pioneering generative artists, including Vera Molnár, Chuck Csuri, and Roman Verostko. 

Molnár is regarded as the first woman to ever venture into the world of generative arts, and her work, 1% de désordre (1976), was designed using computer plotting of rows of concentric squares. Still, two squares were programmed to be randomly omitted. The work is estimated to be worth about $15,000 to $20,000. 

Another more expensive work from Molnár will also be on sale. Alongside the work from other artists, the collectors who throw in the winning bids for these pieces will go with the digital version, while the physical versions will remain in the archive of the artists.

“While NFT projects like CryptoPunks and the Bored Ape Yacht Club have stolen headlines around the world over the past year, few might understand how these NFTs are connected with the history of 20th century art movements — including the early generative artists who paved the way for computer art and the algorithm based art that has inspired many contemporary NFT projects,” said Sotheby’s vice president and co-head of digital art Michael Bouhanna in a statement.

Sotheby’s is not new to auctioning NFT works and is credited for pioneering the trend when it helped Mike Winkelmann (aka Beeple) in selling his Everydays piece which was snapped by a collector called MetaKovan for $69.3 million in Ethereum back in March 2021. Since then, the auction has organized a series of auctions involving generative NFT art collections, including the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC).

The announced generative art auction will further entrench the pivotal role of Sotheby’s in bridging the gap between traditional artists and the capabilities of blockchain tech through NFTs as the Web3 ecosystem evolves.