Buying Abstract Paintings

Buying and collecting abstract painting can be a labor of love.  I love abstract paintings.  I think that my favorite medium is gouache. I found an oil abstract painting that was dated 1947 that was painted by Louis Bassi Siegriest.  I liked the composition, it felt oddly soothing.  The artist signed the back of the painting.  It was a little out of my price range, but I bought it anyway as an investment.

I researched an abstract painting last year.  The artist of the piece was Leonardo Nierman and the medium he used was oil.  I considered buying the piece unframed but,I referred a framer to purchase the work and choose the frame before I leased it out to a gallery to pay for it.(arbitrage can be your friend!)

I tried to buy an abstract painting from a local professor of ART.  I offered him a thousand dollars for the modernist abstract colorful figure.  The artist used red, white and blue and I wanted to acquire this for a novice investor.  She would have loved it, but the professor's work was acquired by his school's administration instead.

I ended up selling abstract paintings from the same gallery that I had bought it, on eBay!  I ended up making a profit on the abstract painting.  There was more information in my auction about the artist, Richard Diebenkorn, than there had been in the auction that I won.  I think the extra hour of research I spent made the abstract painting’s value increase.

I learned a long time ago that an abstract painting is worth exactly as much as someone is willing to pay for it.  I have friends that just cannot be convinced of this basic truth.  I think that if no one wants a particular abstract painting, then it is worth nothing.