Renato Pennisi is a Director and Senior Specialist of Christie’s global 20/21 Century Team for Modern and Contemporary Art, based in Italy. He joined Christie’s in 2001 and signed responsible as Co-Head for Christie’s Milan auctions as of 2007.
In 2013, Renato launched a new sale format Milan Modern and Contemporary, a monographic sale focusing on the most desirable Italian artists, acclaimed alike by existing and new clients with sell through rates achieving over 90% by lot, even up to 100% result in 2015 and 2018.
In his capacity as international Specialist, Renato has achieved some exceptional auction results for Italian artists in- as well as outside of Italy. Amongst them Lucio Fontana’s Concetto spaziale, Attese sold in March 2018 for £8,671,250; and in October 2018 Concetto Spaziale, La Fine di Dio, dating from 1963 for £16,282,823, still the third highest price for the artist, Piero Manzoni’s Achrome from 1958 which sold in April 2018 for €2,970,000, still the highest price achieved for the artist in Italy), Emilio Vedova’s Cicio61/62 no. 2 sold in November 2008 for €731,600, an unbeaten artist auction record price lasting nearly for two decades, as well as Giorgio Morandi’s Natura Morta, 1939 sold in October 2015 for £2,546,500, still the second highest price at auction for the artist, and Francis Bacon’s Three Studies for a Portrait of George Dyer, sold in May 2017 $51,767,500. In 2021 Renato was instrumental for the consignment of the Collection Gerard Valkier : A lifetime journey with Art, which held many works by Italian 20/21century artists and totaled €6,572,250. A few months later in the same year, Renato signed responsible for the single owner sale Thousand Roads: A Private Collection in Rome which sold in Amsterdam and London and during the first edition of Thinking Italian in Paris in 2022, his Alighiero Boetti pink Mappa, 1979-1980 consignment set the then new world auction record for the artist, when selling for €5.6 million, doubling its mid-estimate.
