Last month The Armchair Trader visited the Amar Gallery in London and had the opportunity to catch up with owner and art hunter Amar Singh. The gallery opened in June to champion minority artists, frequently those overlooked on the basis of gender, sex and sexuality.
With additional reporting from Rudy Scott-Gall.
Singh is a self-avowed hunter of forgotten artists. By this he means artists – not always dead – who have fallen out of favour with art collectors. Many of these are 20th century artists, but Singh is focused on a long list of creators going back as far as the 17th century.
His current exhibition, Lawrence Calcagno: Redux, highlights the work of one such artist who has slipped from the limelight. It was an opportunity to view many of his works that have not been seen in London before. Each piece incorporated Calgano’s acute style, with clear influences from his mentors: American artists Mark Rothko and Clyfford Still.
While we enjoyed the exhibition’s opening with canapes and a spectacular performance from jazz band SOL Collective, we were also brought up to speed on Singh’s mission within his art investments.
Art as value investing?
Singh follows a playbook that involves assembling collections of art that enable him to reach a point where he can exhibit the paintings and work to rebuild the profile of lost artists, including in the eyes of collectors and investors. He looks for artists where there is value based on a story, and where real potential has been overlooked, sometimes as the result of historical prejudice.
In many respects this resembles the strategy of the classic value stock investor: the upside can be remarkable. Just by way of example, Singh rediscovered 20th century US artist Lynne Drexler when her works were selling in the range of USD8,000-20,000. They now sell for over USD 1mn.
“Lynne was an overlooked female artist – history had forgotten about her,” says Singh. “I recontextualised her work in London, I followed the history, the research and the academic aspects of her career.”
Ultimately this requires a lot of homework and Singh and his associates maintain a large database of undervalued artists which they have on their radar and which bear further investigation. Often this can require seeking out stolen art, plus having an eye for forged paintings. The stakes can be high: owners of fake art, which they have paid fortunes for, can be keen to keep the knowledge under wraps.
Art hunting as investment strategy
Singh is tracking around 50 artists right now. Many have missing art work – it could be lost, stolen, or simply sitting in someone’s attic. On top of this, even when found, governments can be ridiculously keen to keep original art on their soil, even for neglected 20th century painters.
Regulations covering the movement of art across borders are getting tougher all the time. Singh reports that paintings are constantly being detained by customs, even when they travel temporarily for exhibitions. And then there are the taxes that now accrue on importing artwork.
In some respects living artists can be a trickier proposition than dead ones. Singh says investors in the work of a current artist must get a handle on the creator as a person. “You don’t necessarily know what you have, so you have to understand the artist,” he explains. “Are they going to be a train wreck? It can come down to the raw talent of the artist. Are they that diamond in the rough you have been looking for?”
As with securities and investment schemes, art investing comes with its risks. The serious buyer needs to be alive to the myriad of forgeries out in the market. Singh has had a brush with a few good examples, and relies on a network of academics, specialist galleries and even art detectives, former police officers who now specialise in monitoring crime within the art world, and identifying forgeries. With so much money at stake, it pays to be able to tell the real from an opportunistic fake, even one that is decades old.
Lawrence Calcagno: Redux is at the Amar Gallery in London until 3 November, 2024.
