Francis Bacon, Jeff Koons and Mark Rothko works lead the first 2009 sales of contemporary art this week by Christie’s International and Phillips de Pury as auction houses reduce estimates to attract buyers.

The two London companies are aiming to sell as much as 38.5 million pounds ($57.4 million) of art from Feb. 11-13. The sales follow lower presale estimates and fewer lots in other international auctions in U.K. last week, in which up to 93 percent of lots were sold.

“These are the first sales that have been put together that reflect a different reality,” said Pilar Ordovas, Christie’s London-based head of contemporary art. “People are realizing that estimates are low and this is generating confidence and better results.”

The falling price of art has made owners reluctant to sell at auction, said dealers. Prices and selling rates declined in the last quarter of 2008 as buyers’ confidence and spending power were battered by the economic crisis. In November, only 68 percent of the works were sold at Sotheby’s and Christie’s contemporary-art auctions in New York.

Christie’s sale on Feb. 11 has 31 lots it forecasts to fetch at least 15.2 million pounds. Last year, the equivalent auction contained 54 works with a low estimate of 71.7 million pounds.

The highest-valued lot is Bacon’s 1954 “Man in Blue VI,” one of a series of seven canvases of an unknown businessman with whom Bacon had an affair while living in Henley-on-Thames. Never previously offered at auction, the 5-foot-high portrait painted from life is expected to fetch between 4 million pounds and 6 million pounds, said Christie’s.

Monkey Ladder

Koons’s 2003 playfully computer-manipulated 9-foot-high oil on canvas, “Monkeys (Ladder),” is expected to fetch 1.4 million pounds to 2 million pounds. A 1968 Rothko abstract, “Green, Blue, Green on Blue,” a 3-foot 4-inch high work on paper laid down on canvas, is valued at up to 3.5 million pounds.

Phillips de Pury has combined its Feb. 12 and 13 evening and day contemporary auctions into a single catalog. The 53-lot evening sale is expected to fetch between 6.8 million pounds and 9.3 million pounds. The 123-lot day sale is estimated to raise 1.7 million pounds to 2.4 million pounds.

Phillips is expecting a unique 6-foot, 8-inch-high Koons glass vitrine sculpture filled with 24 basketballs and six soccer balls, dating from 1983 to 1993, to sell for up to 2.2 million pounds. The evening auction in London’s Victoria district also includes a colorful metal bottle-top hanging by the Ghanaian sculptor El Anatsui.

Frieze Week

During the week of the Frieze Art Fair in London in October, Sotheby’s achieved an auction record of 349,250 pounds with fees for a 10-foot-wide El Anatsui hanging. Phillips’s slightly smaller, horizontal hanging, dating from 2006, carries an estimate of 180,000 pounds to 220,000 pounds.

Last week, Sotheby’s contemporary auctions fetched a combined 25.2 million pounds, a decline of 79 percent on the 119.9 million pounds that Sotheby’s sold at the equivalent auctions in February 2008, according to Bloomberg calculations.

Sotheby’s achieved a selling rate of 89 percent at its 144-lot day sale on Feb. 6, following the 93 percent selling rate at the U.S.-based company’s slimline 27-lot auction the previous evening. The day sale totaled 7.3 million pounds with fees, against a high estimate of 6.5 million pounds, based on hammer prices.

Hyped, Overpriced

“If anything, the day sale was more exciting and interesting than in the good times,” the London-based modern and contemporary art dealer Conor Macklin, director of the Grosvenor Gallery, said in an interview. “Now that prices have come down, more people are willing to bid. A lot of my clients were nervous about buying artists they felt were hyped or overpriced.”

The top price at Sotheby’s day sale was the 397,250 pounds paid by a European collector for a 1959 green Lucio Fontana “Concetto Spaziale” canvas with seven slashes, estimated at 180,000 pounds to 250,000 pounds.

Estimates for contemporary works had been reduced by 30 percent to 50 percent to attract buyers, said dealers. The average price per lot was 57,000 pounds. Last February at Sotheby’s 295-lot day sale, the average was 100,000 pounds, according to Bloomberg calculations.

“If prices are down 50 percent, then people will think this is a reasonable correct,” said London dealer Richard Nagy. “But if the economic news gets worse, there will be more discounting.”