Sotheby’s closed the week of marquee autumn evening sales in New York with three back-to-back, sold-out auctions on Thursday (20 November), bringing in a grand total of $252.9m ($304.5m with fees). That sits around the middle of the firm’s estimated take for the night of between $211.3m and $289.3m (all estimates calculated without fees).
The night started with a sale of 13 lots from the estate of the late Chicagoan collectors Cindy and Jay Pritzker that surpassed Sotheby’s high estimate of $88.5.m to bring in $91.7m ($109.5m with fees). A stellar group of 24 works by Surrealist heavy-hitters from an unnamed collection (marketed as “Exquisite Corpus”) followed, generating $81.9m ($98m with fees), squarely within the group’s estimate range ($66.7m-$98.9m). The night concluded with a multiple-owner sale of Modern art that, following three withdrawals, took in $78.9m ($96.9m with fees) across 29 lots, well within the house’s pre-sale estimate of $71.1m to $101.9m.
“People responded really well to the single-owner collections, both the Pritzkers and Exquisite Corpus, but also the collections within the multiple-owner sale, from the [Matthew and Carolyn] Bucksbaum collection, Geri Brawerman’s collection and others,” Helena Newman, Sotheby’s chairman of Europe and worldwide chairman of Impressionist and Modern art—who commanded the rostrum for the third of the night’s sales—said afterwards. “The focus on Surrealism tonight was really reflective of the surge in interest in the movement in the last several years, which was fed by recent museum exhibitions marking the movement’s centennial last year.”
Auctioneer Oliver Barker conducts the sale of Frida Kahlo’s El sueño (La cama) (1940) at Sotheby's in New York on 20 November
Courtesy Sotheby's
It was a Surrealist work that sparked the night’s biggest fireworks and provided its second-highest price. Frida Kahlo’s El sueño (La cama) (1940), a self-portrait of the artist in her four-poster bed with a life-size skeletal sculpture laying above her, set off a protracted, two-way bidding war that pushed it past its $40m low estimate. It ultimately hammered for $47m to a client bidding by phone with Sotheby’s senior vice president and head of Latin American art Anna Di Stasi. With fees the price came to $54.6m, breaking the auction record for Kahlo’s work (set by Sotheby’s almost exactly four years ago), for a work by a Latin American artist and for a work by a female artist, surpassing the Georgia O’Keeffe painting Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1 (1932), which Sotheby’s sold for $44.4m (with fees) in 2014 and is now in the collection of the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Arkansas. Whether the Kahlo actually broke that record, given inflation, is disputed by some, including The New York Times which says the O'Keefe price is the equivalent of around $60.5m today.
“Frida Kahlo is a global icon, a brand—we brought this painting to Abu Dhabi and there were lines around the block to see it,” Julian Dawes, Sotheby’s vice chairman and head of Impressionist and Modern art, said before the sale. “One of the incredible things about this painting is that aside from the setting in the sky and the roots growing out from the bed frame, this is a realistic depiction of her bedroom. Kahlo made her own world so surreal that she needed only to paint it faithfully.”
Prized Pritzkers
Vincent van Gogh, Parisian Novels (Romans Parisiens/Les Livres jaunes), November-December 1887 Courtesy Sotheby’s
Another domestic scene, painted gesturally but faithfully, was the night’s top lot. Vincent van Gogh’s Parisian Novels (Romans Parisiens/Les Livres jaunes) (1887), which had hung for years in the Pritzkers’ library, set off a seven-minute bidding war between three phone bidders and two people in Sotheby’s new salesroom at the Breuer Building, pushing the price well beyond the on-request estimate of $40m. After some cajoling from auctioneer Oliver Barker—”Madam, can we have another one?”—the adviser and former Sotheby’s chairperson Patti Wong, bidding in the room on behalf of a client, prevailed with a winning bid of $54m ($63m with fees).
Of the 13 lots on offer from the Pritzkers’ collection, ten sold within or above their estimate ranges, including another Van Gogh, the 1888 drawing Jardin public avec bancs à la Place Lamartine, which went to an online bidder for $2.4m ($2.9m with fees). Another standout was the rare architectural work by Henri Matisse Léda et le cygne (1944-46), which features the titular mythological scene flanked by minimal renderings of leaves on a bright-red background, all executed on wood panels. It eventually sold smack in the middle of its $7m to $10m estimate, for $8.5m ($10.4m with fees). The Matisse was one of just three lots in the Pritzker sale that Sotheby’s had backed by a guarantee; all three sold within or above their estimates.
Henri Matisse, Léda et le cygne, June 1944-May 1946 Courtesy Sotheby's
Max Beckmann’s large-scale (and scale-y) 1929 painting Der Wels (The Catfish) also set off fierce competition, surpassing its high estimate of $7m and ultimately being hooked with a $7.5m bid ($9.2m).
A surfeit of Surrealism
“We try to be self-aware and not too superlative,” Dawes said before the Exquisite Corpus sale, “but the Pauline Karpidas collection we sold in London in September was probably the best private collection of Surrealist art to come to market yet, and this private collection is just as good if not better.”
The results certainly support that assessment. Every one of the sale’s 11 guaranteed lots ultimately hammered for prices within or above their estimate ranges, and in total 11 of the group’s 24 lots sold for hammer prices above their high estimates
Four artists’ auction records were broken, including Kahlo and Hans Bellmer—twice. His ghostly gouache Mains et bras (around 1950-52) more than doubled its high estimate of $180,000 to hammer for $400,000 ($508,000 with fees), surpassing the Surrealist doll-master’s previous record, set during the Karpidas collection sales in September. Ten lots later, his unsettling composition of disembodied lower backs and legs sporting striped stockings, Les Bas rayés (1959), more than doubled its own $400,000 high estimate and sold for $850,000 ($942,000 with fees).
Dorothea Tanning, Interior with Sudden Joy, 1951 Courtesy Sotheby's
While it was Kahlo’s night, Sotheby’s set a another record for a leading female Surrealist, Dorothea Tanning, whose Interior with Sudden Joy (1951) sold for a hammer price of $2.7m ($3.2m with fees), surpassing her previous secondary market peak, set by Christie’s during last spring’s marquee sales. The night also saw a new record set for the Austrian Mexican Surrealist Wolfgang Paalen, whose chilly science-fiction scene Fata Alaska (1937) sold to a bidder in the salesroom for $850,000 ($1m with fees), nearly doubling its high estimate of $450,000 and besting a record set by Christie’s in February 2023 by around $100,000.
Still more Surrealism
The evening culminated in Sotheby’s multiple-owner evening sale of Modern art, which featured 29 works after three were withdrawn: the Brazilian sculptor Maria Martins’s O Guerreiro (est $700,000-$1m), Claude Monet’s seascape Un Parc à Pourville (est $4m-$6m) and Cândido Portinari’s moody painting Mulata de vestido branco ($800,000-$1.2m).
The sale’s top lot was a larger, painted version of the René Magritte drawing that closed out the Exquisite Corpus auction. Le Jockey Perdu (1942), from the collection of another couple with deep ties to Chicago, Matthew and Carolyn “Kay” Bucksbaum, set off a race between two bidders in the salesroom that pushed the price to $10.2m ($12.3m with fees), squarely within the $9m to $12m estimate.
Another group of works on offer had been deaccessioned by the Phillips Collection in Washington, DC, with proceeds from their sale earmarked for funding future acquisitions. That group’s top lot, and the Modern art sale’s second-highest result, was Georgia O’Keeffe’s wintry still life Large Dark Red Leaves on White (1927), which had been in the Phillips Collection since 1943. A two-way contest between phone bidders pushed its price over the low estimate of $6m and it eventually hammered at $6.4m ($7.9m with fees).
René Magritte, Le Jockey perdu, 1942 Courtesy Sotheby's
The other works from the Phillips were a rare Georges Seurat drawing, Clowns et poney (1883-84), which sold for a within-estimate hammer price of $4.2m ($4.8m with fees); and Arthur Dove’s 1943 canvas Rose and Locust Stump, which elicited just one bid and sold for a hammer price of $600,000 ($681,000 with fees), just half of its low estimate. The Phillips Collection works were among the eight lots on offer in the Modern art evening sale that were backed by guarantees.
Even as the night’s auctions entered their third hour and the crowd thinned, bidding at the Breuer Building remained strong. The white-glove evening’s total take of $252.9m across 66 lots was a significant improvement on the $152m ($186.4m with fees) Sotheby’s racked up during the equivalent auction last spring, which featured 65 lots—among them an Alberto Giacometti bronze bust that was expected to bring more than $70m but flopped and went unsold.
Thursday’s total was well short of rival Christie’s equivalent sale on Monday night, which brought in $574.7m ($690m with fees) from 80 lots, but taken together—and factoring in Phillips’s $54.7m ($67.3m with fees) outing on Wednesday—the New York autumn auctions have given the trade a much-needed boost of confidence after more than two years of decline. Sotheby’s closes out the week on Friday with its day sales and then, following a break for Thanksgiving in the US, the art market’s collective attention will shift south to Art Basel Miami Beach and its attendant bacchanal of satellite fairs and parties.
