The Takeaway: Defying predictions, Christie’s 20th century evening sale demonstrated a robust market for American abstraction and European masterpieces, with significant sales of Richard Diebenkorn, Joan Mitchell, Pablo Picasso, and René Magritte.
After its sporadic 21st century sale earlier this week, Christie’s brought in $640.8 million in its 20th century evening auction—its highest result for a non-single owner sale since November 2017 (when it achieved $785.9 million, helped by the $450.3 million sale of Salvator Mundi by Leonardo da Vinci).
Facing financial challenges, the Museum Langmatt in Switzerland had consigned Paul Cézanne’s Fruits et pot de gingembre (c. 1885). The painting comfortably surpassed its high estimate, bringing in $10.4 million.
Notably, several other works far surpassed their estimates, including Egon Schiele’s Ich liebe Gegensätze (1912), nearly quadrupling its high estimate at $10.9 million.
The top five sales were as follows:
- Claude Monet’s Le bassin aux nymphéas (1917–1919) sold for $74 million.
- Francis Bacon’s Figure in Movement (1976) sold for $52 million.
- Richard Diebenkorn’s Recollections of a Visit to Leningrad (1965) sold for $46.4 million—a record for the artist at auction.
- Mark Rothko’s Untitled (Yellow, Orange, Yellow, Light Orange) (1955) sold for $46.4 million.
- Pablo Picasso’s Femme endormie (1934) sold for $42.9 million.
Other than the Richard Diebenkorn piece, Christie’s hammered five additional record-breaking sales. These include:
- Joan Mitchell’s Untitled (1959) sold for $29 million.
- Arshile Gorky’s Charred Beloved I (1946) sold for $23.4 million.
- Barbara Hepworth’s The Family of Man: Ancestor II (1974) sold for $11.6 million, twice its high estimate.
- Fernando Botero’s The Musicians (1979) sold for $5 million.
- Joan Snyder’s The Stripper (1973) sold for $478,800.
