On Wednesday, Christie’s 20th/21st Century evening sale in London generated £63.8 million ($81.1 million) in sales. Despite the big names included, most lots garnered hammer prices below or near their low estimates.
Unlike Sotheby’s London sales, which saw a Klimt painting become the most expensive artwork sold auction in Europe, the sale at Christie’s seemed to follow the slow action at the New York auctions in May, where signs of a market correction were evident.
Blue-chip artists whose works sold at hammer prices below their low estimates included Alberto Burri, Cy Twombly, and Louise Bourgeois. However, works by Edgar Degas, Damien Hirst, and David Hockney sold for well above their high estimates. Several contemporary artists, like Diane Dal-Pra and Ahmed Mater, also saw their work sell for above their estimates and set new auction records.
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In a post-auction press conference, Christie’s London head of Impressionist and modern art Keith Gill said the sales results reflected the company’s strategy of “presenting the right works at the right estimates and trying to present works that our clients had not seen at auction before.”
The auction was particularly focused on portraiture, which Christie’s vice chairman Giavanna Bertazzoni said was “in recognition of the highly anticipated re-opening of the National Portrait Gallery.”
But the most successful sale wasn’t even a portrait at all. Signac’s oil on canvas painting Calanque-des-Canoubiers-Pointe-de-Bamer-Saint-Tropez (1896) held the highest estimate of the auction,at £5.5 million–£8 million ($7 million–$10.1 million). The pointillist landscape was one of the 13 works that came with third-party guarantees, selling for a final hammer price of £6.7 million ($8.5 million), or £8.02 million ($10.1 million) with fees. Calanque-des-Canoubiers-Pointe-de-Bamer-Saint-Tropez has already been requested for the upcoming exhibition “Symphonies of Color: Signac and Neo-Impressionism,” to be held at the Museum Barberini in Potsdam, Germany in 2026.
Jean-Michel Basquiat’s 1984 tribute to the legacy of Picasso, Untitled (Pablo Picasso), also had a guarantee. The winning bid came from an in-person bidder for £6.46 million including fees, narrowly missing the high end of its estimate of £4.5 million–£6.5 million.
Cecily Brown’s Kiss Me Stupid had an estimate of £3 million–£5 million, but the hammer price came in just under the low end at £2.9 million, or £3.549 million with fees. When the oil painting last appeared at auction at Sotheby’s in New York in 2008, the estimate was $800,000 to $1 million. Kiss Me Stupid also garnered the third-highest selling price among the 68 lots.
Enthusiastic bidding followed works by Diane Dal-Pra, Sahara Longe, Louis Fratino, and Victor Man.
Dal-Pra’s surrealist figurative portrait, It Belongs to You, was the the sale’s first lot. Her 2020 painting of a woman embracing a long-horned goat, carried an estimate of £30,000–£50,000, but went to an online bidder for £113,400 including fees, setting a new world auction record for the French artist.
British artist Sahara Longe’s Self-Portrait carried an estimate of £40,000–£60,000 but sold for £113,400 with fees.
That energy continued with Fratino’s portrait painting Listening to a conch, which was the third lot of the afternoon. It carried an estimate of £40,000–£60,000, but realized a price of £201,600 with fees, more than three times its high estimate.
Immediately afterward was Man’s 2017 work Weiltinnenraum (World Within) with an estimate of £100,000 to £150,000. Bidding quickly pushed the price for the dark figurative portrait beyond the high estimate. After just under five minutes of activity and 25 bidders, Christie’s deputy chairman and head of postwar and contemporary art, Sara Friedlander, placed the winning bid for a final hammer price of $1.4 million. Weiltinnenraum (World Within), which had been exhibited at the Gladstone Gallery in New York in 2018, sold for more than £1.7 million including fees, more than ten times its high estimate. It also set a world record for the artist.
Christie’s auction in London included three works from the Gerald Fineberg Collection: Kazuo Shiraga’s painting Choryo (Jumping Dragon), Cy Twombly’s Untitled from 1956, and Josef Albers’ Study for Homage to the Square (1972), the last of which sold for £869,400 with fees. The hammer price for the Shiraga was £1.2 million ($1.52 million), or £1.49 million ($1.9 million) with fees. The same sales price was realized by Twombly’s Untitled.
Mater’s photograph Magnetism (Triptych) achieved an auction record for the Saudi artist after a successful hammer bid was received by Christie’s international director Isabelle de la Bruyère, going for £150,000, or £189,000 with fees, on an estimate of £50,000 to £70,000.
By comparison, Bourgeois’s golden headless sculpture Nature Study also had an estimate of £800,000 to £1.2 million but sold at a hammer price of £450,000, or £567,000 with fees.
If there were any omens to be found, it may have been for the interest in the final auction lot, Damien Hirst’s Love Will Never Die (1999). The bright red canvas work featuring butterflies and household gloss had an estimate of £250,000 to £350,000. But after three minutes of fervent bidding, Christie’s senior vice president Emily Kaplan placed the winning hammer bid of £425,000, or £535,500 with fees, to applause in the room.