On Thursday night, Sotheby’s finished off a week of evening sales with a mostly energetic three-part auction of modern art that saw a Frida Kahlo painting sell for a record price of $54.7 million and brought in a combined $304.6 million inclusive of fees, well above a $211.3 million–$289.3 million pre-sale estimate.
The evening started off with 13 artworks from the collection of Chicago-based Cindy and Jay Pritzker, followed by a group of Surrealist works. Last came a multiple-owner modern art auction.
“Everyone keeps asking me if I’m emotional,” said Pritzker’s granddaughter, Abby Pucker, before the sale started, “but I’m excited for everyone to see my grandmother’s personality and taste and elegance. To share that with the world is exciting.”
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She had reason to be excited: the 13 lots in the Pritzker portion of the evening were a rousing success, totaling $109.5 million, with five artworks selling above estimate, five within, and only three below. The highest result in the sale was $62.7 million, a 35 percent jump on its pre-sale estimate, for Vincent van Gogh’s 1887 Piles de romans parisiens et roses dans une verre (Romans parisiens), a painting of books laid out on a table. The artwork generated a seven-minute bidding war between Sotheby’s specialist Simon Shaw and two bidders in the room, identified by the Baer Faxt after the sale as dealer David Nahmad and adviser Patti Wong. The latter ultimately won the prize.
In fact, there was deep bidding throughout the evening, with numerous artworks generating interest from multiple phone bidders and in-person attendees.
The 24-lot “Exquisite Corpus” sale that followed, reported by Artnet News to be coming from the collection of Selma Ertegun, made a solid showing at a total of $98 million, with 12 lots hammering above their estimates, 3 within, and 6 below. Among the successes was Valentine Hugo’s otherworldy 1932 work on paper Le Crapaud de Maldoror, which soared past its estimate of $100,000–$150,000 to make $650,000 ($825,500 with fees). The artwork has an inscription in French that translates to “You must be powerful because you have a more than human face, sad like the universe, beautiful like suicide.”
Frida Kahlo, El sueño (La cama), 1940.
Courtesy Sotheby’s
But the star lot of “Exquisite Corpus”—indeed of the entire evening—was Frida Kahlo’s self-portrait El sueño (La cama). After a nearly 5-minute bidding battle between bidders Sotheby’s specialists Julian Dawes and Anna Di Stasi, both on the phone with clients, the painting sold for $55M (inclusive of fees) to Di Statsi’s bidder, an auction record three times over: for Kahlo, for a work by a Latin American artist, and for a work by a woman. The hammer came down to a hearty round of applause. The previous highest price at auction for a work by a woman artist is Georgia O’Keeffe’s Jimson Weed / White Flower no.1, sold at Sotheby’s in 2014 for $44.4 million. The previous record for a work by Kahlo at auction was $34.9 million sold at Sotheby’s in 2021.
Things got uneven, however, in the final portion of the evening, with the 32 lots that constituted the modern evening auction, which totaled $97 million. Three were withdrawn—the 1949 Maria Martins sculpture O Guerreiro, consigned by the Maria Martins Family Collection in Brazil; Monet’s 1882 painting Un Parc à Pourville from the Sam & Marilyn Fox Collection; and Cândido Portinari’s 1936 painting Mulata de vestido branco. (In a late-in-sale snafu, the Monet came out briefly as though it were going on the block.) And ten lots, including works by Rothko and Giacometti from the Geri Brawerman Collection, hammered well below their estimates, a sure sign that reserves had been lowered. “We monitor reaction and interest and we worked with our sellers to adjust reserves where necessary,” auctioneer Helena Newman confirmed to ARTnews after the sale.
The highest value work in the multiple-owner sale was René Magritte’s 1942 painting Le jockey perdu, which went for a within-estimate $12.3 million, inclusive of fees, to adviser Jussi Pylkännen, per the Baer Faxt.
“Tonight the work was good,” said adviser Todd Levin. “The Monet and Kahlo were exceptional. But almost everything hammered at the low end or within estimate. The Monet doubled its low estimate. But obviously things were crystallizing within the last 24 hours. It was a white glove sale because it was handled properly. When the auctioneer said, ‘I can sell it,’ the bids on many lots were greatly below the low estimates. This was a sensible, balanced market and they had a good, solid night.”
The recipe for the past week’s success, to Levin, was simple: “This week we had high-quality works with sensible estimates.”
