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This week marks the beginning of our Modern and Contemporary Sales at the Breuer in New York City. We are kicking things off on Thursday 14 May with Robert Mnuchin: Collector at Heart, a single-owner evening sale at 6:00 PM EDT, followed by The Now & Contemporary Evening Auction at 7:00 PM EDT. We will conclude the week with our Contemporary Day sale which begins at 9:00 AM EDT on Friday 15 May.
Interested in learning more and bidding in the sales? See below for the highlights you absolutely shouldn’t miss.
Robert E. Mnuchin spent decades as an investment banker before retiring and turning his full attention to art, as both a dealer and collector. Robert Mnuchin: Collector at Heart is a curated selection of exceptional pieces from his personal collection with a combined estimate exceeding $130 million.
Built over several decades with his wife Adriana, the collection on offer reflects the art and artists that were deeply personal to Mnuchin, embodying his belief that “the reason to buy art is because you love it, you love it, you love it” (The New York Times). The collection includes exquisite pieces from Mark Rothko, Franz Kline and Willem de Kooning, artists who Mnuchin championed in his own gallery program. The sale is led by Mark Rothko’s Brown and Blacks in Reds (1957), estimated at 70-100 million USD.
Andy Warhol created this Brigitte Bardot portrait in 1974 at the request of her husband from 1966-69, Gunter Sachs. Working from a 1959 Richard Avedon photograph, Warhol produced a set of eight of his signature silkscreened paintings.
It captures a moment when art, glamour, romance and fame collided—marking Bardot’s hypnotic appeal. Warhol, already obsessed with the machinery of fame, found in Bardot exactly the mythological celebrity that he yearned to create. The painting held a permanent place in Sachs’ collection for over fifty years and has never before appeared at auction.
By the mid-1970s, Willem de Kooning had already established himself as one of the defining artists of the 20th century. Yet Untitled III (1975) reflects a painter still evolving and embracing a style that feels more fluid and open. Created after his move to East Hampton, the work draws from the surrounding landscape, with its shifting light, water, atmosphere and sweeping forms. In this painting, decades of experimentation come together in one place.
Fragments of the figure appear and disappear within layers of radiant color, and the surface carries a sense of immediacy as though the paint itself remains in motion. Untitled III stands as a striking example of late-career renewal, where confidence and spontaneity co-exist.
Museum Security (Broadway Meltdown) made its debut at the artist’s historic solo exhibition at Larry Gagosian Gallery, Los Angeles in 1983, one in a suite of 12 monumental canvases all created that year. One of the most complex in this seminal group, the work has since graced some of the most distinguished institutions and famous exhibitions around the world, from the seminal 2010-11 retrospective at the Fondation Beyeler in Riehen and Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris, a five year long-term loan to the Fondation Beyeler from 2014-18, an exhibition at the Salon d'Honneur in Basel, the monumental survey exhibition at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris in 2019, the Basquiat presentation at the Brant Foundation, New York in 2019, the acclaimed Jean-Michel Basquiat: Made on Market Street show at Gagosian Los Angeles in 2024, to the recent exhibition at the Zaha Hadid-designed Dongdaemun Design Plaza Museum in Seoul in 2025-26, where this work was reproduced on the front cover of the exhibition catalogue.
Painted in 1964, Roy Lichtenstein’s Girl in Mirror is one of the artist’s most iconic images of his celebrated blonde heroines, capturing the visual language that came to define Pop Art.
Executed in porcelain enamel on steel, Girl in Mirror features Lichtenstein’s Ben-Day dots and graphic precision. The composition centers on a blonde figure gazing into a handheld mirror, yet the viewer encounters her only through her reflection.
The painting is set to become the highest-valued work ever offered in a day sale at Sotheby’s.
A rare group of works by Keith Haring from the collection of Kermit Oswald offers an intimate perspective on the artist’s life. Preserved in Oswald’s private collection for decades, many of the works were gifts from Haring during the 1970s and 80s, reflecting a friendship that began in childhood.
Among the highlights of the evening sale is one of only six known self-portraits on canvas ever created by Haring. The day sale presents a hand-painted crib and dresser made for Oswald’s first child. The collection offers a rare opportunity to experience Haring’s work through the relationships and experiences that shaped his life.
