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Extraordinary Highlights from the New York Sales
On view in Sotheby’s New York galleries May 2-16, The New York Sales feature hundreds of works spanning three centuries of art.
T his spring’s biggest auctions, Sotheby’s New York Sales are on view May 2-16. Across six auctions, hundreds of works of art spanning the 19th-21st centuries, will feature the very best examples of critical aesthetic developments, from Impressionism to Abstract Expressionism and beyond.
Read on for just a slice of what’s on offer this year.
Marquee week begins on May 13 with a highly anticipated auction of Modern art.
The Modern Evening Auction will feature masterpieces by Alberto Giacometti, Pablo Picasso, René Magritte, Paul Signac, Georgia O’Keeffe and more.
Alberto Giacometti, ‘Grande tête mince’
Grande tête mince is a sculptural masterpiece by Alberto Giacometti – an arresting, hand-painted bust of his brother, Diego, that distills decades of exploration into perception, presence and form. Simultaneously intimate and universal, it captures Giacometti’s lifelong quest to depict the elusive “truth” of seeing. Its striking silhouette – knife-blade thin from the front, powerfully dimensional in profile – creates a visual tension that demands both distance and closeness. The richly worked, uniquely painted surface, with tones of black, brown and gray, enhances its haunting immediacy. A pinnacle of Giacometti’s mature style, this sculpture stands alongside L’Homme qui marche and L’Homme au doigt as a defining icon of 20th-century art.
Pablo Picasso, ‘Homme assis’
Created during the late apogee of Pablo Picasso’s life, Homme assis is a bold testament to the artist’s enduring vigor and inventiveness. Inspired by Alexandre Dumas’ The Three Musketeers and Old Masters like Rembrandt and Velázquez ,as well as the radiant light of the Mediterranean, the painting merges personal memory with painterly abstraction. Its vivid palette, graphic composition and symbolic musketeer avatar reflect Picasso’s confrontation with mortality and his embrace of legacy. Exhibited at the Palais des Papes in 1970, the work exemplifies the spontaneous brilliance of his late period – where raw expression and energy triumphed. As Picasso said, “I have less and less time, and I have more and more to say.”
Paul Signac, ‘Saint-Georges. Couchant (Venise)’
Paul Signac’s Great-Granddaughter's Emotional Reunion with His Masterpiece
A masterpiece of Paul Signac’s celebrated Venetian series, Saint-Georges. Couchant (Venise) captures the golden light of San Giorgio Maggiore at sunset. Painted in 1905, the work exemplifies Signac’s mature Neo-Impressionist technique: bold, mosaic-like brushstrokes and radiant color harmonies. Departing from strict Divisionism, Signac infused the canvas with expressive freedom and shimmering luminosity, aligning himself with past Venetian masters while pushing modern painting forward.
Fernand Léger ‘La Jeune fille au bouquet’
Striking a perfect balance between figuration and abstraction, La Jeune fille au bouquet exemplifies Fernand Léger’s unique postwar style: bold, modern and deeply human. Painted in 1921, the work merges classical composure with industrial dynamism, distilling form and color to their essentials. Beyond its artistic achievement, this canvas holds a remarkable provenance – looted by the Nazis in 1940, recovered through Rose Valland’s heroic Resistance efforts and restituted to its rightful owner in 1947, La Jeune fille au bouquet has been preserved in a distinguished private collection for nearly seven decades.
Rene Magritte, ‘La Traversée difficile’
An Eye-Opening Look at René Magritte’s 'La Traversée difficile'
René Magritte’s La Traversée difficile is a masterwork of visual paradox, interrogating perception through the unsettling fusion of the known and unknown. Reprising and transforming the artist’s earlier motifs, the painting contrasts a suited figure – an allusion to Magritte’s famed bowler-hatted men – with a turbulent sea and a totemic bilboquet, dissolving the boundary between human and object, dream and reality. Anchored by a cyclopic eye in place of a head, the central figure becomes a cipher for Magritte’s lifelong fascination with vision as both revelation and obstruction – a striking embodiment of the Surrealist pursuit to probe what lies behind appearances.
Wassily Kandinsky, ‘Studie für Improvisation 10’
Studie für Improvisation 10 (Study for Improvisation 10) from 1910 marks a crucial moment in Wassily Kandinsky’s evolution toward pure abstraction. Among the important group of Improvisation paintings, which the artist considered to be among his most important experimental works, the present work is a study for Improvisation 10, now in the collection of the Fondation Beyeler, Basel. Achieving the artist’s most beloved figurative landscape motifs with his revolutionary mode of abstraction, Studie für Improvisation 10 (Study for Improvisation 10) is a powerful illustration of Kandinsky’s pioneering pictorial language.
Théo van Rysselberghe, ‘Flottille d’Arnemuiden’
Executed in 1896, the luminous Flottille d’Arnemuiden stands at the height of Théo van Rysselberghe's Neo-Impressionist oeuvre, illustrating the pivotal moment of transition between the artist’s Pointillist methods, informed by the likes of Georges Seurat and Paul Signac, and the more dynamic, elongated brushwork that defines his mature output. The seascape is among the most venerated motifs within van Rysselberghe’s body of work, and this Flemish subject matter – the coast along Arnemuiden, a town in the Netherlands near his native Ghent – alludes to both his heritage and an Impressionist inclination towards atmosphere.
Sotheby’s presentation of modern art continues with a day auction on May 14.
The Modern Day Auction will feature approximately 170 works drawing together a century of painting, drawing and sculpture across Europe and the Americas.
René Magritte, ‘Portrait d’Arlette Magritte’
René Magritte’s portrait of his niece Arlette is a splendid depiction of beauty in full bloom. Arlette’s youthful glow permeates the surrounding landscape, while the artist’s delicate, yet disparate pictorial motifs – the bilboquet, glass and rose – position the work as an unmistakably surrealist subversion of traditional female portraiture.
Rufino Tamayo, ‘Ramo de geranios’
Dominated by a searing palette of vermilion, rust and charcoal, Rufino Tamayo’s Ramo de geranios radiates symbolic resonance and chromatic intensity. A futuristic couple clasp hands in an open interior, while the table and geraniums before them conjure the warmth and tenderness of domestic life. The work is a consummate culmination of Tamayo’s quest to universalize emotion through geometric form.
Pablo Picasso, ‘Paysage’
In Paysage, Pablo Picasso deliberately distorts perspective, isolating and elevating each element of the composition while simultaneously enveloping the viewer in an abstracted, yet distinctly Mediterranean landscape. Surreal, swirling lines draw the eye into an almost otherworldly terrain while flattened, abstracted forms echo the dramatic expressionism of El Greco’s brooding skies and the turbulence of Van Gogh’s twisting cypresses.
Henri Matisse, ‘Nu au drapé’
In Nu au drapé Henri Matisse is particularly concerned with the mass and balance of the body depicted in contrapposto. With the counterbalance of her hip accentuated by the deep fold of her torso, the model strikes a pose reminiscent of Renaissance sculpture. In the present painting, the dynamic twisting movement and strong modeling show how indebted Matisse was to his early experience as a sculptor in his renderings of the nude in two-dimensional form.
Edward Hopper, ‘Spurwink Church’
Edward Hopper’s Spurwink Church dates to the artist’s time in Cape Elizabeth, ME during the summer of 1927. The artist spent nine consecutive summers in small coastal towns in Maine, documenting quiet moments of solitude. He first began painting in watercolor in 1923 as he grew increasingly fond of illustrating his subjects en plein air, where the fluidity of the medium allowed him to capture the rapidly changing effects of light on these striking coastal subjects.
On May 15, an auction dedicated to the visionary dealer Barbara Gladstone will feature works by Richard Prince, Rudolf Stingel, Mike Kelley and more from her cherished personal collection.
Barbara Gladstone was trusted steward of a new international artistic vanguard, and her enduring legacy remains as multifaceted and far-reaching as the artists she represented as a gallerist. Selections from The Collection of Barbara Gladstone encapsulates her visionary spirit and profound impact on the creative output of our time.
Richard Prince, ‘Man Crazy Nurse’
Set against a flaming vermilion background, emblazoned with gestural strokes of yellow and gushing drips of white pigment, Richard Prince’s Man Crazy Nurse is a seminal example of the artist’s celebrated body of Nurse paintings. Prince’s female protagonist, screenprinted from the cover art of a midcentury pulp fiction romance novella, explores and exploits the melodramatic femme-fatale stereotype, encapsulating the audacious subversion of authorship, identity and authenticity at the heart of Prince’s practice. The series marks a climax in the narrative arc of Prince’s conceptual program, which begins with his iconic Cowboys in the 1980s, through which the artist contends with notions of originality through appropriation and witty interrogations of mythical cultural archetypes.
Andy Warhol, ‘Flowers’
Andy Warhol’s Flowers rank among the artist’s most significant and recognizable motifs, created during the first decade of the artist’s production. The coloration of the present work makes it a particularly rare and desirable example; it is one of only four recorded examples featuring black flowers on a green ground. Testament to the motif’s centrality within the artist’s practice, Warhol chose this subject to represent his debut exhibition with Leo Castelli Gallery in 1964, which was a landmark, sell-out show that was legendary in the history of American Pop Art. Flowers extends a storied art historical lineage from Dutch still lifes to Claude Monet’s waterlilies to Vincent van Gogh’s sunflowers.
Richard Prince, ‘Are You Kidding?’
Are You Kidding? is a paradigmatic example of the deadpan, candid satire that defines Richard Prince’s iconic Joke paintings. Yellow sans-serif text stretches edge to edge across the canvas, situating a blunt joke in a cobalt monochrome expanse. Prince began his Joke series in 1985 during a five-month stay in Los Angeles. The artist soon moved from the handwritten reproductions of jokes from his earlier works to silkscreen paintings on canvas, wryly asserting “low” culture into the “high art” backdrop and expanding his exploration of the categorically quotidian subject on the proverbial canvas.
Rudolf Stingel, ‘Untitled (Bolego)’
Intimate in scale, Untitled (Bolego) from 2006 is an exceptional example of Rudolf Stingel’s conceptual rigor and technical mastery. The present work is part of one of the artist’s most iconic series of self-portraits, a suite of monochromatic, photorealistic paintings based on photographs taken by Stingel’s friend Roland Bolego. Meticulously reworking Bolego’s photographs in oil paint, Stingel interrogates the historically intertwined relationship between photography and painting, introducing a contemporary perspective on the art historical tradition of self-portraiture, while also furthering his career-long exploration of authorship and artmaking.
Elizabeth Peyton, ‘What Wondrous Thing Do I See…’
What Wondrous Thing Do I See… (Lohengrin, Jonas Kaufmann) is a luminous portrayal of a scene from Richard Wagner’s opera Lohengrin. One of the most influential figurative artists working today, Peyton is celebrated for her paintings of cultural icons and close friends that have been lauded for reinvigorating the genre of portraiture. The present work’s tender and observant gaze underscores the artist’s dedication to unearthing the profound essence that lies behind her often famous subjects. Closing in on the two sitters, cropping out their surroundings, and focusing on the moment they meet for a kiss, Peyton distills emotive potential into the 9-by-11-inch picture frame, urging us to gaze into a moment of love forever frozen in time.
Also taking place on May 15 is a landmark auction of radical mid-century Italian and American artworks from the personal collection of Daniella Luxembourg.
Im Spazio: The Space of Thoughts charts a powerful transatlantic story featuring works by Lucio Fontana, Alberto Burri, Alexander Calder and others from the visionary gallerist, dealer and advisor’s private collection.
Lucio Fontana, ‘Concetto Spaziale, La Fine di Dio’
Through lacerated cavities, impassioned apertures and the ghost of the artist’s own hand clawing at the canvas, Lucio Fontana plumbs the absolute limits of painting as he assails the burnished bronze of Concetto spaziale, La fine di Dio’s lustrous surface, thus asserting his most powerful contribution to 20th century art: the rupture of the picture plane. Executed in 1963, the present work ranks among the most significant of La fine di Dio, or “The End of God,” paintings, which represent the utter apex of his artistic enterprise. Of the 38 works in the series, Concetto spaziale, La fine di Dio is the third to be recorded in the artist’s catalogue raisonné, and is one of just 10 rarified examples executed with glitter – others of which reside in the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, and Fondazione Lucio Fontana, Milan.
Claes Oldenburg, ‘Soft Switches’
In Claes Oldenburg’s radical Soft Switches from 1964/69, the artist renders a quintessential modern household technological fixture obsolete through a seemingly malleable, organic and strikingly anthropomorphic three-dimensional embodiment. Soft Switches is among the most exceptional manifestations of Oldenburg’s revolutionary deconstruction of the hegemony of sculpture through iconizing ordinary objects. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, against the grain of the dominating Abstract Expressionist movement, Oldenburg rejected abstraction in favor of an idiosyncratic exploration of archetypes of the mundane. Soft Switches is a paradigmatic example of the artist’s seminal early works, encapsulating Oldenburg’s refashioning of quotidian functional objects into artifacts of an impending bygone era, imbued with emotional resonance.
Alexander Calder, ‘Armada’
Triumphantly exhibited in Alexander Calder’s seminal 1947 exhibition at Bucholz Gallery, NY, Armada from 1946 is an early and important example of the artist’s corpus of mobiles, representing Calder’s celebrated return to working freely with sheet metal after the conclusion of World War II. Famously pictured with the artist in an iconic photograph by Herbert Matter, the present work is a feat of construction and complexity of form, as a fleet of matte-black elements surging along a meridian of scarlet rods: the weight, gravity and intensity of Armada’s abstract elements channel the strength and naval fortitude of its very namesake. Armada also bears exceptional provenance, having formerly belonged in the permanent collection of the Minneapolis Institute of Art before residing in the distinguished collection of French filmmaker Claude Berri. Held for the last two decades in the personal collection of Daniella Luxembourg, Armada ranks among the most arresting of Calder’s creations, summoning his proficiency and intuitive vision.
Michelangelo Pistoletto, ‘Maria nuda’
Michelangelo Pistoletto’s Maria nuda exemplifies the conceptual rigor and poetic resonance of the artist's iconic Quadri specchianti, or Mirror Paintings. Created in 1969, a pivotal year in the artist’s career, Maria nuda depicts Maria Pioppi, Pistoletto’s muse and partner, in a pose reminiscent of classical art historical precedents like Titian’s Venus of Urbino, Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres’s La Grande Odalisque or Édouard Manet’s Olympia.
Alberto Burri, ‘Nero Cretto’
A monumental expanse of obsidian black splintering before the viewer, obliterating its own image, Alberto Burri’s Nero Cretto from 1976 offers neither picture nor portal, instead exploring the poetics of material degradation in an ingenious act of creative invention. Spanning 2.5 meters in width, the incredible monumentality of Nero Cretto invites its spectator to revel in its calamitous surface, scored into thirds as if summoning the format of Renaissance triptychs and altarpieces. The present work ranks among the most impressive and dramatic of Burri’s Cretti paintings, belonging to a rare and limited group of 38 large-scale examples which measure more than 100 centimeters on both sides.
The Now and Contemporary Evening Auction on May 15 will present masterworks from the latter half of the 20th century through to the present in a unified platform.
The Now and Contemporary Evening Auction will feature works by Jean-Michel Basquiat, Frank Stella, Robert Rauschenberg and more.
Lee Krasner, ‘August Petals’
A captivating tour-de-force teeming with explosive gestures, vivid hues and emotional intent, Lee Krasner’s August Petals epitomizes the artistic revelation that overtook Krasner following a period of extraordinary hardship. Painted in 1963 – directly preceded by Krasner’s groundbreaking Umber paintings, a series fraught with emotional turmoil following the sudden loss of her husband, Jackson Pollock, and her mother – the present work marked a pivotal turning point, both personal and artistic, during which she embarked on a series with the same intense psychic intensity but liberated from the underlying trauma which infused them. August Petals is among a limited suite of 11 paintings that Krasner produced that reveal the renewed inspiration she found in nature during this emotionally trying period.
Jean-Michel Basquiat, ‘Untitled’
Unlock the Mythology Hidden in Basquiat’s 'Untitled' (1981)
An incendiary image of warrior, deity, artist, and hero erupts in technicolor in Untitled, in which Jean-Michel Basquiat prophetically manifests the invention, innovation and staggering appetite for creation that would drive the rest of his career. Executed in 1981, the critical year which heralded his ascent from SAMO, the street provocateur, to the prodigy of the mainstream art world – during which time he also began producing artworks under his own name – Untitled powerfully asserts the clairvoyant vision of a figure predicting their own victory: aflame, unblinking and crowned with a triumphal laurel wreath.
Ed Ruscha, ‘That Was Then This Is Now’
Radiating above a celestial yet portent cloudy sky, Ed Ruscha’s iconic and enigmatic text “THAT WAS THEN THIS IS NOW” thunders across the canvas, evoking the cinematic climax of the transient instance between past and present. In an arresting theatrical crescendo, Ruscha masterfully elicits a moment of revolution: glowing white sunlight emanates from behind clusters of stormy clouds, dramatically illuminating an ethereal promise of hope and transformation. Ruscha’s titular phrase epitomizes a central conceptual concern of the artist’s practice: the enduring friction between nostalgia and reality, before and after, past and present. Executed in 1989, That Was Then This Is Now belongs to a seminal and limited group of sfumato skies painted between 1988-90, including Hell Heaven and Do Az I Do, which provide a conceptual counterpart to the artist’s earlier burning sunrise-sunset paintings of the 70s and 80s.
Adrian Ghenie, ‘Alpine Retreat 2’
Haunted by the surreal presence of a monumental head lurking above, the protagonist of Adrian Ghenie’s Alpine Retreat 2 lies in repose, only to be obliterated by his signature drags of cerulean, white and scarlet paint. Executed in 2017, the present work is the sister painting to The Alpine Retreat, which dates to the year prior and today resides in the collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Together, these works see the artist’s facture, psychological inquiry and revisionist reconsiderations reach their apogee, representing the apex of Ghenie’s uncompromising subversions of 20th-century history painting – a subject that served as the focus of the artist’s critically acclaimed presentation at the 56th Venice Biennale in 2015. The present work depicts an anachronistically pregnant Eva Braun, Adolf Hitler’s mistress, at their Bavarian mountain chalet.
Michael Armitage, ‘Mpeketoni’
Coruscating, jewel-toned passages of crimson, violet and turquoise pool together to form the figures and foliage of Michael Armitage’s verdant junglescape, Mpeketoni. With its title referencing the name of a town in his native Kenya, Mpeketoni advances Armitage’s layered assessments of localized violence, contemporary experience, the art historical canon and East African culture. Showcasing Armitage’s signature use of Lubugo cloth and his nuanced facture and modulations of color, Mpeketoni probes the nature of tragedy and art’s ability to engender a site for healing. His courage, candor and incontestable technical proficiency have earned Armitage fierce institutional interest and several important traveling mid-career surveys, most notably his 2020 exhibition “Michael Armitage: Paradise Edict” at the Royal Academy of Arts, London and Haus der Kunst, Munich as well has his 2022 exhibition “You, Who Are Still Alive” at the Kunsthalle Basel.
Marquee week will conclude on May 16 with a day sale dedicated to contemporary art.
The Contemporary Day Auction will include a selection of Roy Lichtenstein works from the artist’s personal collection, alongside other critically acclaimed artists of the 20th and 21st centuries, including Alexander Calder, Joan Mitchell, David Hockney and George Condo.
David Hockney, ‘Terrace Hollywood Hills House with Banana Tree’
Terrace Hollywood Hills House with Banana Tree from 1982 exemplifies David Hockney’s California period, blending vibrant color, fragmented perspective and theatrical composition to depict the interplay of indoor and outdoor life in Los Angeles. Influenced by stage design, Cubism and artists like Matisse, the painting merges personal memory with formal experimentation. Lush vegetation, bold architectural forms and Hockey’s signature pool imagery evoke both the physical landscape and emotional essence of Southern California. A highlight of the lauded exhibition Hockney Paints the Stage from 1983, the work encapsulates Hockney’s modernist vision and enduring fascination with light, space, and visual storytelling.
Alexander Calder, ‘20 White in 20 Inches’
20 White in 20 Inches is a masterful example of Alexander Calder’s kinetic sculpture, created during a pivotal decade of global recognition. Featuring 20 white elements within a compact vertical frame, the mobile exemplifies Calder’s innovation through motion, minimalism and spatial harmony. The present work has never before been seen, having remained in the family of the original owner, who commissioned the work directly from Alexander Calder. Echoing his Snow Flurry series and drawing on the monochrome legacy of Malevich and Mondrian, the present work embodies Calder’s vision of sculpture as dynamic and atmospheric, reinforcing his legacy as a pioneer of motion in modern art.
Sam Gilliam, ‘Ray II’
Sam Gilliam’s Ray II exemplifies his groundbreaking fusion of painting and sculpture through his signature beveled-edge technique. Created in 1970, the work explodes with vibrant, prismatic color and three-dimensional presence, challenging traditional expectations of African American art and the flatness of the canvas. Using poured, folded acrylics, Gilliam harnessed gravity and gesture to create luminous, tactile surfaces. Ray II transforms painting into a spatial experience, immersing viewers in a dynamic interplay of color, form and movement – affirming Gilliam’s legacy as a pioneering figure in postwar abstraction and a radical innovator of the medium.
Avery Singer, ‘Kundry’
Avery Singer’s Kundry reimagines Richard Wagner’s mythic heroine from the 19th-century opera Parsifal as a luminous, sword-wielding avatar, suspended in a digitally rendered grid. Fusing 3D modeling software with airbrushed precision, Singer blurs the lines between painting and technology, illusion and material. A highlight of her 2018 solo show Days of the Week (Computer Pain), Kundry exemplifies Singer’s pioneering aesthetic – where classical archetypes and digital artifice converge to redefine narrative in the age of the screen.
George Condo, ‘The Endless Journey’
George Condo’s The Endless Journey from 2022 is a monumental example of the artist’s style of psychological Cubism, blending abstraction and figuration to depict the complexities of the human mind. The painting’s dense, chaotic forms and jarring color palette evoke emotional and perceptual instability. With its hallucinatory quality, the work reflects Condo’s ongoing examination of identity, perception and internal states. The title suggests an unresolved, perpetual transformation, while the fragmented figure speaks to the tensions between order and chaos. The Endless Journey represents Condo’s mastery in blending historical influences with contemporary psychological depth.
