Sotheby’s Exclusive Editions continues with Raymond Pettibon, one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary American art. Emerging from the Southern California punk scene of the 1980s, Pettibon first became known for drawings and graphics associated with bands including Black Flag and Sonic Youth before establishing an internationally recognized art practice. His influential oeuvre reaches far beyond those origins, drawing on literature, art history, politics, religion, sports, popular culture and other strands of American iconography. Throughout it all, image and language remain inseparable.
Among the many subjects Pettibon has returned to throughout his career, the ocean and the solitary surfer have become some of his most recognizable. First appearing in his work in the mid-1980s, towering waves place small human figures against immense and unpredictable forces of nature. They are far more than surfing scenes. Pettibon uses shifts in scale, expressive mark-making and fragments of language to turn the encounter between surfer and wave into something psychological, at times evoking bravery, vulnerability, ambition and the limits of human control.
For Sotheby’s Exclusive Editions, Pettibon revisits this important strand of his practice with three new works: No Title (What is the…), No Title (As she turn’d…) and No Title (But the sand…). Developed with LITO Editions as a strategic collaborator, the works are produced using LITO Hi-Rnd© technology on anodized and mirrored aluminium, allowing texture, relief, color and reflection to become part of the composition itself. Each is signed and numbered by Pettibon and released in a tightly limited edition, offering collectors a new way to engage with imagery that has occupied the artist for more than four decades.
| Category | What to Know |
|---|---|
| What Are Exclusive Editions | Limited edition artworks created in close collaboration with leading contemporary artists and available only through Sotheby’s |
| Featured Artist | Raymond Pettibon presents No Title (What is the…), No Title (As she turn’d…) and No Title (But the sand…), three new works rooted in his wave and surfer imagery |
| Why Editions Matter | They provide another point of access to works by major contemporary artists while remaining a distinct collecting category from unique works |
| Production | Created in close collaboration with the artist and produced and co-published with LITO with exceptional attention to texture, relief, and color |
| Edition Size | No Title (What is the…) and No Title (As she turn’d…) are editions of 15; No Title (But the sand…) is an edition of 25 |
| Medium and Materials | LITO Hi-Rnd© technology prints on anodized or mirrored aluminium, incorporating texture, relief, color and reflective effects |
| Collector Appeal | Signed and numbered by Raymond Pettibon, available exclusively through Sotheby’s and |
Long before Raymond Pettibon’s drawings entered major museum collections, his imagery circulated through the underground culture of Southern California. Born in Tucson, Arizona, in 1957, Pettibon studied economics at the University of California, Los Angeles before becoming closely associated with the punk scene that emerged around Los Angeles during the late 1970s and 1980s. His graphics, posters and album artwork for bands including Black Flag and Sonic Youth introduced an uncompromising visual language that was immediately recognizable. Yet defining Pettibon through punk alone misses the breadth of the artist he would become.
Drawing has remained at the center of Pettibon’s work, often pairing fluid, expressive imagery with handwritten fragments of language. Words are not simply captions. They can redirect an image, contradict it or open another possible interpretation altogether. Pettibon moves between his own writing and language drawn from mass media and literature, with references ranging from William Blake and Walt Whitman to Marcel Proust and John Ruskin. The relationship between what is seen and what is read rarely resolves neatly, giving his drawings much of their tension and ambiguity.
That openness extends across Pettibon’s oeuvre. Politics, religion, sports, trains, literature, popular culture and the ocean can all enter his work, sometimes carrying the visual immediacy of the alternative culture from which he emerged and elsewhere taking on a more literary or introspective register. His work has been the subject of major museum exhibitions, including the 2017 survey Raymond Pettibon: A Pen of All Work at the New Museum in New York, and is held in collections including The Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, Tate, Centre Pompidou and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
Institutional recognition has been accompanied by significant collector demand. In November 2025, No Title (Preparing the Ground), a monumental pen, ink and gouache work on paper executed in 2002, sold for $2.7M USD at Sotheby's. Measuring more than seven feet high, the work demonstrates how Pettibon’s drawing practice can move far beyond the intimacy traditionally associated with works on paper while retaining the expressive line and immediacy central to his work.
More recently, No Title (There was no...), a 1998 ink and watercolor on paper, sold for $486K USD in May 2026. Considerably smaller in scale, the work provides another indication of collector interest in Pettibon’s primary works across different formats and periods of his career.
While unique works and limited editions occupy distinct positions within the artist’s market, these results provide useful context for collectors approaching Pettibon today. With significant works on paper reaching six- and seven-figure prices, signed and numbered editions can provide a more accessible way to engage with his practice. That opportunity becomes particularly meaningful when an edition draws from imagery deeply connected to the artist’s career, as is the case with the ocean and solitary surfer that anchor Pettibon’s new Sotheby’s Exclusive Editions.
Among the many subjects Raymond Pettibon has explored throughout his career, the ocean and the solitary surfer have become some of his most recognizable. Pettibon began developing his wave imagery in the mid-1980s, returning repeatedly to the dramatic relationship between a lone figure and the immense body of water surrounding them. The subject draws naturally from the visual culture of Southern California, yet in Pettibon’s hands it becomes something far more psychologically charged than a straightforward depiction of surfing.
Scale is central to these works. Surfers often appear remarkably small against towering, curling waves, creating an uneasy balance between control and vulnerability. Pettibon’s expressive mark-making gives the water a sense of movement and unpredictability, while fragments of handwritten text can complicate the scene further, shifting its meaning between observation, poetry and introspection. The ocean becomes both a physical force and a space onto which ideas about isolation, freedom and human ambition can be projected.
Pettibon has continued to revisit the motif over several decades, allowing the wave to evolve while remaining immediately connected to his broader visual language. That history gives the subject particular significance within his practice and provides the foundation for his three new Sotheby’s Exclusive Editions: No Title (What is the…), No Title (As she turn’d…) and No Title (But the sand…). Rather than reproducing a single earlier work, the editions extend Pettibon’s longstanding engagement with the ocean through new compositions, materials and surfaces.
Created for Sotheby’s Exclusive Editions, No Title (What is the…), No Title (As she turn’d…) and No Title (But the sand…) bring together three new works rooted in Pettibon’s decades-long exploration of the ocean and the solitary surfer. Across the series, waves rise dramatically around small human figures, while Pettibon’s characteristic combination of expressive mark-making, vibrant color and language carries through each composition. Differences in scale and surface, however, give the three works distinctly different physical presences.
The two larger editions, No Title (What is the…) and No Title (As she turn’d…), measure approximately 55.12 by 31.15 inches, giving Pettibon’s waves an imposing physical scale. In No Title (What is the…), the image is realized on anodized aluminium, a surface that lends the work a distinct material quality while allowing the intensity of the composition and color to remain at the forefront. Produced in an edition of just 15, the work translates imagery closely associated with Pettibon’s drawings into a format with considerably greater physical presence.
Also produced in an edition of 15, No Title (As she turn’d…) uses mirrored aluminium to create a different relationship between the artwork and its surroundings. Reflection becomes part of the viewing experience, shifting with changes in light, perspective and environment. The effect is particularly resonant with Pettibon’s ocean imagery: a subject already defined by movement becomes visually responsive to the space in which the work is seen.
No Title (But the sand…) approaches the motif at a more intimate scale. Measuring approximately 16.19 by 10.35 inches and produced on anodized aluminium, the work brings the immediacy associated with Pettibon’s works on paper into closer focus. Its smaller proportions create a more concentrated encounter with the imagery while retaining the expressive line, color and sense of movement that connect the series. The work is issued in a limited edition of 25.
Seen together, the three editions demonstrate how a subject Pettibon has explored since the 1980s can continue to shift through changes in scale, material and presentation. They are not reproductions of a single historical composition, but new works that extend one of the artist’s most recognizable bodies of imagery into a different material context. Developed with LITO Editions as a strategic collaborator and available exclusively through Sotheby’s, each work is signed and numbered by Pettibon and produced in a tightly controlled edition.
Translating Pettibon’s waves into edition form presents an unusual challenge: much of their energy comes from the immediacy of his line. Sweeping marks suggest water in motion, while dramatic shifts in scale make the surfer appear almost precarious within the composition. In the three Exclusive Editions, that sense of movement is carried beyond the image itself and into the physical surface of the work.
Produced using LITO’s Hi-Rnd© technology, the editions introduce texture, relief, color and surface into Pettibon’s imagery. Rather than functioning as conventional flat prints, the works use the physical qualities of their supports as part of the composition, creating a more tactile relationship between image and object.
The choice of material pushes that relationship further. Anodized aluminium gives No Title (What is the…) and No Title (But the sand…) a distinct surface quality, while the mirrored aluminium of No Title (As she turn’d…) introduces reflection directly into the viewing experience. Light moves across the works as the viewer changes position, subtly altering how each composition is perceived. For imagery built around the shifting force of water, that responsiveness adds another layer of visual movement.
Developed with LITO Editions as a strategic collaborator, the three works bring a new material approach to imagery that has occupied Pettibon for more than four decades. Scale, surface and reflection allow the wave and surfer motif to be experienced differently here, without losing the expressive immediacy that has made it such a defining part of his oeuvre.
For many collectors, editions have become another way to build a meaningful relationship with an artist’s practice. Unique works are finite by nature, and many significant examples eventually move into museums or private collections where they may remain for decades. A carefully conceived edition expands the opportunity to collect an artist without attempting to replicate the position of a one-of-a-kind work.
That distinction is particularly relevant for artists such as Raymond Pettibon, whose significant primary works can command prices from approximately $200,000 into the higher six figures and beyond. A limited edition occupies another position within that market, often at a more accessible price point while retaining a direct connection to the artist through authorship, involvement and signature. The significance of an edition can also depend on the imagery it explores, its scarcity, materials and the quality of its execution.
Collectors approach the category from different directions. Someone beginning a contemporary art collection may encounter an important artist through an edition before considering a unique work, while an established collector may use editions to broaden an existing group of works by an artist they already follow. Increasingly, the two formats sit comfortably alongside one another, reflecting different aspects of the same practice.
Pettibon’s three Exclusive Editions fit naturally within this context. Developed as new works around imagery with a long history in his practice and released in tightly controlled numbers, they offer another way to collect the artist at the primary market stage. Their significance lies not in standing in for Pettibon’s unique works, but in extending his visual language into a distinct edition format created specifically for this release.
An edition begins with an artistic idea, but its success ultimately depends on how convincingly that idea survives the transition into physical form. Sotheby’s Exclusive Editions is built around close collaboration with the artist, with materials, surface, scale and production considered in relation to the individual practice. There is no single visual formula for the series; the format changes according to what matters most in the artist’s work.
Working with LITO Editions as a strategic collaborator, the series pairs Sotheby’s curatorial perspective with LITO’s technical expertise and proprietary Hi-Rnd© technology. Texture, relief, reflection and color can therefore be approached differently from one release to the next. The objective is not to impose a shared aesthetic, but to find a material language appropriate to each artist.
That range can already be seen across Sotheby’s Exclusive Editions. Kehinde Wiley’s portraiture was reimagined through mirrored surfaces and engraved details, while Oscar Murillo’s Mango emphasized the dense, materially worked qualities associated with his early “word paintings.” Peter Halley’s Rebus I and Rebus IV translated the texture, fluorescent color and physical depth of his Cell Grid paintings into edition form. Pettibon takes the series somewhere different again, pairing the energy of his wave imagery with anodized and mirrored aluminium surfaces that respond to light and their surroundings.
What connects these releases is not a particular material or technique, but the attention given to the qualities that make each artist’s work distinctive. Developed with the artist and released in tightly controlled numbers, the editions are conceived as fully realized works with their own physical presence. For collectors, that combination of artistic involvement, technical precision and considered production is central to the approach behind Sotheby’s Exclusive Editions.
Sotheby’s Exclusive Editions offers collectors the opportunity to acquire works developed in close collaboration with leading contemporary artists and produced and co-published with LITO Editions, available exclusively through Sotheby’s. The series brings together limited availability, artist involvement and a production approach tailored to each release. For collectors, the series provides an opportunity to acquire signed and numbered primary market works at their earliest stage of availability.
With Raymond Pettibon, that opportunity is anchored in a subject with four decades of history behind it. No Title (What is the…), No Title (As she turn’d…) and No Title (But the sand…) bring his waves and solitary surfers into a new material context through three tightly limited editions.
They add another chapter to a motif that has continually evolved within Pettibon’s oeuvre, offering collectors a new way to engage with the singular interplay of image, language and drawing that defines his work.
Sotheby's Exclusive Editions are limited edition artworks created in close collaboration with leading contemporary artists and produced and co-published with LITO. Each work is signed and numbered by the artist and is available exclusively through Sotheby’s, with edition sizes intentionally limited to ensure rarity, quality, and a close connection to the artist’s original vision.
Yes. Each edition is signed and numbered by Raymond Pettibon.
The editions are produced in tightly controlled numbers. No Title (What is the…) and No Title (As she turn’d…) are each limited to 15, while No Title (But the sand…) is issued in an edition of 25. At this scale, only a very small number of collectors will be able to acquire each work.
Yes. These editions are created in close collaboration with Raymond Pettibon and produced in strictly limited numbers. Because they are developed with the artist and signed and numbered, they are considered original editions and form part of Pettibon’s broader body of work. Within the contemporary art market, artist-authorized limited editions are an established and respected collecting category, particularly when produced in close collaboration with the artist and released in small edition sizes.
The works are produced using LITO’s proprietary Hi-Rnd© technology on aluminium rather than conventional paper. No Title (What is the…) and No Title (But the sand…) use anodized aluminium, while No Title (As she turn’d…) is produced on mirrored aluminium. The process brings texture, relief and color into the finished works, while the metal surfaces allow light and reflection to influence how they are experienced.
Sotheby's Exclusive Editions are defined by close collaboration with the artist, exceptional production quality, intentionally small edition sizes, and exclusive availability through Sotheby’s. Because these works are developed and released solely through Sotheby’s in collaboration with the artist, they represent a more limited and tightly controlled category of contemporary editions than traditional print releases.
Whether you are expanding an established collection of Raymond Pettibon’s work or acquiring one of his editions for the first time, Sotheby’s offers a trusted and seamless way to buy Exclusive Editions on the secondary market.
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