Browse a selection of modern discoveries coming to the auction block for the first time.

Auction Highlights

Browse highlights of the Modern Discoveries Auction hand-picked by our team of specialists.

Specialists’ Picks

Discover dream-like landscapes, uncanny scenes and <i>objet </i>of the theater inspired by Surrealist principles.<br>

Stepping into the Surreal

Explore diverse approaches to landscape painting by Impressionists and Post-Impressionists.

En plein air

From vivid gouaches to delicate etchings, explore a section of modern works on paper.

Tracing Modernism

New York

Sotheby's Modern Discoveries Auction brings together over a century of paintings, drawings and sculpture from across Europe and the Americas to display the best of the revolutionary avant-garde movements of the 19th and 20th centuries. Exemplified by rare drawings by Wassily Kandinsky and Gustav Klimt, gleaming canvases by Charles Camoin and Gustave Loiseau and mysterious surrealist objects by Leonor Fini and Antonio Gattorno, the Modern Discoveries Auction encapsulates the novel ways in which artists have dared to challenge tradition to shape the course of modern art.