T he Now and Contemporary Evening Auction in May 2026 will feature artworks which capture the paradigmatic artistic shifts of the latter half of the 20th century through to the present. Led by one of Jean-Michel Basquiat’s most significant paintings—Museum Security (Broadway Meltdown) from 1983—as well as a tranche of American and European masterworks by Mark Rothko, Lucio Fontana, Alexander Calder and more from the Collection of Jean & Terry de Gunzburg, The Now and Contemporary Evening Auction this spring features examples of extraordinary creative achievement from the last 80 years.
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Beginning with Postwar abstraction through to Minimalism, Pop, and into the critical postmodern inquiries from the 1980s to today, this radical new mode of art-making radically altered the course of art history. Spotlighting these developments within a unified platform, the masterworks of The Now and Contemporary Art Evening Sale call into focus the plurality of visions, identities and artistic innovations that reshaped the trajectory of art history as we know it. The sale is led by best-in-class examples by some of the most important names in art from the last century: Jean-Michel Basquiat, Andy Warhol, Willem de Kooning, and Roy Lichtenstein, among others.
One of the top highlights of the sale is Jean-Michel Basquiat's triumphal masterwork, Museum Security (Broadway Meltdown). Closely related to one of Basquiat's most recognizable and important paintings, Hollywood Africans, also executed in 1983 and now in the collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, Museum Security (Broadway Meltdown) ranks among the most significant works ever created by the artist. The work has graced some of the most distinguished institutions 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 2013-18, the monumental survey exhibition at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris in 2019, the Basquiat presentation at the Brant Foundation, New York in 2019, 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 cover of the exhibition catalogue.
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This Spring, Sotheby's will bring to auction a portrait of unthinkable glamour: Andy Warhol's Brigitte Bardot, from the Gunter Sachs collection. A mid-century cultural phenomenon, Bardot was among the most photographed women in the world, captivating the public with on screen and across the tabloid media as the epitome of stardom and glamour. The present work belongs to Warhol’s legendary series of eight Bardot portraits commissioned by Gunter Sachs, her husband from 1966-69. Here, Bardot’s radiant emerald visage entrances the viewer with a profound hypnotic intensity, her beguiling gaze immortalized by the camera’s flash. Elevated to the status of a modern-day goddess, Brigitte Bardot is the successor to Warhol’s earliest Pop heroine trinity—Marilyn Monroe, Jackie Kennedy and Liz Taylor—embodying Warhol’s ultimate artistic obsessions: celebrity and popular media.
A seminal series in Warhol’s inimitable pantheon, Warhol’s Brigitte Bardot paintings epitomize Warhol’s enduring obsession with the cult of celebrity in popular culture. Held in the Gunter Sachs’ collection for over fifty years and seldom seen in public, the present work is a treasured example within Warhol’s oeuvre. The painting powerfully encapsulates the revolutionization of the visual vernacular of painting at the core of Warhol’s conceptual project. Here, the glamorous European movie star transforms into not just a pop cultural symbol but is immortalized as a symbol of the fixation on and fetishization of fame in contemporary society. Warhol probes the paradigm of an icon’s status through a practice which feels ever more relevant in the present day.
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This May, Sotheby's is honored to present a selection of best-in-class examples from this seminal, celebrated period of Postwar abstraction, with true masterwork-caliber examples by Kenneth Noland, Helen Frankenthaler, Morris Louis, Alma Thomas, and more. From the intensely saturated target announced by Kenneth Noland's Circle, the towering expanse of ruby and celadon in Frankenthaler's rare and early Cape Orange, which was treasured by the artist in her personal collection, the Alma Thomas mandala painting Pinks of Cherry Blossoms, whose resplendent, dappled composition engenders the exuberant splendors of springtime, to Morris Louis' extraordinary Ambi IV, a rare example by the artist, The Now & Contemporary Evening Auction unveils examples of incomparable magnitude to the market.
This May, Sotheby's is thrilled to offer a selection of incredible Modern and Contemporary artworks following the single-owner sale of Design in April 2026.
For more than four decades, Jean and Terry de Gunzburg have assembled one of the most seminal and dynamic private collections of 20th century art and design, the result of a shared endeavor guided by instinct, curiosity, and a profound sensitivity to form. Shaped largely within their New York home—which they describe as “New York on the outside, Paris on the inside”—the collection reflects a way of living in which objects were not merely acquired, but discovered: a dynamic mix of artists and designers whose works introduced new visual languages of line, color, texture and ornament, arranged by their friend, the renowned decorator Jacques Grange.
In the Now & Contemporary Evening Auction, works of exquisite elegance and art historical gravitas form the core of the offerings: the singular Venezia work by Lucio Fontana, one of four large-scale Versions works by Robert Ryman, and a monumental mounted painting on paper by Mark Rothko, among others. Jean and Terry de Gunzburg reflect: "Collecting, after all, is never static. It evolves with curiosity, with new encounters, and with the simple pleasure of discovery. If we have learned anything along the way, it is that the only real rule is to respond to what moves you, with both your eyes and your heart."
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Works by the cutting-edge voices defining the tenor and texture of the 21st century art world further headline The Now & Contemporary Evening Auction this May. Ding Shilun and Florian Krewer explore states of selfhood and being through distorted modes of figuration, juxtaposed with the pictorial dissolution of Sarah Sze that defines seeing and experience in the digital age. Joseph Yaeger and Elizabeth Peyton form a close dialogue on the nature of perception, each creating portraits of immense beauty through idiosyncratic painterly techniques.
