T his year’s New York Sales — Sotheby’s biggest auctions of the season — are now on public view before auction week begins later this month. In the photos above, see highlights from across six sales and get a glimpse behind the scenes as the works of art are prepared for display.
On 16 May, The Macklowe Collection returns to the block following the peerless collection’s record-setting November auction. Highlights this time include a magnificent, crepuscular Mark Rothko, an epic seascape by Gerhard Richter and an iconic self-portrait by Pop icon Andy Warhol.
Five more auctions, presented in partnership with CELINE, round out the week, which will see modern and contemporary masterworks from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Just a few of the top lots include one of Claude Monet’s only paintings from Venice, a monumental painting of incisive social critique by Kerry James Marshall, the triumphant finale to Francis Bacon’s seminal “Pope” paintings and a groundbreaking, uninhibited portrayal of Pablo Picasso’s muse Marie-Thérèse Walter.
Photography by Julian Cassady for Sotheby’s.
