The New York Sales at Sotheby’s this November will present a series of auctions showcasing masterworks spanning over a century of artistic production. The sales feature the major artistic movements of the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries, from the innovations of the Impressionists to the groundbreaking works by young and emerging artists working today.

The Leonard A. Lauder Collection is a once-in-a-generation collection of 20th-century masterpieces that personifies the lifelong connoisseurship of one of the greatest collectors and benefactors of the arts in America. The Evening and Day Auctions will launch Sotheby’s new global headquarters: the historic Breuer Building on Madison Avenue, a cultural landmark of New York.

Carefully assembled over nearly fifty years, The Cindy and Jay Pritzker Collection stands as one of the most discerning ensembles of Modern and Impressionist art. The collection reveals an instinct for works of art historical significance and aesthetic power. At its heart is Vincent van Gogh’s Piles de romans parisiens et roses dans une verre (Romans parisiens) (1887), a work of immense importance and among the artist’s greatest still lifes. Equally commanding within the collection is Henri Matisse’s Léda et le cygne, a monumental triptych that reinvents myth through bold experimentation. Other highlights include Paul Gauguin’s La Maison de Pen du, gardeuse de vache (1889), a pivotal Pont-Aven canvas; Max Beckmann’s Der Wels (Catfish) (1929), an allegorical tour de force from his Paris years; and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner’s Hallesches Tor, Berlin (Halle Gate, Berlin) (1913), among the largest of his Berlin cityscapes remaining in private hands.

Celebrated as one of the foremost private collections of Surrealist art, Exquisite Corpus represents the culmination of a lifetime of engagement with the movement’s radical spirit. Built over more than four decades with a connoisseurial eye and unwavering dedication, the collection traces the movement’s imaginative arc—from its seminal figures to lesser-known, yet equally compelling contributors. At the center of the collection is Frida Kahlo’s psychologically charged El sueño (La cama)—an intimate meditation on identity and mortality—joined by the pioneering visions of Dorothea Tanning, Kay Sage, Remedios Varo and Valentine Hugo, artists whose work expanded Surrealism’s expressive range and gave form to its most personal and visionary dimensions.

The Modern Evening and Modern Day Auctions chart the production of the late 19th to mid 20th centuries, curating the historic throughlines, radical conceptual fissures and cross-continental dialogues of the last 150 years. From Impressionism to Abstract Expressionism, the Modern sales spotlight the very best examples of these critical aesthetic developments.

The Contemporary Evening Auction and Contemporary Day Auction extend this narrative to the present, featuring the seismic, paradigm-shifting artworks created during the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Beginning with Pop Art and Minimalism through to the well-established and newly canonized artists working today, these sale platforms bring into focus the plurality of visions, identities and innovations that have reshaped and continue to direct the trajectory of art history as we know it.

Explore the top works, collections and stories of the season as they are announced and join us for The New York Sales exhibition and live-streamed auctions this November.