[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Screenshot-2026-03-06-at-18.13.36.png?w=1024″]<\/p>\n
\n\tThis week has shown that there\u2019s still a lot of money sloshing around London\u2019s art market; Christie\u2019s three-pronged 21st\/20th century evening sale on Thursday took \u00a3197.5 million ($265 million), one day after Sotheby\u2019s modern and contemporary auction brought \u00a3131 million ($175 million).<\/p>\n
The result marked a 52 percent increase<\/strong> on the house\u2019s equivalent sale last year, achieving a 96 percen sell-through rate by lot<\/strong> and 98 percent by value.<\/strong> There were also new artist records set for Henry Moore, Toyen, and Dorothea Tanning. Four works by <\/strong>Cecily Brown, Bridget Riley, Lucian Freud, and Frank Auerbach were withdrawn before kick-off, and carried a collective high estimate of nearly \u00a317 million.\u00a0<\/p>\n <\/strong>Christie\u2019s sales\u201321st\/20th century, \u201cThe Art of the Surreal,\u201d and \u201cModern Visionaries \u00a0\u2013 <\/strong>The Roger and Josette Vanthournout Collection\u201d (in that order)\u2014felt like a slog at times, with 90 odd lots sold in nearly four hours. But both houses\u2019 results countered the recent narrative that London\u2019s status as a cultural powerhouse was on the slide. Rich people are still spending big here, despite the Labour government scrapping the UK\u2019s non-domicile status last April, meaning all British residents now need to pay tax on income, no matter where they earned it. Several top dealers and advisors told ARTnews <\/em>last year that they were worried the move would push more collectors to take their art-buying elsewhere. Concerns that ongoing war between the US, Israel, and Iran would stem bidding were also put to rest, at least for the top lots, which sold well.\u00a0<\/p>\n Lot 7, Henry Moore\u2019s King and Queen<\/em> bronze, sailed past its \u00a315 million high estimate to sell for \u00a326.3 million ($35.2 million), the artist\u2019s new auction record. At one point, the thronging crowd gasped as the bidding leapt from \u00a320.5 million to \u00a322 million. Before the sale, Katherine Arnold, Christie\u2019s vice chairman of 20th\/21st century art and head of post-war and contemporary art for Europe, described the work as \u201cthe most exciting sculpture I\u2019ve ever seen brought to market.\u201d<\/p>\n Over WhatsApp, Phillip Hoffman, founder of The Fine Art Group, messaged me his takeaway from the front row: \u201cAs we see with the Moore, quality and rare does extremely well in this market.\u201d King and Queen<\/em> bronze is the last cast from the series still in private hands.<\/p>\n Auctioneer Adrien Meyer, Christie\u2019s global head of private sales, impressionist and modern art, was doing his best to rouse bidders from the house\u2019s new rostrum early on. When Lot 8 came up\u2014Gerhard Richter\u2019s Abstraktes Bild<\/em>\u2014he refused an increment of \u00a3100,000 that would have taken the price to \u00a36.1 million. \u201cWe\u2019ve got 90 more lots to get through tonight, you\u2019ll need to do better than that,\u201d he said. It eventually sold for \u00a37.6 million ($10.1 million).<\/p>\n Lot 11, Wassily Kandinsky\u2019s Le Rond Rouge<\/em>, which had a \u00a315.5 million high estimate, or about $21.3 million, ended up selling within estimate for \u00a312.5 million ($16.8 million). Eduardo Chillida\u2019s Modulaci\u00f3n del espacio III<\/em> sold for \u00a33.3 million (high estimate: (\u00a31.2 million),<\/strong> Rose Wylie\u2019s Tube Girl<\/em> fetched \u00a3152,400 (high estimate: \u00a370,000), <\/strong>coinciding with her major solo exhibition at The Royal Academy. <\/strong>The 20th\/21st part of the sale totalled \u00a3114 million.<\/p>\n The 25th edition of \u201cThe Art of the Surreal\u201dachieved 100 percent sell-through by lot and value,<\/strong> totaling \u00a343 million ($57.4 million) <\/strong>The sale also set two world auction records: Dorothea Tanning\u2019s Children\u2019s Games<\/em> made \u00a34.7 million<\/strong>($6.2 million), and Toyen\u2019s Le devenir de la libert\u00e9<\/em> fetched \u00a33.7 million ($4.9 million). <\/strong>Ren\u00e9 Magritte\u2019s Les gr\u00e2ces naturelles<\/em> also went for \u00a38.5 million ($11.4 million).<\/p>\n Finally, \u201cModern Visionaries \u2013 The Roger and Josette Vanthournout Collection\u201d <\/strong>realized a total of \u00a340.3 million ($53.9 million), with sell-through rates of 97 percent by lot and 94 percent by value. The highlight of the auction was Pablo Picasso\u2019s Nu Debout et Femmes Assises<\/em>, <\/strong>which fetched \u00a37 million ($9.3 million).<\/p>\n Despite Christie\u2019s taking \u00a3131 million for the evening, Jussi Pylkk\u00e4nen, Christie\u2019s former global president and founder of Art Pylkk\u00e4nen, told me in the foyer after the sale that we remain in a \u201csoft market.\u201d \u201cThe estimates tonight were generally too high, which means less people were bidding on them,\u201d he said, \u201cAnd when there\u2019s only one or two bids on a work, it often doesn\u2019t represent their true value.\u201d<\/p>\n Olivier Camu, Christie\u2019s deputy chairman, impressionist and modern art, said that the evening\u2019s results were \u201ca powerful tribute to Roger and Josette Vanthournout \u2019s 60-year-long passion for discovering and collecting.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tMilan-based advisor Mattia Pozzoni left the night bullish on London. \u201cThis week had the feeling of London reclaiming its place on the market map,\u201d he said. \u201cBetween the auctions and the buzz around Tracey Emin\u2019s show at the Tate, it almost felt like going back a few years when collectors came to London expecting to see important works and were ready to spend serious money on them.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n [analyse_source url=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/art-news\/news\/christies-triple-header-20th-and-21st-century-evening-sales-nets-265-m-as-london-proves-its-still-a-draw-to-collectors-1234776027\/”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Screenshot-2026-03-06-at-18.13.36.png?w=1024″] This week has shown that there\u2019s still a lot of money sloshing around London\u2019s art market; Christie\u2019s three-pronged 21st\/20th century evening sale on Thursday took \u00a3197.5 million ($265 million), one day after Sotheby\u2019s modern and contemporary auction brought \u00a3131 million ($175 million). The result marked a 52 percent increase on the house\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,226],"class_list":["post-1812320","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-artnews-com","tag-crawlmanager"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1812320","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1812320"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1812320\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1812320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1812320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1812320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}