{"id":2010888,"date":"2026-06-25T18:47:04","date_gmt":"2026-06-25T15:47:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=2010888"},"modified":"2026-06-25T18:47:04","modified_gmt":"2026-06-25T15:47:04","slug":"5-m-guston-leads-christies-zabludowicz-sale-in-a-34-m-night","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=2010888","title":{"rendered":"$5 M. Guston Leads Christie\u2019s Zabludowicz Sale in a $34 M. Night"},"content":{"rendered":"

[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Auctioneer-and-Senior-Client-Advisor-Yu-Ge-Wang-selling-Philip-Gustons-Mirror-Head.-Christies-Images-LTD-2026.jpg?w=1024″]<\/p>\n

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\n\tEurope is seeing a historic heat wave, but things were a bit more lukewarm in Christie\u2019s London salesroom on Thursday evening at a two-part sale featuring 56 contemporary artworks from the collection of Anita and Poju Zabludowicz followed by a 79-lot sale of postwar and contemporary art. A \u00a34 million ($5.2 million) Philip Guston from the Zabludowicz\u2019s holdings led the sale. The evening totaled \u00a325.7 million ($34 million), with the first sale making \u00a315.5 million ($20.5 million) and the second \u00a310.2 million ($13.5 million).<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Zabludowicz works were estimated to total between \u00a312.6 million and \u00a319.3 million ($16.6 million\u2013$25.5 million); the hammer total was \u00a312.3 million ($16.2 million), just below the low estimate; with the house\u2019s fees, the sale totaled \u00a315.4 million ($20.5 million). Seven lots were guaranteed; three were withdrawn; seven failed to find buyers, for a sell-through rate of 89 percent. Records were set for Anj Smith, Rose Wylie, and Jakub Julian Ziolkowski.<\/p>\n

\n\tGuston\u2019s Mirror Head <\/em>(1977) led the Zabludowicz works, fetching just shy of \u00a34 million ($5.2 million) on a \u00a33.5 million ($4.6 million) low estimate, thus accounting for a third of the sale\u2019s value. No other works reached nearly those heights, with the second-highest price coming in within estimate at \u00a31.3 million ($1.7 million) for an 11-foot-wide Mark Bradford mixed-media collage, Farther South and Elsewhere <\/em>(2015). Rashid Johnson\u2019s 10-foot-wide Untitled Broken Crowd <\/em>(2021) sold within estimate for \u00a3952,500 ($1.3 million), while a 1994 Richard Prince\u2019s Untitled (Cowboy)<\/em> exceeded estimate to fetch \u00a31.6 million ($2.1 million). No other works owned by Zabludowiczes, who have appeared on ARTnews<\/em>\u2019s Top 200 Collectors list each year since 2005, cleared \u00a31 million.<\/p>\n

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Philip Guston, Mirror Head <\/em>(1977).<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\n\tSince the collector couple remain together and are both still living, as Katya Kazakina pointed out in Artnet News<\/em>, the classic \u201cthree Ds\u201d (death, debt, and divorce) that often account for high-profile auctions like this one don\u2019t seem to apply, leading to questions about why, in a softened market, they would choose to sell. Sources told Kazakina the reason was \u201cyears of strain between the Zabludowiczes and parts of the art world over the family\u2019s ties to Israel.\u201d The couple had been collecting since 1994 and held some 8,000 works by about 600 artists, Artnet <\/em>notes.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe other contemporary sale was estimated to fetch between \u00a38.6 million and \u00a312.1 million ($11.4 million\u2013$16 million), but fell short, achieving a hammer total of just \u00a38.1 million ($10.7 million), or \u00a310.2 million ($13.5 million) after the house\u2019s fees. Christie\u2019s found buyers for 81 percent of lots offered, and an auction record was set for Vanessa Raw at \u00a325,400 ($33,519).<\/p>\n

\n\tLeading the sale was Cecily Brown\u2019s nearly nine-foot-wide painting The Haunter <\/em>(2010), which was guaranteed to sell and took just over a minute to squeak past its \u00a32.2 million ($2.91 million) low estimate to hammer for \u00a32.25 million ($2.97 million).\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Cecily Brown\u2019s The Haunter <\/em>(2010) sold for \u00a32.25 million ($2.97 million).<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\n\tThe next priciest lot from this part of the sale was an Andy Warhol\u2019s Jackie <\/em>(1964), which took just about a minute to hammer for \u00a3420,000 ($555,000), just above its low estimate, or \u00a3533,400 ($704,000) with fees. Other top prices were accounted for by G\u00fcnther Uecker, Antony Gormley, Julian Schnabel, and Damien Hirst.<\/p>\n

\n\tJust days after the artist\u2019s death, an editioned David Hockney iPad drawing printed on paper, The Arrival of Spring in Woldgate, East Yorkshire in 2011 (twenty eleven) \u2013 30 April <\/em>(2011), hammered at \u00a3220,000 ($291,000) against a \u00a3150,000 ($198,000) high estimate, or \u00a3279,400 ($368,861) with fees.<\/p>\n

\n\tAuctioneer Lisanne de Jooden couldn\u2019t resist a quip when it came to the night\u2019s final lot, Jeff Koons\u2019s sexually explicit 1991 photograph Dirty \u2013 Jeff On Top <\/em>(price: \u00a3139,700, or $184,000), saying, as she brought down the hammer, \u201cGoing out with a bang!\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

[analyse_source url=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/art-news\/market\/guston-zabludowicz-christies-london-postwar-contemporary-1234790333\/”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Auctioneer-and-Senior-Client-Advisor-Yu-Ge-Wang-selling-Philip-Gustons-Mirror-Head.-Christies-Images-LTD-2026.jpg?w=1024″] Europe is seeing a historic heat wave, but things were a bit more lukewarm in Christie\u2019s London salesroom on Thursday evening at a two-part sale featuring 56 contemporary artworks from the collection of Anita and Poju Zabludowicz followed by a 79-lot sale of postwar and contemporary art. A \u00a34 million ($5.2 million) […]<\/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-2010888","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\/2010888","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=2010888"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2010888\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2010888"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2010888"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2010888"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}