{"id":2203581,"date":"2026-10-15T21:57:24","date_gmt":"2026-10-15T18:57:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=2203581"},"modified":"2026-10-15T21:57:24","modified_gmt":"2026-10-15T18:57:24","slug":"sothebys-london-contemporary-sale-tallies-61-1-m-led-by-de-kooning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=2203581","title":{"rendered":"Sotheby\u2019s London Contemporary Sale Tallies $61.1 M., Led by De Kooning"},"content":{"rendered":"

[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Contemporary-Evening-Sale-October-2026-photographer-Rayan-Bamhayan-Courtesy-Sothebys.jpg?w=1024″]<\/p>\n

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\n\tIn a tense saleroom with a lot of silent moments and anxious pauses\u2014at times it felt like a courtroom, with all eyes on auctioneer Tom Eddison\u2014Sotheby\u2019s London conducted a slow but steady \u00a346.1 million ($61.1 million) contemporary art sale on Thursday in a full sale room, with a \u00a39.8 million ($12.9 million) Willem de Kooning abstraction earning the top price. The sale carried an overall estimate of \u00a341.7\u201358.6 million ($55.3\u201377.8 million); the hammer total of \u00a336.9 million, before the house\u2019s fees, fell shy of the low figure.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt was a trim one-hour sale, with 34 lots, 10 of them bearing guarantees. Three works\u2014by Damien Hirst, Anselm Kiefer, and Leon Kossoff\u2014were withdrawn before the sale. Works by Banksy, Georg Baselitz, Jad\u00e9 Fadojutimi, Lucian Freud, Gerhard Richter, and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye went unsold. Last year\u2019s equivalent sale totaled \u00a347.6 million ($63.3 million), led by a Francis Bacon that fetched \u00a313 million ($17.5 million).<\/p>\n

\n\tSotheby\u2019s sale on Thursday came one night after a somewhat safe but healthy evening at Christie\u2019s that totaled \u00a3218.6 million ($289.4 million) across two sales, more than double last year\u2019s total. The sale came during London fair week, the day after stars like Tilda Swinton and Raf Simons were seen streaming into Frieze, where many dealers reported robust sales.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI would say the market is very cautious,\u201d Ivana Miloradovic, art historian and consultant, told ARTnews <\/em>at the Sotheby\u2019s sale. Most of the lots, she said, \u201ceither underperformed or were at the lower end.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Willem de Kooning, Untitled<\/i>, 1977.<\/span>Sotheby\u2019s.<\/cite><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\n\tThe sale was led by an untitled Willem de Kooning abstract painting from 1977 that was estimated at \u00a38\u201312 million ($10.6\u201315.9 million). Measuring 5 feet wide, it sold within estimate, hammering at \u00a38.2 million, to sell for a total of \u00a39.8 million ($12.9 million). The painting had last come to auction at Sotheby\u2019s New York in 2015, when it fetched $6.1 million.<\/p>\n

\n\tComing in second on the night was Gerhard Richter\u2019s 8-foot-wide Abstraktes Bild<\/em> (1992), which was estimated at \u00a36\u20138 million ($7.9\u201310.6 million); it hammered below estimate at \u00a35.4 million, to sell for \u00a36.7 million ($8.9 million) with fees. Thursday night\u2019s seller picked it up at Christie\u2019s London in 2011, paying \u00a33.6 million ($5.7 million at the time).<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Richter was followed by an untitled dark-hued Mark Rothko abstract from 1969 that was estimated for \u00a33\u20134 million ($4 million to $5.3 million) and hammered at its low estimate to fetch \u00a33.8 million (just shy of $5 million) with fees. It last came to market in 1992 at Christie\u2019s New York, when Thursday\u2019s seller picked it up for $264,000.<\/p>\n

\n\tWorks by Georg Baselitz, David Hockney, Albert Oehlen, and Andy Warhol filled out the top 10, with Baselitz, Hockney, and Warhol all appearing twice.<\/p>\n

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Gerhard Richter, Abstraktes Bild<\/i>, 1992.<\/span>Sotheby\u2019s<\/cite><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\n\t\u201cBritish sales on British soil are always joyous,\u201d said Miloradovic, pointing to rousing demand for David Hockney\u2019s 10th\u201422nd June 2021, Water Lilies in the Pond with Pots of Flowers <\/em>(2021) and Butterfly Fish<\/em> (1978) by Michael Andrews (1928\u20131995). \u201cEverybody knows the artist, the gossip and the history. It was a homey atmosphere.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIndeed, one of the night\u2019s runaway successes was Andrews\u2019s Butterfly Fish<\/em>, depicting the titular animal, which hammered at \u00a3550,000 on a high estimate of \u00a3120,000 for a total with fees of \u00a3704,000 ($933,117) after an extended contest, setting a new high for a work on paper by Andrews. The artist is today less well known than his School of London peers such as Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud, but he was renowned by his contemporaries: \u201cMike is so economical,\u201d fellow painter Frank Auerbach once said of Andrews. \u201cHe paints only masterpieces.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Michael Andrews, Butterfly Fish<\/em>, 1978.<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\n\tOttilie Windsor, head of contemporary art at Sotheby\u2019s London, echoed Auerbach\u2019s point in a post-sale interview. \u201cThe paintings that he did make were often bought as they were being made by a group of collectors who followed his work really closely,\u201d she told ARTnews<\/em>.\u201d [Those collectors have] never really needed to sell and so we get very, very low supply of his work to the market; when they do come up, they really do very well.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Mark Rothko, Untitled, 1969<\/i>.<\/span>Sotheby\u2019s<\/cite><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\n\tThere were mixed results for the under-50 set, with Louis Fratino\u2019s painting Kissing Couple <\/em>(2019) bringing a within-estimate \u00a3320,000 ($424,144) and Adrian Ghenie\u2019s The Wall <\/em>(2019) likewise selling within estimate for \u00a3640,000 ($848,288). (Fratino currently has a sold-out show at David Zwirner\u2019s London showroom.) At the same time, pieces by Fadojutimi and Yiadom-Boakye went unsold.<\/p>\n

\n\tGetting 28 lots across the line out of 34 was still a success, Windsor argued. \u201cAny dealer at the [Frieze] fair would be thrilled to sell nearly 30 secondary market lots.\u201d There is both interest and money in the market, she said, \u201cbut the market continues to be selective and continues to surprise us with what it\u2019s looking for.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

[analyse_source url=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/art-news\/market\/sothebys-london-contemporary-art-sale-61m-de-kooning-1234802516\/”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Contemporary-Evening-Sale-October-2026-photographer-Rayan-Bamhayan-Courtesy-Sothebys.jpg?w=1024″] In a tense saleroom with a lot of silent moments and anxious pauses\u2014at times it felt like a courtroom, with all eyes on auctioneer Tom Eddison\u2014Sotheby\u2019s London conducted a slow but steady \u00a346.1 million ($61.1 million) contemporary art sale on Thursday in a full sale room, with a \u00a39.8 million ($12.9 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-2203581","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\/2203581","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=2203581"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2203581\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2203581"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2203581"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2203581"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}