Christie’s Touts Strength of Surrealist Artists at London Sales

The auction house's 20th/21st Century Evening Sale series generated over US $200 million, with most lots selling above their high estimates.

The Vice Chairman of Christie's 20th/21st Century Art Department trumpeted Surrealist women artists following their London auctions last night, which included The Art of the Surreal Evening Sale and the 20th/21st Century: London Evening Sale.

Giovanna Bertazzoni said, 'the pioneering Surrealist women artists reflect a zeitgeist witnessed across the art world in public programming and in the market.'

'Surrealism itself continues to be the cradle between conceptual and contemporary art and this legacy is in turn evident in the female painters that opened our sales with a series of records,' he said.

Surrealist works from one San Francisco Bay Area collection have so far brought in almost US $25 million, with more lots featuring in Christie's Impressionist and Modern Art Day and Works on Paper Sale on 3 March.

Sales by Surrealist artists from the collection last night included Leonora Carrington's Quería ser pájaro (1960) for $1.1 million, Remedios Varo's Retrato del Doctor Ignacio Chávez (1957) for $4.7 million, and Dorothea Tanning's Visite jaune (Visite éclair) (1960) for $425,000.

Another Surrealist work, René Magritte's Le retour (c. 1950), sold for $7.4 million, a record for a gouache by the artist.

Other works by Magritte also found buyers, with Souvenir de voyage (1958) fetching US $6.7 million, Le masque de la foudre (1965–66) garnering $5.4 million, and an untitled collage from 1927 more than doubling its high estimate, selling for $1.1 million.

Predictably, the works that fetched the highest prices at Christie's 20th/21st Century Evening Sale were Pablo Picasso's Femme dans un rocking-chair (Jacqueline) (1956) for $20.3 million and Paul Cezanne's L'Aqueduc du canal de Verdon au nord d'Aix (1882–83) for $8.6 million.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir's Jeune fille endormie (La dormeuse) (c. 1880) sold for $6 million, while Vincent van Gogh's portrait Kop van een vrouw (Gordina de Groot) (1885) sold for $5.8 million, and David Hockney's Chair with a Horse Drawn by Picasso (1970) fetched $5.3 million.

Among the more surprising results were huge new records set for female contemporary artists.

Michaela Yearwood-Dan's Love me nots (2021) sold for $879,100, obliterating the estimate of $48,000–72,000; Cristina Banban's La Fatiga Que Me Das (You Exhaust Me) (2019) sold for $197,000 against an estimate of $60,200–84,300; and Caroline Walker's The Puppeteer (2013) sold for $834,000 roughly triple its estimate of $180,600–240,700. —[O]