Sotheby’s London Evening Sale Musters £100m

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Sotheby’ Modern & Contemporary Evening Auction brought in £99.7 million (U.S. $126.6 million) in London last night. Ninety percent of artworks found buyers.

With today’s Modern and Contemporary Day sale yet to take place, the result is shaping up as a modest come down from last year, when the auctions brought in a combined total of £172.6 million ($208.2 million).

Last night’s auction was led by Pablo Picasso‘s Homme à la pipe (1968), which garnered £13.7 million ($17.4 million), one of five works sold for over £5 million—along with paintings by Claude Monet, Paul Signac, Francis Bacon, and Joan Miró.

Across Sotheby’s evening and day sales in 2023, five works sold for over £15 million.

Among last night’s most noteworthy sales, Françoise Gilot‘s Portrait de Geneviève avec un collier de colombes (1944) sold for £723,900 ($918,774), four times its estimate. The work was a gift given to Arianna Huffington by the artist in 1986.

New auction records were set for three female artists: Etel Adnan, Takako Yamaguchi, and Rebecca Warren.

Continuing London’s spring auctions, Christie’s 20th / 21st Century: London Evening Sale commences at 5pm GMT this evening.

The top lots by estimate are René Magritte‘s L’ami intime (The Intimate Friend) (1958) for £30 million–50 million), David Hockney‘s luminous California (1965) for around £16 million, and Francis Bacon‘s moody Landscape near Malabata, Tangier (1963) for £15 million–20 million). —[O]

Main image: Sotheby's auctions Françoise Gilot's Portrait de Geneviève avec un collier de colombes (1944) at London Evening Sale on 6 March, 2024. Courtesy Sotheby's. Photo: Haydon Perrior.