Sotheby’s modern art evening sale in New York on Tuesday night collectively hammered at $152 million, or $186.4 million with buyer’s premium, across 60 lots. Fifty works sold, for a sell-through rate of 83.3 percent. Roughly 40 percent of the lots exceeded their high estimates, with half appearing at auction for the first time. The result was strong given a cooling art market as of late, though the night’s high-profile miss cast a long shadow.
Among the top lots was Pablo Picasso’s Homme assis, which sold for $15.1 million against an estimate of $12 million to $18 million. (All prices listed include buyer’s premium unless otherwise stated.) From the artist’s “Musketeers and Matadors” series, the 1969 painting was won by a bidder in the room.
Georgia O’Keeffe’s Leaves of a Plant, which had never been auctioned before, was among the many lots that turned into a contest, reaching nearly 30 bids before selling for $13 million, comfortably above its $8 million to $12 million estimate. René Magritte’s La Traversée difficile just cleared its low estimate to land at $10.04 million, while Alexander Calder’s Four Big Dots, a black-painted metal mobile from 1966, hammered at $6.7 million after deep bidding in the room, for a total sale price of $8.3 million. Paul Signac’s Saint-Georges. Couchant (Venise)—in private hands for over 70 years—sold for $8.1 million, a new auction record for one of the artist’s Venetian scenes.
While the sale notched solid prices for works by blue-chip figures, the post-sale talk was certainly dominated by the failure of Alberto Giacometti’s Grande tête mince to find a buyer. The 1955 bronze bust of the artist’s brother, Diego, had been widely touted as the priciest work of the spring auctions, with expectations set north of $70 million. Offered without a financial guarantee by the Soloviev Foundation, the work opened bidding at $59 million. There were a handful of interested people, and after a few minutes of tugging auctioneer Oliver Barker was able to coax a bid of $64 million out of the room. Then, after a pregnant pause, he split the bid for someone who hoped $64.25 million might be the lucky number. But, the seller seemingly had a price in mind that Barker couldn’t reach.
The pass marked a rare public defeat for a Giacometti of this caliber, which was cast during the artist’s lifetime and is believed to be the only painted example in its edition. More than a few people gasped audibly after Barker dropped the hammer and declared the work “a pass.” Those gasps turned into awkward applause followed by a flurry of conversation in the usually pin-drop quiet room.
Barker, ever the pro, continued on with the next lot, Lyonel Feininger’s Trompetenbläser I (Trumpeters I) over the din, which quited down once the Feininger sold for a hair over its high estimate, at $5.08 million. That the season’s top lot was a nonstarter suggests that even works with stellar provenance by blue-chip artists are not immune to hesitation at the very top of the market.
“Christie’s did a better job securing and placing its top lots, successfully getting them across the line,” adviser Peter Bentley Brandt told ARTnews. “The failed sale of the Giacometti will give future estates pause on which direction they will want to move in. That said, the results also underscore continued strength in the sub–$5 million segment,” Brandt said, “particularly in design, where interest remains robust.”
Sotheby’s CEO Charles Stewart, speaking after the sale, insisted the result wasn’t cause for alarm. “It was a genuine auction moment,” he told ARTnews. “The seller believed in the work and was willing to let it go without a guarantee. That’s rare today. It’s better than watching 20 lots engineered to sell on a single bid.” While Stewart emphasized the value of price transparency and risk-taking, the outcome highlighted the limits of relying on prestige and condition alone. “Nobody lost money,” he added. “The work didn’t sell, but it goes back to the owner. They’re fine.”
One of the more closely watched elements of the evening was the group of works from the estate of Rolf and Margit Weinberg, Swiss collectors whose holdings were billed as “connoisseur-driven” and spanned Impressionism and early modernism. Paul Cezanne’s Portrait de Madame Cézanne sold for $7.4 million, the second-highest price ever paid at auction for a portrait of the artist’s wife, Hortense. Henri Matisse’s Le Bras brought in $4.2 million, while Wassily Kandinsky’s Anfang (Beginning) hammered at $2.1 million. Egon Schiele’s Gewitterberg sold for $2.2 million. Edvard Munch’s Portrait of Heinrich C. Hudtwalcker, also from the Weinberg collection, was chased by five bidders before selling for $1.9 million to a collector in Asia. While those results didn’t break records, they did validate to an extent Sotheby’s emphasis this season on historical depth, long provenance, and a careful mix of pricing and presentation.
In contrast to the Giacometti, some of the night’s most aggressive bidding came not for a painting but for a lamp. A Frank Lloyd Wright double-pedestal lamp, designed in 1904 for the Susan Lawrence Dana House in Springfield, Illinois, sold for $7.5 million after a 10-minute bidding battle, nearly quadrupling the price it achieved when it last appeared at auction in 2002. The sale also more than doubled Wright’s previous auction record, set in 2023. The lamp is one of only two of its kind—the other belongs to the Dana-Thomas House museum—and Sotheby’s had presented it as a crown jewel of early American design. It did not disappoint.
Starting at $2.5 million, Barker worked the room with visible energy as the number of bids climbed past 30, eventually reaching $6.1 million before hammering at that price. At one point, light applause broke out in the room, followed by a noticeable exodus: at least 15 people got up and left, as if they’d seen what they came for.
This newer strategy of placing a design piece in a modern art evening sale seemed to work as Sotheby’s intended. The Wright result follows a precedent set in November, when a stained-glass window by Tiffany Studios sold for $12.4 million at Sotheby’s, a new record for the atelier founded by Louis Comfort Tiffany. Commissioned in 1913 for an Ohio church, the Danner Memorial Window marked the first time a major Tiffany work appeared in a blue-chip evening sale alongside works by the likes of Monet and Picasso.
Together, the Tiffany and Wright results point to a shift in how Sotheby’s is positioning design, as a rising category with the potential to attract a broader class of collectors. If the Giacometti bust revealed the limits of demand at the very top, the lamp proved that scarcity and narrative still drive action.
“I’m sure this will be seen as a disappointment, especially with the Giacometti,” adviser Maria Brito told ARTnews. “But at the end of the day, Sotheby’s, just like Christie’s, is a powerhouse. Selling almost $200 million in art in one night is impressive.”
Still, Brito noted the sale leaned toward “B+” material and lacked the cohesion of Christie’s 20th-century sale the night before. “It felt padded,” she said, pointing to several second-rate works rounding out the evening. But she also saw opportunity. “Now is a great time to buy. There were a lot of opportunities on that sales floor.”
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