Public auctions alongside Art Basel Paris

For this auction session, Sotheby’s and Christie’s together expect a combined total exceeding €120 million. Last year, they achieved €144,6 million. Christie’s is holding four sales, comprising around 300 lots in total, with an aggregate estimate above €71 million. In 2024, it reached €82 million. On 23 October, Christie’s will disperse a distinctive European private collection bringing together some forty modern and contemporary works. Paying tribute to the European avant-gardes, the collection includes, among others, La Passerelle Debilly (1903), an oil on canvas by Paul Signac (estimated €4-6 M). That same day, the sale “Avant-Garde(s) including Thinking Italian” will feature California (IKB 71) by Yves Klein – a monumental monochrome still in private hands, never before offered at auction (est. over €16 M). Also included is Femme debout by Alberto Giacometti, a rediscovery from a Paris private collection, where the bronze had been carefully kept for over fifty years (est. €5-7 M). The following day, sales devoted to modern art (Chagall, Renoir, Manet, Cézanne, Matisse…) and contemporary art (Simon Hantaï, Victor Vasarely, Georges Mathieu, Jean Dubuffet, Jean Paul Riopelle, Hans Hartung…) will take place. Sotheby’s is presenting two auctions – its traditional “Modernités” and “Surrealism and Its Legacy” sessions. The house expects a combined total of around €50 million (low estimate) across roughly fifty lots. The first sale includes Portrait de Raymond Radiguet by Amedeo Modigliani, a “blue chip” never before seen at auction and kept out of sight in the same collection for seventy years. Presented a century after it was first shown to the public in 1925 in the journal L’Amour de l’art, the painting is estimated at €5.5-7.5 million. In its other sale, devoted to Surrealism, Sotheby’s will showcase La Magie noire (1934) by Magritte, acquired directly from the artist in 1935 by the family of the current owners, the Lorge-Spaak, among his most fervent supporters. For this very first version of the Belgian painter’s celebrated series, Sotheby’s has set an estimate of €5-7 million. Artcurial, for its part, is launching the second edition of its modern and contemporary art sale “Selected 20/21”, to be held on 25 October (28 lots, est. €6.5-9 million). Among the works on offer are Maternité sur fond bleu (1976) by Chagall (€460 000–560 000), a gilt-patinated bronze by Pierre Soulages (Bronze No 2, 1976, €300 000-500 000), and, within the same estimate range, a painted metal sheet titled Cock’s Comb (Maquette) (1961) signed by Alexander Calder. At Drouot, although no sale devoted to modern and contemporary art coincides with the fair, a painting by Picasso, Buste de femme au chapeau à fleurs (Dora Maar), painted in 1943 and unseen for decades, will be unveiled on 24 October by Lucien auction house. Testifying to the artist’s passion and torment during the Occupation, this wartime portrait carries an estimate of €8 million.