At its Madison Avenue headquarters, Sotheby’s kicked off the May auction season early, smack in the middle of the opening of art fairs all around Manhattan, with a solid if unexciting $389.3 million sale of modern and contemporary art, led by an $85.8 million canvas by Mark Rothko. Major auctions at Christie’s and Phillips will follow next week. The equivalent sale last year tallied just $186.1 million.
“The sale was robust, and it felt authentic,” said New York adviser Laura Paulson as she exited the sale room partway through the evening.
“It was a good sale,” said adviser Jacob King after unsuccessfully bidding on a Warhol. “Not particularly exciting, but good.”
The sale opened with 11 works from the estate of legendary New York dealer Robert Mnuchin, who died last year at 92, and his wife Adriana. The group was estimated to sell for in excess of $130 million. The house guaranteed the seller an undisclosed price for the group of works, which included pieces by Rothko, Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline, Pablo Picasso, and other market stalwarts. The 11 works rang up at a total of $166.3 million with fees, with all works finding buyers.
Leading that group was Rothko’s Abstract Expressionist canvas Brown and Blacks in Reds (1957), which stands over 7 feet high and was estimated at $70 million to $100 million. The painting had been in the collection of alcoholic beverage tycoon Joseph E. Seagram until Mnuchin bought it at Christie’s New York in 2003 for just $6.7 million. It was poised to exceed his existing record of $86.9 million, paid for Orange, Red, Yellow (1961) at Christie’s New York in 2012, though it just barely didn’t reach that figure.
Mark Rothko, Brown and Blacks in Reds, 1957.
Courtesy Sotheby's
Brown and Blacks in Reds ended up hammering for $74 million, though with fees included, the value rose to $85.8 million, making it the second-most expensive Rothko ever to sell publicly at auction. (All figures in this report include buyer’s premium, except when otherwise noted.) After the hammer came down on the Rothko, people in the room applauded.
Also included in the Mnuchin haul was another Rothko, his No. 1 (1949), estimated at up to $20 million. It came to auction as recently as 2017 at Christie’s London, when it fetched $13 million. With premium fees included, the painting sold for a notch above its high estimate, at $20.8 million, meaning that it accrued $7 million in value in less than a decade.
The 11-lot sale was a brief affair, lasting just over a half hour and leaving enough time for a short break before the contemporary art auction. Most artworks sold for amounts within or above their estimates, and many sold quickly. The exception was an untitled Willem de Kooning abstraction from 1970 that hammered at $8.8 million after four and a half minutes of bidding, earning a round of applause. With premium fees, that figure rose to $10.8 million. That sum was more than $4 million above the work’s high estimate.
The night then proceeded to a 90-minute, 40-lot sale of contemporary art that totaled $233.1 million on after five lots were withdrawn before the sale.
Jean-Michel Basquiat, Museum Security (Broadway Meltdown), 1983.
Courtesy Sotheby's
Leading the sale was Jean-Michel Basquiat’s seven-foot-tall 1983 painting Museum Security (Broadway Meltdown), tagged at in excess of $45 million. It last came to market in 2013, at Christie’s London, where an unnamed buyer snagged it for $14.6 million. ARTnews previously reported that French art dealer John Sayegh-Belchatowski was the buyer; Sotheby’s describes it only as coming from “a distinguished collection.” After very thin bidding in the room, it hammered at $45.3 million, selling for $52.7 million with the house’s fees. That makes it the fifth-most expensive Basquiat ever to sell at public auction.
Willem de Kooning’s Untitled III (1975) had been off the market for two decades; coming to auction for the first time, it was estimated at $25 million to $35 million. The 7-foot-high canvas was guaranteed to sell by the house but barely managed to meet its low estimate with fees, selling for $26 million.
Andy Warhol’s Brigitte Bardot (1974) was tagged at $14 million to $18 million. Another Warhol painting featuring the late French actress was sold in November of last year sold for $16.7 million on Loïc Gouzer’s Fair Warning platform, and this one went for even more. Created for Gunter Sachs, Bardot’s ex-husband, and showing the movie star with bright red lips in an image dominated by bright green, it exceeded its estimate to ring up for $24.8 million with fees following five minutes of passionate bidding.
Andy Warhol, Brigitte Bardot, 1974.
Courtesy Sotheby's
Another Rothko, an untitled 1969 painting defined by large fields of black rimmed by a purple border, had been off the market since the seller bought it in 2000. It hammered for its $15 million high estimate to sell for $16.5 million. It came from the collection of Jean and Terry de Gunzburg, as did Lucio Fontana’s Concetto spaziale, Il cielo di Venezia (1961). The de Gunzburgs bought the 5-foot-square Fontana canvas at Sotheby’s London in 2002 for £1.4 million ($2.1 million). It hammered at its $15 million high estimate to sell for $16.4 million.
Roy Lichtenstein’s Half Face with Collar (1963), estimated at $10 million to $15 million, has kicked around in the collections of legendary dealers Ileana Sonnabend, Gian Enzo Sperone, and Larry Gagosian. The house guaranteed the unnamed seller an undisclosed price; it squeaked by its low estimate and sold for just shy of $13 million.
Agnes Martin’s Untitled #10 (1981), a six-foot-square abstraction in white naked by stripes in pale colors, was estimated at $7 million to $10 million. The house guaranteed the unnamed seller an undisclosed price; it hammered for just $7.2 million to fetch $8.9 million with fees.
Martin was not the only female postwar painter whose work performed well tonight. Joan Mitchell’s Loom II (1976), a blue abstraction produced in studio in the French commune of Vétheuil, returned to auction on Thursday for the second time in the past two decades. In 2013, at Christie’s, it sold for a hair over $1 million. Tonight, at Sotheby’s, it sold for $7.8 million, in a testament to just how far the Mitchell market has come.
Ding Shilun, Three Princes, 2022.
Courtesy Sotheby's
Emerging artists, who are part of a market category frequently termed “ultra-contemporary” by the major auction houses, fared well at Sotheby’s. There has been significant contraction in this area of the market in recent years—the New York Times reported that the number of ultra-contemporary works was three quarters the amount of what was had four years ago, when the sector was red hot. But the Sotheby’s sale suggested that the ultra-contemporary market had not died out completely.
Lot 1 was a painting by Ding Shilun (b. 1998), a Chinese painter whose market is fast rising. Conservatively pegged with a $50,000–$70,000 estimate, his Three Princes (2022) ended up selling for $358,400 with fees. That was more than two times his record, which was set at Phillips in London last year, where one of his paintings sold for the equivalent of $149,600. It was not a bad showing for an artist who has never had a New York solo show.
Also selling wildly above estimate was Lot 2, Leaves carpet (2017), by Yu Nishimura (b. 1982), estimated at up to $180,000 but selling for $998,400 after a lengthy and heated contest. That beat the artist’s record of $711,200, also established at Sotheby’s New York, in 2025, for the artist’s Thicket (2020), multiples of its $120,000 high estimate. (It helps that he joined David Zwirner, one of the world’s biggest galleries, that year, too.)
Florian Krewer, night hunters, 2022.
Courtesy Sotheby's
Joseph Yaeger (b. 1986), an American painter, continued his market ascent, with his 2021 painting The Euphemism selling for $320,000, re-setting his auction record of $265,700. And Florian Krewer (b. 1986), a German painter making his marquee New York auction debut, also performed strongly. In a bid of confidence, the house had given his moody 2022 painting night hunters, featuring a group of mysterious animals staring into a green ocean, a $180,000 estimate—more than three times as much as his record of $52,500, set at Phillips in London last year. The painting ended up selling for $256,000, nearly quintupling that result.
