Just under a year ago, Sotheby’s made its biggest foray in the Gulf yet with its first-ever auction in Saudi Arabia. That sale, titled “Origins” and featuring 117 lots spanning art and luxury objects, brought in $17.3 million with fees—squarely within its $14 million–$20 million presale estimate. It wasn’t a spectacular result, but also wasn’t a disaster.
Over the weekend, the house staged its second such sale, titled “Origins II,” to far stronger results. The auction netted $19.6 million with fees on just 61 lots, comfortably above its $11.7 million–$16.6 million presale estimate.
The house even had an artist record to trumpet: Safeya Binzagr’s Coffee Shop in Madina Road sold for $2.1 million with fees, more than ten times its $200,000 high estimate. The result nearly doubled the previous auction record for a Saudi artist, set in 2023 at $1.2 million for a work by Mohammed Al Saleem.
The sale featured nine works by Saudi artists, all of which sold, totaling $4.3 million against a $1.1 million high estimate. Two of those works were by Al Saleem, both fetching more than triple their high estimates. By comparison, the first “Origins” sale included just four works by Saudi artists, which together totaled $1.1 million.
The biggest difference between this year’s sale and last, however, was the expanded presence of Western masters—perhaps signaling the house’s growing confidence in its relationships with collectors in the Kingdom. The auction included three works by Picasso, topped by a $1.6 million painting; seven works by Roy Lichtenstein drawn from the artist and his wife’s personal collection; an Andy Warhol painting that sold for just over $1 million; a set of four Warhol screenprints of Muhammad Ali for $352,000; and works by Anish Kapoor and James Turrell. (Last year’s sale included three minor Warhols and a single Picasso, none of which topped $250,000, though it did place works by Fernando Botero, Banksy, and René Magritte for over $1 million each.)
Roughly a third of the evening’s lots—about 20 works—sold to buyers based in Saudi Arabia.
While attention this week may be focused on Qatar for the launch of Art Basel Qatar, the results in Saudi Arabia make clear that it will not be the only Gulf country staking a serious claim in the art market.
