In a standout sale, Christie’s 20th/21st Century evening sale in London last night totaled £81.98 million ($107.15 million). This result nearly doubled the result of the same sale the previous year, which realized £44.69 million ($52.86 million). Notably, the auction house revealed that the sale attracted a younger audience— 23% of buyers at the auction were millennials or younger.
The highest-selling lot of the night was Lucian Freud’s Ria, Naked Portrait (2006-07), which sold for £11.81 million ($15.44 million), only slightly above its low estimate of £10 million ($13 million). The painting, which remained in the same private collection since it was sold by Acquavella Galleries in 2008, portrays Ria Kirby, an art handler the 83-year-old artist met at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London in 2006.
The top results following the Freud painting include:
None of the top five lots exceeded their pre-sale estimates. However, two lots set artist auction records. American artist Sarah Sze’s mixed media collage Spell (2023) achieved £756,000 ($988,000), beating her record of $737,500 set at Christie’s in 2020. Meanwhile, Modernist Belgian painter Léon Spilliaert’s Phare sur la digue (1908) achieved £982,800 ($1.28 million), smashing the artist’s long-lasting record of $661,073 set at De Vuyst in 1998.
There were two standout sales of works by René Magritte: Shéhérazade (1947) and Le grand style (1952), which both comfortably passed their presale estimate at £882,000 ($1.15 million) and £2.58 million ($3.37 million), respectively. A third work by the artist, L’invitée (1956), achieved £1 million, within its presale estimate of £800,000–£1.2 million ($1.04 million–$1.57 million)
Katharine Arnold, vice chairman of post-war and contemporary art in Europe, and Keith Gill, vice chairman of 20th/21st Century Art and head of Impressionist and modern art in Europe at Christie’s, released a joint statement commenting on the auction house’s week of strong sales: “We sourced fresh to the market works that resonated with collectors globally and priced them fairly. This evening’s results demonstrate that London draws international collectors attracted by the energy and diversity of what’s on offer during Frieze Week. We take pride in contributing to London’s vibrant arts ecosystem.”
