Piet Mondrian’s Composition with Large Red Plane, Bluish Gray, Yellow, Black and Blue (1922) sold for $47.56 million at Christie’s on May 12th. The painting was the most expensive lot from the auction house’s two back-to-back evening sales that kicked off a week of auctions in New York. All prices include fees.
Mondrian’s geometric, minimalist painting was part of Leonard & Louise Riggio: Collected Works, a single-owner sale of 39 lots from the collection consigned by the widow of the late Barnes & Noble founder. The sale totaled $272 million. The second sale of the night was the 20th century evening sale, which brought in $217 million, with all lots sold. Combined, the two sales totaled $489 million against a combined pre-sale low estimate of $446 million.
This pair of results surpasses the $413.3 million total achieved for last May’s 20th century evening sale, and narrowly edges out the $486 million total from the auction house’s November 2024 evening sale.
The Riggio collection sale, comprising 39 works, focused on Surrealism, modernism, and Minimalism. In addition to the Mondrian, highlights included René Magritte’s L’empire des lumières (1949), which sold for $35 million. This painting last appeared in November 2023 at Christie’s New York, where it sold for $34.91 million to the Riggio family. The sale also featured Pablo Picasso’s Femme à la coiffe d’Arlésienne sur fond vert (Lee Miller) (1937), which sold for $28.01 million.
The 20th Century Evening Sale, comprised of 37 lots, began with nine works from the Anne and Sid Bass collection, all of which sold for a combined $73.2 million. This included the evening’s second and third most expensive works: Claude Monet’s Peupliers au bord de l’Epte, crépuscule led the session (1891), which sold for $42.96 million, and
Mark Rothko’s No. 4 (Two Dominants) [Orange, Plum, Black] (1950–51), which sold for $37.85 million. Also among the notable results were new auction records for two artists. Dorothea Tanning’s Endgame (1944), which sold for $2.34 million on a high estimate of $1.5 million, and Remedios Varo’s Revelación (El relojero) (1955), which sold for $6.22 million. Tanning’s previous record was set by Le mal oublié (1955), which sold for $1.44 million at Christie’s in 2022. The Varo result narrowly surpassed the artist’s previous record of $6.19 million, set at Sotheby’s in 2020.
