The art market got some bright news Wednesday evening when Sotheby’s sale of British socialite and arts patron Pauline Karpidas’s collection shattered its $53 million high estimate, totaling $100 million. While Surrealism carried much of the weight, one of the night’s clearest signals of collector demand came from François-Xavier and Claude Lalanne.
Nine works by the artist-designer couple—also known as Les Lalanne—achieved $18.5 million, more than five times their combined high estimate of $3.5 million. Put another way, they were expected to account for just over 6.5 percent of the evening sale’s total but ended up contributing nearly 20 percent.
The result tracks with an ARTnews analysis in April that found prices for Les Lalanne sculptures have surged in recent years. Four of the top 10 auction results for François-Xavier were recorded in 2024 alone. Experts at the time pointed to the duo’s unusually broad collector base, as well as their historical ties to Surrealism. François-Xavier and Claude Lalanne lived near Constantin Brancusi in Paris, and through him met Man Ray, Max Ernst, and other artists associated with the movement.
In that respect, the Karpidas sale was the perfect venue for their work. The sale was packed with 23 Surrealist works, including 11 by René Magritte. Sotheby’s went so far as to call Karpidas’s collection “the greatest collection of Surrealism to emerge in recent history.”
While no works rivaled François-Xavier’s record of $19.4 million, set at Christie’s Paris in 2023 for Rhinocrétaire I, they consistently outperformed expectations. The top result came from Claude Lalanne’s Structure végétale mirror and wall light, which sold for $4.8 million against a $615,000 high estimate, her second-highest price at auction. A set of crocodile stools fetched more than $1.3 million, also well above the $340,000 high estimate.
Beyond the nine Lalanne works in Wednesday’s evening sale, another 53 appeared in a Thursday day sale and an online-only auction that closes Friday.
The day sale works similarly performed well: 23 pieces of jewelry made by Claude totaled $695,900 on a $134,000 collective high estimate; Claude’s Unique Feuilles Frame sold for $90,100 on a $20,300 high estimate, and François-Xavier’s bronze Ganesh sold for $623,700 on a $95,000 high estimate.
Lalanne mania shows little sign of cooling. In October, Di Donna Galleries will stage a major New York exhibition of more than 50 works by Magritte and Les Lalanne, organized in collaboration with London’s Ben Brown Fine Arts.
