Christie's Paris Marquee Week Features Italian Art with Mario Schifano Highlights

Christie's auction house is preparing for its 20/21 Marquee Week in Paris from April 15-17, 2026, featuring a curated selection spanning Impressionist to Contemporary art. The event includes three days of sales with significant private collections. On April 15, an Evening Sale will present museum-caliber lots including Maurice de Vlaminck's Fauvist masterpiece 'La Femme au Chapeau' (1906), estimated at €5-7 million and unseen publicly for over 45 years, alongside Claude Lalanne's monumental 'Pomme de New York' with a similar estimate. The Contemporary Art Day Sale on April 16 will be led by a 2011 iPad painting by David Hockney (€150,000-200,000), while the Impressionist and Modern session on April 17 features a rediscovered double-sided drawing by Vincent van Gogh, 'Cueilleuses de pois,' hidden in a Spanish collection for decades. Within this global context, the Thinking Italian section highlights 20th-century Italian excellence, led by Mario Schifano's 'Untitled' (1963), estimated at €120,000-180,000, reappearing on the market after nearly two decades. This work comes from the private collection of influential postwar critic Maurizio Calvesi, with whom Schifano had a personal connection, using Calvesi's apartment as a studio before moving to New York. Another key Schifano piece is 'View beyond the Hudson River (To Anita Pallenberg)' (1964), estimated at €200,000-300,000, a personal canvas dedicated to model and actress Anita Pallenberg, featuring an intentional cigar burn near the dedication. Christie's timing coincides with a major Schifano retrospective at Rome's Palazzo delle Esposizioni curated by Daniela Landoni, reinforcing Italian art's presence alongside artists like Lucio Fontana, Jannis Kounellis, and Giorgio de Chirico in major Paris auctions.