Frida Kahlo Record and $304.6M Total at Sotheby's New York Marquee Week

Sotheby's New York concluded its Marquee Week on November 20, 2025, at the Breuer Building with three catalogues: The Cindy and Jay Pritzker Collection, Exquisite Corpus, and the Modern Evening Auction. The aggregate total reached $304.6 million, pushing Sotheby's evening sales past $1 billion for the week. The Pritzker Collection of 13 lots sold entirely for $109.5 million, led by Vincent van Gogh's 'Piles de romans parisiens et roses dans une verre' (1887) at $62.7 million—a record for a van Gogh still life. Henri Matisse's 'Léda et le cygne' (1946) fetched over $10 million, and Max Beckmann's 'Der Wels' (1929) sold for $9.2 million. The Exquisite Corpus surrealist sale totaled $98.1 million with a white-glove sale. Frida Kahlo's 'El sueño (La cama)' (1940) sold for $54.7 million, setting a new auction record for a female artist. René Magritte's 'La Représentation' (1962) went for $3.7 million, likely to a third-party guarantor. Works by Remedios Varo, Dorothea Tanning, Paul Delvaux, and Kay Sage sold above estimates. The Modern Evening Auction of 29 lots (three withdrawn) generated $96.9 million. Top lot was Magritte's 'Le Jockey Perdu' (1942) at $12.3 million, bought by a client of former Christie's president Jussi Pylkkanen. Other strong sales included Claude Monet, Georgia O'Keeffe, Jean Dubuffet, Wilfredo Lam, and Jean Arp's bronze 'Ptolémée III' at $5.174 million. The week signaled a resurgence of ultra-high-net-worth collecting.