The Art of the Surreal Evening Sale

Sale Overview

Christie’s presents the 25th edition of The Art of the Surreal Evening Sale, taking place on 5 March 2026 as part of the 20th/21st Century Art London auction series. This landmark edition brings together an outstanding group of Surrealist and related works that exemplify the movement’s imagination, formal innovation and psychological depth. The sale traces Surrealism’s development from its early Symbolist and Dada influences through to post‑war masterpieces.

This year’s offering features exceptional examples by René Magritte, Paul Delvaux, Dorothea Tanning, Toyen, Max Ernst, Joan Miró, Odilon Redon and Pablo Picasso, among others.

Leading the sale is René Magritte’s Les grâces naturelles (c. 1961), a luminous and iconic painting centred on his celebrated ‘leaf‑bird’ motif. The strong Magritte group also includes Le chœur des sphinges (1966) and La jeunesse illustrée (1937), among other important works that exemplify the artist’s wit, poetic logic and enduring fascination with metamorphosis. Together, these paintings highlight Magritte’s 1960s return to earlier themes, reimagined with striking clarity and visual economy.

The sale is further distinguished by major works by Paul Delvaux, notably the dreamlike La ville lunaire (1944), and by significant contributions from pioneering women Surrealists, including Dorothea Tanning’s psychologically charged Children’s Games (1942) and Toyen’s enigmatic Le devenir de la liberté (1946).

Additional highlights include rare works by Odilon Redon, important paintings by Joan Miró and Pablo Picasso from The Renker Collection, and three significant works by Max Ernst. Together, they offer a compelling and nuanced survey of Surrealism’s enduring imaginative power and its rich experimental legacy.

Auction times

05 Mar 07:00 PM (GMT) Lots 101-127

Our specialist’s selection

Brought to you by

Ottavia Marchitelli

Senior Specialist, Head of The Art of The Surreal Sale | Impressionist & Modern Art

Ottavia Marchitelli is a Director, Senior Specialist in the Impressionist and Modern Art Department in London.

Ottavia drives business sourcing in Impressionist and 20th Century Art, focusing on business getting, art advisory and auction management. Her passion engages clients and institutions alike across Europe, a knowledge base she transfers into the strong results she continues to achieve for the department. As a Director, Ottavia leads the core Impressionist team, prioritising the sourcing of outstanding works of art for the Day and Works on Paper Sales.

Ottavia joined Christie’s in 2010 and holds a Master of Science in Economics and Management for Arts, Culture, Media and Entertainment from Bocconi University, Milan. Ottavia is fluent in English, French and Italian.

Ottavia lives in London with her husband and two children.

Olivier Camu

Deputy Chairman, Senior International Director | Impressionist & Modern Art

In 2007 Olivier was appointed Head of the London Department, a position he held until 2009. He enjoyed considerable success in this role. In June 2008 the Impressionist Evening sale reached new heights, achieving £144.5m ($285m) thanks to the Miller Collection from Columbus, Indiana - for a long time the highest total for any Impressionist and Modern Art sale in European auction history. In that sale Monet's ‘Nympheas’ sold for £41m ($82m) a world record then not only for Monet, but for any Impressionist painting at auction. He also played a key role in the consignment of single major paintings such as Gauguin's ‘L'homme à la hache’, which sold for the world record price of $40m in New York in November 2006, and Degas' pastel ‘Danseuses à la barre’ which sold for £13.5m ($26.5m) in 2008.

In 2012 Olivier was appointed Deputy Chairman of the department. He has since then been responsible for several major sales such as the Hubertus Wald Charitable Foundation collection from Hamburg, which was a backbone of the London February 2012 evening sales and witnessed several world record prices. In 2014 he was responsible for the sale of the unnamed ‘Modern Masterworks from a Private Swiss Collection’, which included world record masterpieces such as Juan Gris 'La nappe à carreaux' of 1915, which sold for a double world record price of £35m ($57m) as well as Carlo Carra's 'Solitudine' from circa 1917-26, which sold for a record £3m ($5m).

In 2015 Olivier was responsible for the consignment of Picasso's 'Les Femmes d'Alger' of 1955, which sold for $180m, not only beating the previous record price of $108m, but also establishing the world record price for any work of art at auction; he was also responsible for the sale of Mondrian's ‘Composition III’ from 1929, which achieved the new world record of $50m, and the anonymous Belgian collection ‘Reality and Surreality’ which included Bacon's ‘Cardinal Rouge’ and fetched $45m while the total collection sold for $120m (£75m), mostly in February 2015 in London: as well as being responsible for the consignment of the anonymous ‘Figuration and Abstraction: works from a private European collection’, which also sold in February 2015 for £42m ($64m), with Miro’s 1950 ‘Painting (Women, Room, Birds)’ estimated at £4-7m and selling for £15.5 ($25m), a world record for any post-war Miro.

Olivier has been responsible for helping Christie's achieve a dominant position in the Surrealist and Italian 20th Century Art yearly sales in London since their inception in 2000. While Olivier stopped running the Italian sale in 2008, he successfully continues to run ‘The Art of The Surreal sale’ which is world renowned and is the leading sale for such art worldwide and the only one to take place regularly in London every February. As result Christie's holds a 77% market share in that sale format. In 2015 his Surrealist sale achieved a highpoint when Christie’s registered 80% market share against our competitors. That sale at £66.5m ($101m) achieved the highest sold total for any Surrealist sale in auction history.