The Art of the Surreal Evening Sale

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

Ottavia leads business sourcing in Impressionist and 20th Century Art, with a focus on business development, art advisory, and auction management. Her deep passion for art resonates with both private clients and institutions worldwide, fuelling the strong results she consistently delivers for the department.

She holds a Master of Science in Economics and Management for Arts, Culture, Media, and Entertainment from Bocconi University in Milan.

Since joining Christie’s in 2010, Ottavia has held key roles across major sales. As Head of the Impressionist & Modern Art Works on Paper Sale (2016–2019), she developed expertise in works on paper—drawings and watercolours by the great masters of Impressionism and the 20th-century avant-garde—and significantly expanded her network within the collector community. She then led the Impressionist & Modern Art Day Sale (2019-2022), managing a core team and driving the sourcing of paintings and sculptures priced from $10,000 to $1 million.

Today, Ottavia spearheads the prestigious annual The Art of the Surreal Evening Sale, dedicated to the leading figures of Surrealism. This platform allows her to express her enthusiasm for artists such as Magritte, Dalí, Miró, and Ernst among others—names central to a rapidly growing area of the market.

With over 15 years of experience at Christie’s, Ottavia has developed a keen ability to source 20th and 21st-century works across all price points. She currently advises a global network of collectors based in Europe, the Americas, and Asia and is fluent in English, French and Italian.

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.