London 20th/21st Century Art Evening Sales total £219m / $289m / €258m

As the art world looks to London for Frieze Week 2026, the first night of Christie’s 20th and 21st Century Art auctions opened with Monsoon: The Peter Simon Collection Evening Sale and the 20th/21st Century: London Evening Sale. Together thay achieved £218,603,400 / $289,430,902 / €258,389,219, up 103 per cent on last year. Across both sales, there was a sell through-rate of 91 per cent by lot and 96 per cent by value, with two masterpieces selling for more than £25 million.

This buoyant result highlights reflect the strength in the market for important single-owner collections and blue-chip masterpieces. On the evening, auctioneers Adrien Meyer and Yü-Ge Wang fielded bids from the room, telephones and Christie’s LIVE for 87 lots across both sales.

The majority of bidders, 59 per cent, came from Europe, the Middle East and Africa, while 31 per cent were from the Americas and 10 per cent were from the Asia-Pacific.

Multiple records were broken, including the highest value single-owner collection ever sold at Christie’s London; the highest value lot sold in the London October season in the last five years; and world auction records for seven artists, four of which were women.

Monsoon: The Peter Simon Collection

The Peter Simon Collection Evening Sale collection totalled £107,508,800 / $142,341,651 / €127,075,402, the highest value single-owner collection sold at Christie’s in London. Sell-through rates saw 98 per cent by lot and 99 per cent by value, with 43 per cent of lots selling above the high estimate.

Built by the fashion entrepreneur over four decades, the collection reflects his adventurous spirit and eye for colour and composition. The top lot was Francis Bacon’s Figure in Movement (1978), an intense composition of form suspended in motion, which Simon acquired from the renowned dealer Ivor Braka in 2006. Included in the artist’s landmark shows at the Tate Gallery, the Hayward Gallery, and the Yale Center for British Art, it sold for £17,185,000 to a bidder in the room.

This was followed by Piet Mondrian’s Composition A, with Double Line and Yellow (1935). Created from just three lines and as few colours, it comes from a late period of the artist’s intense examination of spatial volumes and equilibrium. The work’s first owner, James Johnson Sweeney, a curator at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, paid Mondrian 3,000 francs after seeing it in the artist’s Paris studio. In 1945, when Sweeney organised the artist’s seminal posthumous retrospective at the MoMA, he included the work. It made £9,710,000.

The third highest price was paid for Joan Miró’s Peinture (Les amants — Adam et Eve), 1925. Part of the artist’s revolutionary ‘Dream’ series, in which the artist appears to abandon narrative and logic, it depicts a pair of amorphous lovers, and made £8,560,000 at its auction debut.

Bridget Riley’s Streak 2 (1979) made £5,214,000, breaking the artist’s previous record of set at £4.3 million at Christie’s in 2016. A monumental work from the height of the artist’s exploration into curves and one of the last from this period in private hands, it was previously in the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection.

More record prices for women tumbled. After eight minutes of competitive bidding in the room and on the phones, Painterly Architectonic (1918), a rare painting by Liubov Popova, the Russian Cubo-Futurist who died aged 35, made £7,640,000 against a low estimate of £1,800,000, demolishing her previous record of £1,700,500 set in 2007.

Strong bidding was also witnessed for the young Zimbabwean artist Portia Zvavahera, whose painting This is where I travelled [3], 2020 — lot number one of the sale — made £307,200, breaking her previous recored of £286,258.

Barbara Hepworth’s The Hands and the Arm (1948), from her rare series of figurative works completed in surgical theatres, made £537,600, breaking her record for a painting.

Elsewhere, David Bomberg’s response to an El Greco landscape San Miguel, Toledo, Afternoon (1929) made £3,262,000, smashing his previous record of £1.4 million set at Christie’s in 2022.

The collection’s showcase of key figures of British art continued with works by Hurvin Anderson, London School and St Ives School artists. Weeks after it hung in Hurvin Anderson’s acclaimed Tate Britain retrospective, his painting Last House (2013) sold for £5,702,000, almost triple its low estimate.

Howard Hodgkin’s evocation of the blazing warmth of an afternoon in the ‘Sunshine State’ Florida Garden (1996-97) made £1,152,000. Frank Auerbach’s charcoal portrait Head of Helen Gillespie (1961) made £1,981,000. And Leon Kossoff’s impasto of the Spitalfields landmark Christ Church, Stormy Day, Summer (1994) making £896,000. All these results were more than double the works’ low estimates.

Continuing the theme, compelling results were realised by Ben Nicholson’s hand-carved monochrome wood panel 1934 (relief), 1934, made £1,664,000; Michael Armitage’s painting on lubugo bark cloth Elephants (2015), making £1,126,400; Peter Doig’s snowscape Reflection (1997), making £832,000; and Wyndham Lewis’s Study in Blue (1912), making £89,600 — all above their high estimates.

Also breaking its high estimate, Fernand Léger’s Jazz Age Le siphon (1924), made £5,33600. Moments later, the related work on paper fetched £179,200, more than double its high estimate.

20th/21st Century: London Evening Sale

The 20th/21st Century: London Evening Sale saw 46 lots offered, selling 85 per cent by lot and 93 per cent by value. The highest value lot sold was Wassily Kandinsky’s Das bunte Leben (La vie mélangée), 1907, which was offered following a landmark restitution to the heirs of Hedwig Lewenstein-Weyermann in 2023. Using the folk-tales of his native Russia as his subject, and acid hues as his palette, the panoramic landscape pulses with life, and paved the way for the artist’s turn towards pure abstraction. On the evening, after almost six minutes of bidding, it made £31,560,000 — becoming the most expensive work of sold at auction during Frieze Week in the last five years.

The second highest price was paid for another Neo-Plastic work by Mondrian: Composition III (Komposition No.XIII) from 1920. One of only eight works he made during this pivotal year, it marks the moment the artist reduced his subject to its purest essence of line and form. Five of the other works from his annus mirabilis are held institutionally, including Tate, MoMA and the Stedelijk in Amsterdam. Fresh to auction, it achieved £25,235,000.

The sale opened with two of Josef Albers’s iconic square paintings. The red R-I d-1 (1968) and the yellow Study for Homage to the Square: Warm Silence (1971) made £588,800 against a low estimate of £250,000 and £742,400 against a low estimate of £380,000, retrospectively. They both come from the landmark collection offered in London and Paris, Radiant Modernism: Signac to Albers.

Shortly after, Paul Klee’s jewel-like watercolour Kleine Erinnerung an Nymphenburg (1921), from Lines of Light: An Important Italian Collection of German Modernism, made £537,600 against a low estimate of £200,000.

The next lot was René Magritte’s Le seize septembre (c. 1955-56). The petit gouache on card made £3,262,000, almost triple its low estimate. It was immediately followed by David Hockney’s oil of his dachshund Stanley Dog Painting 17 (1995), which more than doubled its low estimate at £3,506,000. It marked the first time one of Hockney’s ‘Dog’ series paintings has come to auction. The following lot was Flora Yukhnovich’s two-metre wide Capriccio (2019), painted during a residency in Venice. It made £2,286,000, more than double its low estimate.

Towards the end of the sale, more records were broken. Igshaan Adams’s The certainty of being a rose (2026), which was being sold to benefit ClientEarth and Gallery Climate Coalition, broke the artist’s previous record of £78,765 to make £96,000; and the penultimate lot, Gerhard Richter’s tapestry Abdu (2009), realised £1,152,00 — a new record for the artist in the medium.

Elsewhere, offered from the Collection of Antonio Homem Sonnabend, Gilbert & George’s Dead Boards No 19 (1976) made £153,600, more than triple its low estimate. Meanwhile, Pablo Picasso’s early still-life Paquet de tabac, vase à fleurs, journal, verre, bouteille (1918) realised £2,042,000, and Fernand Léger’s foliate Des fleurs dans un élément mécanique (1943) made £1,152,000 — both more than doubling their low estimates.

Competitive bidding continued throughout the evening. Henri Matisse’s nearly four-metre-wide screenprint on linen Océanie, la mer (conceived in summer 1946; executed in 1948) made £3,384,000, August Macke’s vivid Kolonnade mit Segelboot II (1913-14) made £2,530,000, Paul Delvaux’s surreal Etude pour Alésia (1973) made £1,408,000, Edvard Munch’s landscape Bjørkestammer (Birch Trunks) (1914-15) made £1,280,000, and Alexander Calder’s standing mobile Zigzag (1972) made £1,088,000 — all above their high estimates.

London Frieze Week sales continue

On 15 October, 69 lots are offered in Monsoon: The Peter Simon Collection Day Sale, led by works by Hurvin Anderson, Damien Hirst, and Günther Förg. On the same day, the Post-War and Contemporary Art Day Sale brings another 102 lots led by paintings by Cecily Brown, George Condo and Sean Scully.

The following day, the Impressionist and Modern Art Day and Works on Paper Sale will present 167 works, led by Paul Klee, Alfred Kubin and Theo van Rysselberghe.

Another 82 lots are offered in Monsoon: The Peter Simon Collection Online Sale, until 20 October, led by Alfred Wallis, Gabriel Orozco and Walead Beshty. And 183 more lots make up Post-War and Contemporary Art Online, which is live for bidding until 21 October and showcases works by Ettore Spalletti, Sol Lewitt and Wade Guyton.

Looking further ahead, the Modern British and Irish Art Evening Sale on 21 October, contains 39 works, including top lots by Barbara Hepworth, Henry Moore and Frank Bowling. On 22 October, the Modern British and Irish Art Day Sale has 151 works, with standout lots by Gerald Laing, Barry Flanagan and L.S. Lowry.

Paris 20th/21st Century Art auctions

Also on 22 October, Christie’s in Paris presents remarkable works by Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Alfred Sisley in Durand-Ruel, Generations of Vision, followed by 20th/21st Century: Paris Evening Sale including Thinking Italian, led by important works by Lucio Fontana, Joan Mitchell and Amedeo Modigliani.

The following day in Paris, Art Moderne — Vente du Jour, including Works from the Durand-Ruel Collection and Works from the Marlene and Spencer Hays Collection takes place. The 216 lots are led by Pierre Bonnard, Raoul Dufy and Pablo Picasso. That afternoon, Art Contemporain - Vente du Jour brings 141 more lots, led by Josef Albers, Gerhard Richter and Alexander Calder.