Walk the auction: your guide to Christie’s 20th and 21st Century Art sales in NY this November

From the revolutionary Impressionists to the trailblazers of contemporary art, Christie’s 20th and 21st Century auctions this November celebrate works that define an era. Masterpieces by David Hockney, Mark Rothko, Pablo Picasso, Lucian Freud, Richard Diebenkorn and more anchor the season, offering collectors and enthusiasts an unparalleled opportunity to engage with art history’s most transformative moments.

Many of these works hail from distinguished private collections, including The Collection of Robert F. and Patricia G. Ross Weis, Elaine: The Collection of Elaine Wynn, the Edlis | Neeson Collection, Birth of the Modern: The Arnold and Joan Saltzman Collection, and Property from the Kawamura Memorial DIC Museum of Art — each a testament to decades of vision and connoisseurship.

How to visit

A diverse array of works will be on view at Christie’s iconic Rockefeller Center galleries from 7-20 November. The exhibition is free and open to the public from 10:00am to 5:00pm daily (except for Sunday 9 November, when we open at 1:00pm). Stop by Christie’s Café for a coffee or tea while exploring works. Browse highlights here.

What’s on

From 17–20 November, Christie’s 20th and 21st Century sale week comprises six live auctions.

Monday 17 November, 6:30pm ET

The evening of Monday 17 November begins at 6:30pm EST with The Collection of Robert F. and Patricia G. Ross Weis, including outstanding paintings by Mark Rothko, Pablo Picasso, and Piet Mondrian. Built over the course of fifty years, their collection embodies a lifetime of discovery and a rich dialogue between movements, across time.

Monday 17 November, 7:00pm ET

Following at 7:00pm, the 20th Century Evening Sale boasts works of remarkable provenance, from preeminent private collections and unparalleled institutional holdings. Elaine: The Collection of Elaine Wynn takes centre stage with iconic paintings such as Joan Mitchell’s alluring Sunflower V and one of Richard Diebenkorn’s finest Ocean Park paintings, while Property from the Kawamura Memorial DIC Museum of Art in Japan offers masterworks from Claude Monet and Marc Chagall amongst others. Read about David Hockney’s first double-portrait and more top picks from Christie’s specialists.

Birth of the Modern: The Arnold and Joan Saltzman Collection features across the 20th Century Evening Sale as well as the Impressionist & Modern Art Day Sale. Dedicated philanthropists and public servants Arnold and Joan Saltzman built a singular collection of modern masters including a breakthrough in Cubism by Fernand Léger.

Tuesday 18 November, 10am ET

Tuesday 18 November opens with the Impressionist & Modern Works on Paper Sale at 10am, which is not to be missed. For 40 years Christie’s has celebrated this unique category with a dedicated sale for works on paper connoisseurs. Highly anticipated lots include Edgar Degas’ delicate pastel Danseuses sur la scène (c. 1879) and a dynamic Joan Miró from 1942, Personnage, oiseau, étoiles, as well as must-have finds under $50,000.

Tuesday 18 November, 11:30am ET

The day continues with the Impressionist & Modern Art Day Sale at 11:30am. The auction encompasses important paintings and sculptures by leading international artists of the late 19th and 20th centuries, amongst them Tamara de Lempicka, Pablo Picasso, Alfred Sisley, Leonora Carrington and Rufino Tamayo. A pair of portraits by Jean Metzinger and Robert Delaunay from the Saltzman collection charts the historic friendship between the two artists.

Wednesday 19 November, 7pm ET

On Wednesday 19 November at 7pm, the 21st Century Evening Sale Featuring Works from the Edlis | Neeson Collection opens with a single-owner selection from one of the most important collections of contemporary art ever amassed. While further sales of art and design from the Edlis | Neeson Collection will continue throughout 2026 at Christie’s, this Evening Sale offers prime works by Richard Prince, Ed Ruscha, Jeff Koons and Andy Warhol. Additional highlights of the evening include Christopher Wool’s four-letter provocation and Kerry James Marshall’s imagined portrait of John Punch. Marshall is one of several artists with current exhibitions around the world — his at the Royal Academy in London — who can be seen in Christie’s galleries.

Thursday 20 November, 10am ET

Capping off the sale week is the Post-War & Contemporary Art Day Sale on Thursday 20 November at 10am, featuring further exceptional works from the Weis collection, the collection of Elaine Wynn, and Property from the Kawamura Memorial DIC Museum of Art as well as Collector/Connoisseur: The Max N. Berry Collections. Expect to see Sam Gilliam, Roy Lichtenstein — subject of a forthcoming retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art — and Wayne Thiebaud along with celebrated contemporary artists such as Marlene Dumas, Gerhard Richter and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye.

Meanwhile, Picasso Ceramics is open for bidding online from 7-21 November and features unique ceramics by the Spanish master from his 25-year collaboration with Georges and Suzanne Ramié, founders of the renowned Atelier Madoura from Vallauris, France.

How to watch

Tune in from anywhere in the world for a high-definition experience at your fingertips on Christie’s YouTube, Tiktok, Facebook and Instagram, where the sales will be livestreamed from our salerooms at Rockefeller Center.

For real-time results and of-the-moment updates, tune into Christie’s LIVE on Christies.com.

To attend live sales in person, tickets are required — seats in the sale room are reserved for select registered bidders.

How to bid

Whether you want to attend a live auction or bid online from the comfort of your home, buying art at Christie’s has never been easier or more accessible. To bid in the auction or review auction results, visit Christie’s LIVE on Christies.com.

Learn more about how to create an account, find what you love, register and bid.

Don’t miss…

A roaring display of Surrealism

A Frida Kahlo painting with a storied exhibition history will be offered in the 20th Century Evening Sale. Kahlo and Lucienne Bloch were shopping for art supplies when a Fourth of July shop window display stopped the beloved Mexican painter in her tracks. The festive garlands and papier-mâché figures reminded her of Mexico. Diego Rivera encouraged her to paint the scene. The unusual oil on metal work depicting a lion and stallion alongside a portrait of George Washington has appeared in institutional shows across Mexico and the United States, as well as catalogues of her work published by Tate Modern and the Detroit Institute of Arts, amongst others.

Experiments in colour and optics

Three works in the 20th Century Evening Sale proffer a view onto the technical innovations of modern painting’s colour and opticality. Two paintings by Paul Signac derive from a concentrated series devoted to the Seine as it passes through Les Andelys, a commune northwest of Paris where the artist spent the summer of 1886. In Les Andelys, Port Morin and Les Andelys, les bains — the latter of which Signac dedicated and then gifted to his friend, the painter Camille Pissarro — the artist announces his shift from a foundation of Impressionism towards the new methods and radical techniques of Pointillism.

Signac had been inspired to take up painting after seeing the work of Claude Monet, and he spent years studying Impressionist colour, technique and composition. He soon moved away from this style though — working alongside his close friend Georges Seurat, Signac developed a revolutionary new approach to painting rooted in contemporary colour theory. The technique used small points of complementary colours, placed side by side, that would optically blend in the viewer’s eye.

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec’s work from the same period increasingly embraced techniques that prioritized the opticality of the painted surface, emphasizing how the viewer’s eye and mind read and translate marks into form. Executed circa 1890, Femme assise de profil vers la gauche utilizes complex layers of brushwork to depict the figure, her clothing and the surroundings of the artist’s studio, playing with the density of the pigments to achieve different finishes and textural effects.

Monumental sculpture in the spotlight

The week includes an exceptional selection of monumental and outdoor sculpture, led by the largest and most significant of Alexander Calder’s wooden Constellation works ever to come to auction, Painted Wood (1943).

Cast in bronze from a mannequin the artist’s wife gave him for his 62nd birthday, Untitled (Cowboy) (2011-13) by Richard Prince was made as a self-portrait. Prince spent two years amending the figure and adding a new hat, boots and a double holster with guns.

Henry Moore’s Reclining Woman: Elbow will welcome visitors at the outdoor plaza of Christie’s Rockefeller Center galleries, while in the Channel Gardens the imposing Bronze Form showcases the celebrated sculptor’s mastery of the vertical.

Gazing Ball (Ariadne) (2013) hails from a body of work Jeff Koons debuted in New York in 2013, fusing classical references to Greco-Roman form with contemporary mysticism vis-à-vis a reflective, ultramarine orb perched on a figurative curve.

Explore larger-than-life works by Takashi Murakami, Barbara Hepworth, Isamu Noguchi, David Smith and more in our modern and contemporary sculpture guide.

Ones to watch

Contemporary artists on the rise shine in the Post-War & Contemporary Day Sale, and one exciting offering this season comes from the Indigenous Australian artist Yukultji Napangati, whose work emerges from the Papunya Tula circle of artists in the western region of her country. Beyoncé and Jay-Z acquired two of the painter’s canvases from her first United States solo exhibition in 2019.

A luminary of a new generation of artists, Lauren Halsey makes her Christie’s debut with an exquisite work of hand-carved gypsum on wood from the collection of Elaine Wynn. Deriving from her first exhibition at David Kordansky Gallery in early 2020, the work articulates a mythopoetic vision of the artist’s neighbourhood in South Central Los Angeles.

Animalia

A menagerie of creatures will be gracing the sales week with their presence, but luckily for all involved, they’re perfectly well-behaved — from Andy Warhol’s gold monkeys to Botero’s fleshy rooster and Deborah Butterfield’s equine bronzes.

A Calder for the table, please

Alexander Calder is rightly lauded for his monumental sculptures, but he also made a veritable banquet of table-top stabiles that have charmed generations of collectors. Meet a few of these coveted gems in the Post-War & Contemporary Art Day Sale.