Our specialists’ guide to Christie’s Day Sales

‘This exceptional mobile encapsulates Alexander Calder’s extraordinary ability to transform sculpture into an architectural experience. Executed at the height of his career and commissioned by Edward Durell Stone, the work embodies the creative dialogue between two visionaries who reimagined the relationship between art and space.

‘Its twelve coloured elements achieve an equilibrium between engineering precision and apparent weightlessness. Acquired directly from Stone by Marshall Anderson Shaffer in 1952, the mobile has an especially compelling history, connecting Calder’s sculptural innovation with the architectural vision of one of postwar America’s most influential designers. Remaining in the same family collection for over seven decades, its emergence on the market presents a rare opportunity to acquire a work of exceptional distinction.’

‘There is something extraordinary about the ease with which Claude Monet can capture a fleeting moment and conjure the sensation of being there with just a few brushstrokes. Measuring just 2¾ by 3½ inches, La Barque is barely larger than a playing card, yet there is nothing miniature about the world it evokes. Sweeping strokes suggest an immense sky, flashes of colour ripple across the water, and a sail seems to catch the wind before our eyes.

‘Painted circa 1874, the year of the first Impressionist exhibition in Paris, this tiny panel encapsulates the revolutionary spirit of the movement: the ambition to convey not simply what the eye sees, but the most ephemeral sensations of nature.’

‘What I particularly love about this wonderfully eccentric Paul Klee is how the artist transforms one composition into another, offering a fascinating glimpse into his creative process. Erwartender (The One Who Waits) presents a wide-eyed, rather bewildered figure, seemingly suspended between childhood innocence and existential anxiety. Turn the sheet over, however, and the surprise becomes apparent: the abstract composition on the verso, with its looping, intersecting lines and floating geometric forms, has been ingeniously repurposed on the recto, its underlying shapes informing the figure’s torso and folded arms.

‘It is quintessential Klee — playful, economical and endlessly inventive, finding a new image within an existing one. For an artist who famously described drawing as taking a line for a walk, this particular line seems to have wandered right through the paper and emerged on the other side.’

‘Picasso’s need to create was as primal as the need to eat, sleep, even breathe. For me, nowhere does this impulse feel more palpable than in his best ceramics, a medium he discovered in his late sixties and explored to its fullest potential across hundreds of designs.

‘Painterly and decorative, this large-scale unique Taureau bowl is a tribute to the artist’s native Spain, reprising one of his perennial motifs — the bull — through an instinctive economy of means. Across media, the bull frequently represented an avatar for Picasso himself, an enduring symbol of male virility. Displayed on a library wall or as centrepiece of a dining room, this rare work by the foremost artist of the 20th century is an interior designer’s dream.’

‘I love the way Vija Celmins makes the infinite feel so intimate. Here, Saturn is rendered in her signature photorealistic style, using only graphite to capture the intricacies of the planet and its rings. What I find so compelling is the tension between the subject’s immense scale and the delicacy of her approach. Every mark is considered, yet the image has a pulsing vitality. She takes something as immense and unknowable as space yet renders it with such precision and intimacy.’

‘De Kooning painted Figure in Landscape I at an important moment of transition. He was completely changing his style and abandoning the abstract style of the late 1940s. His intense focus on the female figure, the thrilling way he handles the paint, notably on the legs and her bright red hair, really animates the surface of the painting. It’s a rollercoaster for the eyes.

‘Painted at the same time he was working on Woman I, the iconic painting now in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, this painting belongs to de Kooning’s most famous group of works.’

‘Odilon Redon’s flowers inhabit the same mysterious universe as the fantastical visions of his earlier noirs, only now that world has erupted into colour. Rising from an elegant blue vase, the blossoms of Fleurs dans un vase bleu pulse with a delicate intensity, their saturated reds, pinks and blues dissolving into a shimmering haze of turquoise and ochre. The bouquet seems almost weightless, suspended somewhere between the tangible and the imagined. The longer you look, the more you find yourself drawn into its spell, a fever dream that only Redon could have conjured from something as traditional as a still life.’

‘Few artists could say so much with so little as Henri Matisse, and this wonderfully economical drawing from 1935 is a masterclass in the art of leaving things out. Its provenance adds a distinctly Hollywood twist: it once belonged to legendary filmmaker Billy Wilder, who had arrived in America just two years before Matisse put pencil to paper. The director of Some Like It Hot and Sunset Boulevard clearly knew a thing or two about compelling leading ladies. There is something rather delightful about imagining Wilder, a master of the perfectly timed line, living with a drawing in which every line is equally indispensable.’