This year, the March London auctions were under even closer scrutiny than usual as the pound surged, buoyed by renewed investor confidence in the U.K. market. The shift was driven in part by the uncertainty surrounding President Trump’s new policies in the United States, which have already begun to stoke tensions. More significantly, all eyes were on how the art market would respond to ongoing geopolitical crises unfolding around the world.
All three major auction houses opted to bet on the favorable conditions in the U.K. market, bringing a selection of masterpieces to the rostrum while tailoring their offerings to align with current market demands. The result was a combined £208,145,400 across the London evening sales, a figure experts would love to interpret as a sign of market optimism in the U.K. and beyond. At the same time, the results underscored the reality that auction houses must continuously adapt expectations and secure top-tier consignments to succeed.
The week began with strong and sustained bidding at Sotheby’s Modern & Contemporary Evening Auction on March 4, exceeding expectations with a £62,506,800 ($78,624,178) total. But the tightly curated 38-lot sale saw three withdrawals before bidding even began, including a 1995 Gerhard Richter abstract estimated at £5-7 million.
One of the undisputed highlights of the evening was Lisa Brice’s After Embah, which set a new auction record for the artist, hammering at £4.4 million and closing at £5.4 million ($6.8 million) after fees—well beyond its initial £1-1.5 million estimate. Oliver Baker, who presented the work, emphasized its unparalleled quality, describing it as incomparable to any Brice painting auctioned in recent years since her last record at Sotheby’s New York in 2021. After an intense ten-minute, six-way bidding battle between a woman in the room and the winning bidder on the phone, the final price more than doubled its high estimate.
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Another standout of the sale was Yoshitomo Nara’s 2005 Cosmic Eyes (in the Milky Lake), which ignited prolonged phone bidding. The lot swiftly surpassed its £6 million low estimate but climbed more slowly to meet its £8 million high estimate, ultimately selling for £9,027,500 after fees. The result comes just three months after the opening of Nara’s major retrospective at the Hayward Gallery, following its debut at LACMA and its stop at the Guggenheim Bilbao.
Banksy’s Crude Oil (Vettriano), consigned from Blink-182 founding member Mark Hoppus’ art collection, landed within its £3-5 million estimate, hammering at £3.5 million (£4.3 million/$5.4 million after fees) to a British private collector bidding online. Recognizing that Banksy’s Crude Oil series, which debuted in 2005, appeals strongly to a younger generation of collectors, Sotheby’s accepted cryptocurrency payments for this rare, fully hand-painted piece.
Sculptures also saw strong demand, particularly Constantin Brancusi’s L’Oiseau d’Or, cast in 1981 by Susse Fondeur from a copy of the original plaster under the instruction of the artist’s heirs. Backed by both an irrevocable bid and a third-party guarantee, the work achieved £3.3 million ($4.2 million) after competitive bidding, aligning with its £2.5-4 million estimate. Meanwhile, the auction’s opening lot, Max Ernst’s cryptic and fantastical sculpture Moonmad, returned to the market for the first time in 45 years. Attracting at least six bidders between the room and the phones, the work ultimately shattered expectations, selling for £2.1 million ($2.7 million)—three times its estimate.
Generating even more excitement was a seminal example from Alberto Burri’s celebrated Sacchi series, which has been in the same collection since its acquisition in 1965. Given the rarity of such a fine and extensive work from this series appearing at auction, it was no surprise when bidding quickly surpassed its £2.5-3.5 million estimate, ultimately achieving £4.9 million ($6.2 million).
Lucio Fontana’s signature work, the white Slashes, Concetto Spaziale, Attese, failed to generate the same enthusiasm, despite its inclusion in the artist’s major 2019 retrospective at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The piece sold over the phone for £2,968,000, including fees, falling short of its £3-4 million estimate. Further reinforcing concerns that the market for Fontana may no longer be reaching the peaks of previous years, another Slashes work—this time in red—came up just a few lots later, selling within its expected range for £1,504,000.
Nicolas Party’s market also showed signs of recalibration, moving away from the six-figure results that had become standard in recent years. At Sotheby’s, a 2015 portrait of two men by the artist landed at £210,000 after only a handful of bids, closing at £266,750 after fees.
Oliver Barker faced a challenge in driving interest past the £1 million low estimate for Roy Lichtenstein’s early Peanut Butter Cup, which hammered at £900,000 before likely selling for £1,019,000—just enough to cover its irrevocable bid or guarantee. This is one of the rare oils on canvas by the Pop artist to appear at auction, it comes to Sotheby’s ahead of the Whitney Museum’s major survey of Lichtenstein planned for later this year. The work also boasted an exceptional provenance, having remained for years with the same owner who originally acquired it from Ileana Sonnabend’s gallery in 1964 after it had previously passed through the hands of Leo Castelli.
A three-hour-long marathon at Christie’s
Christie’s took over with a far more conspicuous offering, resulting in an almost three-hour-long tour de force of paddle waving. The night opened with auctioneer Adrien Meyer’s optimistic “good luck tonight” and later gave way to his more fatigued remark, “tough night,” after reclaiming the baton from his colleague Yü-Ge Wang, who led the Art of the Surreal session that followed. Despite the marathon evening, Christie’s 20/21st Century Evening Sale and the Art of the Surreal delivered a remarkable combined total of £130,251,700 ($166,591,924), with 94 percent of lots sold by lot, 97 percent sold by value and 43 percent exceeding their high estimates across both sales.
Christie’s reshuffled its sale strategy this time, kicking off with high-demand names in ultra-contemporary art—artists whose works are virtually inaccessible on the primary market, making the auction block the only way to acquire them. Case in point: the opening lot was a work by Danielle Mckinney. Even collectors who donated her works to institutions long ago are still waiting for access to one of her oils for their collections. The bidding war for Other Worldly ignited at £85,000, with rapid back-and-forth relaunches that pushed it to £130,000, then £145,000 within minutes. The momentum didn’t stop there—the phone bidding escalated the hammer price to £210,000 (£264,600 after fees), soaring well above her primary market prices. Scarcity, even when artificially created with waiting lists, remains a driving force, especially with living ultra-contemporary artists. The sale set a new record for Mckinney, surpassing her previous auction high of $201,600.
Up next, Dreampop by Tokyo-born Justin Caguiat confirmed the strong start, quickly reaching £420,000 and ultimately bringing in £529,200 with fees for the artist’s ethereal large-scale canvas. The rapid bidding momentum continued, carrying over into Emmi Whitehorse’s spiritual abstractions. Following her recent participation in the Venice Biennale, her work quickly surged past its £120,000-180,000 estimate to achieve £302,400—far more aligned with her primary market prices but still significantly above her previous record of $177,800. In a carefully curated shift, Christie’s moved next to the lyrical abstractions of a spiritual abstractionist from a different era: Wassily Kandinsky. His fragmentary yet frenetic Schwarze Begleitung wasted no time hitting the million-pound mark before closing at £2,218,000, nearly tripling its £700,000-1,000,000 estimate.
From there, Christie’s arrived at one of the night’s most anticipated lots, Knabe in Matrosenanzug (Boy in a Sailor Suit) by Egon Schiele, which came to auction from a restitution agreement. Strangely, despite the vibrancy of the linework and the artist’s masterful use of color, the piece was offered without a guarantee or irrevocable bid. Any doubts over demand, however, quickly vanished—the work shot past its £1,500,000 high estimate and landed at £3,307,000, outperforming the $2.23 million double-sided Two Female Nudes from 1910, which sold at Christie’s Impressionist & Modern Works on Paper sale in New York in 2023.
Echoing the previous lot in aesthetic resonance, next on the rostrum was Jenny Saville’s monumental charcoal and pastel drawing, inspired by Michelangelo’s Pietà Bandini in Florence and exhibited just two years ago at Museo Novecento. Having remained in the same collection since its acquisition at Gagosian in London the year it was first shown, the piece achieved a modest yet expected £982,800—well within its £800,000-1,200,000 estimate and perfectly timed ahead of the artist’s major show at London’s National Portrait Gallery in June.
Another highly anticipated highlight followed: Amedeo Modigliani’s Portrait de Lunia Czechowska, painted circa 1917-18. The exquisite rendering of one of the artist’s eternal muses landed at £6,290,000, falling neatly within its well-calibrated £4-7 million estimate. Tension in the room ratcheted up when Francis Bacon hit the rostrum with a work fresh from the widely acclaimed National Portrait Gallery London survey. The piece shot quickly to £5.5 million before ultimately closing at £6,635,000, likely covered by the third-party guarantee.
A similarly strong performance came from Portrait du Docteur Boucard by Tamara de Lempicka, which auctioneer Adrien Meyer hammered down at £6,635,000. The work, hitting the market for the first time in 40 years, arrived at auction just as de Lempicka’s long-overlooked legacy gains long-overdue recognition, fresh off her first major U.S. museum retrospective, now traveling from the de Young Museum in San Francisco to the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.
Meanwhile, blue-chip names like Cy Twombly and Jean-Michel Basquiat performed solidly within current market expectations. Basquiat’s rare collaboration with Transavanguardia painter Francesco Clemente and Andy Warhol, Horizontal Painting, achieved £982,800, while Cecily Brown’s majestic triptych, Things Could Be Different. Still, They’re Not, sold within estimate at £907,200. The latter result came despite anticipation just days before the opening of Brown’s first extensive U.S. survey at the Barnes Foundation.
The evening’s final lot, Fernando Botero’s The Botero Exhibition, served as a reality check for what’s resonating—and what’s not. Despite being a quintessential, large-scale example of the artist’s unmistakable style, the piece barely reached £420,000 before stalling and ultimately failing to meet its £500,000 low estimate, passing as unsold.
From there, the auction house transitioned into the Art of the Surreal Evening Sale, featuring twenty-five lots that generated one of the top results of the season: a £48,071,200 ($61,483,065) total, with 96 percent sold by lot and 98 percent sold by value. The numbers reaffirm the enduring strength of the Surrealist market—a movement born in an era of political instability that, in today’s climate, feels eerily prescient.
The undisputed star of the session was René Magritte’s archetypal La Reconnaissance Infinie (1933), which, following a strong year for the artist, delivered the week’s only eight-figure result at £10,315,000—an extraordinary leap from the £677,250 it last sold for at Christie’s in 2004.
Equally sought-after were three quintessential Paul Delvaux paintings, long held by an unnamed Belgian hotelier. Nuit de Noël sold briskly for £2,339,000, but the evening’s most intense bidding war came over La Ville Endormie (1938), which more than tripled its £1,200,000-1,800,000 estimate, closing at £6,175,000. The final piece of the triptych, Les Belles de Nuit (Comédie du Soir ou La Comédie), reached £4,396,000 after a few minutes of bidding, hammering at £3.6 million. Together, the three Delvaux works generated a combined £12.9 million (fees included), all selling on the phone to an Asia-based collector via a Hong Kong specialist.
Two classic Metafisica paintings by Giorgio De Chirico also outperformed estimates. Interno Metafisico con Officina achieved £289,800, while the iconic Gli Archeologi sold for £378,000, both comfortably above their reasonable £160,000-200,000 estimate range.
“With 96 percent of lots sold and over half above the high estimate, the extraordinary results of yesterday’s the Art of the Surreal Evening Sale reaffirm this annual auction as a pivotal moment in the international art market,” Ottavia Marchitelli, head of the sale, told Observer. “The quality and freshness of our offerings continue to engage collectors. We are thrilled with the phenomenal success of the three rare Delvaux paintings we presented and the enduring appeal of Magritte, whose La Reconnaissance Infinie sold for over $13 million.”
Despite robust sell-through rates, the Christie’s sales underscored the market’s increasing selectiveness, where excitement and premium prices remain reserved for only the very best material. The £130.3 million total, while undeniably strong, represented a 34 percent drop from last year’s £196.7 million result—another sign that, in 2024, the art market continues to favor caution over speculation.
The hunt for blue-chip low estimates and ultracontemporary record-setting at Phillips
Closing out this round of evening sales, Phillips embarked on another tour de force—not so much due to the number of lots in their Modern & Contemporary Art Evening Sale (just twenty-nine, after three were withdrawn) but rather in the effort required to coax bids up to the low estimate. As the night wore on, even the youthful energy of auctioneer Henry Highley seemed to fade, his tireless attempts to draw out counterbids from hesitant buyers taking a visible toll. By the end of the event, he looked palpably drained. Despite the struggle, Phillips managed to salvage the sale, closing with a respectable £15,386,940 ($19,821,456) total and a strong 90 percent sell-through rate.
Joan Mitchell’s wintery, lyrical triptych Canada II set the tone for the night’s slow climb. The bidding inched up from an opening £1.4 million to £2.1 million, where it stalled for several tense minutes as Highley pushed relentlessly for just one more bid to secure the work at its low estimate. The bid eventually came, with the piece hammering at £2.2 million (£2,710,000 after fees)—still short of its £3 million low estimate. A similar fate befell Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Pattya, a more restrained canvas from 1987, created the year after his first global trip and inspired by his time in Thailand and Japan. The work opened with a £950,000 commission bid and barely scraped past the million mark, hammering at £1.3 million (£1,681,000 after fees) to a phone bidder in New York—well below its £2-3 million presale estimate. But a more positive outcome came earlier in the evening for another Basquiat: an untitled drawing of a man from 1982, the year his meteoric rise truly began. In contrast to the struggles of Pattya, the work on paper exceeded its modest £400,000-600,000 estimate, ultimately selling for £609,600 after fees.
The sale revealed a renewed interest in Christopher Wool’s work—both his text-based and more abstract pieces—reflecting his signature blend of gestural expression and mechanical reproduction. Early in the auction, his 1987 text-based Untitled, inspired by Richard Hell & the Voidoids’ 1977 album Blank Generation, ignited a lively bidding war that lasted over five minutes before closing at £927,100 after fees. A few lots later, his large-scale Lester’s Sister (My Brain) from 2000—an embodiment of his evolving style and relentless interrogation of the painterly medium—sold for £1,379,000, comfortably within its £1,200,000-1,800,000 estimate.
Phillips, reinforcing its role as the go-to launchpad for artists making their auction debut, saw solid performances among ultra-contemporary names. Many met expectations, while some exceeded estimates and set new records. One standout was an untitled oil-and-pencil canvas by Peter Doig protégé Florian Krewer, which landed within estimate yet set a new auction record for the artist, hammering at £40,640—more than doubling his previous benchmark of £20,160 set in early 2024.
Chinese painter Ding Shilun generated even more excitement with his allegorical 2021 oil on canvas, which opened the sale, more than doubling both its estimate and primary market prices to fetch £114,300 in just a few minutes. Likely fueling this market enthusiasm was the artist’s recent show at ICA Miami, which coincided with Art Basel Miami and followed presentations at the Zabludowicz Collection in London and Bernheim Gallery in Zurich and London.
Another competitive bidding war accompanied Max (2015-2022) by young French painter Nathanaëlle Herbelin, which quickly surpassed its £25,000-35,000 presale estimate and shattered her previous £16,380 auction record (set in 2025), ultimately selling for £57,150. Herbelin, who had a solo exhibition at Musée d’Orsay in 2024, is set for a forthcoming show at the Art Museum in Shunde, China, in 2025.
Amoako Boafo, once in a similarly meteoric position, appears to have lost some of his market heat. His Pink Shorts barely met its low estimate, hammering at £180,000—effectively returning to primary market pricing despite once commanding aggressive premiums at auction.
Bidding for established blue-chip names like Pablo Picasso, Damien Hirst and even Yayoi Kusama was muted. The first Picasso drawing sold just under estimate at £368,300, while Tête d’homme et nu assis failed to reach its £1,500,000-2,000,000 estimate and passed at £1.3 million. Kusama’s Infinity Nest sold with a single bid on the book for £600,000 (£762,000 with fees), while one of her Pumpkins sparked a brief phone battle between London and Hong Kong before selling for £500,000. Meanwhile, Hirst’s Ascent, a circular butterfly painting, failed to meet its £500,000-700,000 estimate and passed at £320,000. His large-scale dot painting fared slightly better, selling for £444,500—though it only surpassed its low estimate once fees were included.
KAWS-GONE.jpg?quality=80&w=970″ alt=” sculptural artwork by KAWS titled ‘GONE,’ featuring a gray Companion figure carrying a lifeless blue BFF character in its arms. The figures have signature ‘X’ eyes and smooth, cartoon-like features, set against a minimalist gallery background.”” width=”970″ height=”970″ data-caption=’KAWS, <em>GONE</em>, 2018. <span class=”lazyload media-credit”>Phillips</span>’>
KAWS’s market momentum appears to have vanished entirely, with his GONE sculpture failing to generate any real interest and ultimately selling for £571,500 on the book. Equally underwhelming was the reception for Ed Ruscha’s early pastel, despite the artist’s major retrospective at MoMA and strong auction results just last November. Offered as the final lot of the evening, Folded Paper barely inched past its £110,000 starting bid, receiving only a handful of counterbids before hammering at its low estimate of £180,000—closing at £228,600 after fees.
On the other side of the pond, Christie’s went ahead with its A.I. art Auction
This week, Christie’s pressed forward with its highly contested sale dedicated to A.I.-generated art—the first auction in history to formally recognize the status and market for works created with this emerging technology. The sale surpassed all expectations, generating $728,784, though the result still appeared modest compared to the figures achieved in London.
Refik Anadol, featuring swirling abstract textures in shades of vibrant blue and earthy orange. The digital composition evokes a dreamlike, fluid landscape, blending organic and cosmic elements in an immersive, data-driven visualization” width=”970″ height=”1480″ data-caption=’Refik Anadol,<em> Machine Hallucinations – ISS Dreams – A,</em> 2021. <span class=”lazyload media-credit”>Courtesy of Christie's</span>’>
Of the thirty lots offered, many soared past their often very reasonable estimates, with only four going unsold. Unsurprisingly, the top lot of the sale was Machine Hallucinations – ISS Dreams by Refik Anadol, one of the most prominent artists working with A.I. technology. The piece, which transforms publicly available images from the International Space Station (ISS) into mesmerizing, machine-generated visual hallucinations, sold for $277,200—well beyond its $150,000-$200,000 estimate. Just last month, a larger work from the same series, Machine Hallucinations, Space / Chapter II: Mars, achieved $900,000 (including fees) at Sotheby’s inaugural auction in Saudi Arabia. Beyond his auction success, Anadol remains a key figure in championing and educating the public on A.I.-generated art, with plans to open the first-ever dedicated museum for this emerging medium in Los Angeles.
Another standout result came from Embedding Study 1 & 2 by Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst, which sold for $94,500, exceeding its high estimate. The work’s cultural and historical significance had already been validated by its inclusion in the last Whitney Biennial, adding to its appeal. “At Christie’s, we are dedicated to championing the artists of our time. With this project, our goal was to spotlight the brilliant creative voices pushing the boundaries of technology and art,” said Nicole Sales Giles, Christie’s VP and Director of Digital Art Sales, in a statement after the sale.
Notably, the auction attracted a wave of new and younger buyers to Christie’s. Gen Z and millennial collectors dominated the bidding pool, with 37 percent of registrants completely new to the auction house and 48 percent of bidders falling into these younger demographics. The results closely aligned with last year’s Hiscox/ArtTactic A.I. art report, which predicted that A.I.-generated artworks would find more traction with emerging collectors rather than established ones.
