Art collectors and market-watchers start your engines. There’s only one week to go until the annual May marquee auctions in New York kick off next Monday with a Christie’s double-header: a sale dedicated to works from the late Barnes & Noble founder and former ARTnews Top 200 collector Leonard Riggio and his wife Louise, followed by the house’s 20th century evening sale.
As usual, the sales will be closely watched for signs of which way the market is blowing. After all, we are now two years into a soft market, a reality that the recent Art Basel and UBS Global Art Market Report put it into cold, hard numbers last month, finding that global art sales shrank by 12 percent last year. While that report did find some positive trends under the hood—namely, an increase in the volume of transactions, thanks to the sale of lower-valued works—the art market and the greater economy are both in a precarious position.
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And, as ARTnews’ Karen K. Ho wrote last week, President Donald Trump’s wide-ranging tariffs have “affected shipping activity at US ports, curbed international tourism, caused volatility in the stock markets, and spurred predictions of a global recession.” The situation has left a lot of galleries participating in this week’s gauntlet of New York fairs wondering just what to expect of collector buying activity.
But first, consignors!
This auction season, there was no shortage of named consignors across the three auction houses’ sales. At Christie’s, there was, of course, the Riggios, but also the house of Anne and Sid Bass, who ranked on the Top 200 for years, Tiqui Atencio and Ago Demirdjian, businessman Jeffrey P. Draime and his wife, among others. At Sotheby’s, there are works from the collection of art dealer Daniella Luxembourg, the estate of Barbara Gladstone, who died last June, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. At Phillips, there are works from the collection of Chicago businessman Ray Allen (who died in 2023) and his wife Sally, and the collection of Lydia Winston Malbin.
As for what the auction houses—and collectors—would rather we didn’t reveal, we’ve got those too. It just took a bit of digging.
First up is Dorothea Tanning’s Endgame, a 17 inch by 17 inch oil painting that was last sold during a Sotheby’s estate sale in November 1981. Marketed by Christie’s as Tanning’s “masterpiece,” the painting has an extensive exhibition history, last appearing at Madrid’s Museo Reina Sofia and London’s Tate Britain in 2018-2019. A peek into Victoria Carruther’s Dorothea Tanning: Transformations, a study of the artist published in 2020, appears to show that the seller of Endgame is none other than the family of late arts patrons Harold and Gertrud Parker. (Gertrud, the founder of San Francisco’s Museum of Craft and Folk Art died in 2021.) It hits the block with a $1 million to $1.5 million estimate at Christie’s 20th Century evening sale on Monday.
Also in that sale is Robert Motherwell’s Elegy to the Spanish Republic No. 160, a large-scale acrylic and charcoal on canvas work from 1979 that Christie’s notes is from an “important Private Swiss Collection.” Last sold from Zurich’s M. Knoedler gallery in 1982, it appears in Volume Two of Motherwell’s 2012 catalogue raisonné, where it is listed as in the Hess Art Collection. That’s the collection of Swiss art collector and vintner Donald Hess, who often appeared on the Top 200 and died in 2023. It carries an estimate of $3.5 million to $5.5 million.
While much of the attention for Christie’s 20th Century sale has gone to Andy Warhol’s Big Electric Chair, from the collection of Belgian patrons Roger Matthys and Hilda Colle and carrying a $30 million estimate, ARTnews was able to uncover the consignor for a different Warhol in the sale. Self-Portrait, a 1966 work with an estimate of $4 million to $6 million, last sold in 1980 from Galerie Bruno Bischofberger in Zurich. Volume 2B of The Andy Warhol Catalogue Raisonné of Paintings and Sculptures 1964-1969, published in 2004, lists Bischofberger himself below that work. While it’s possible the gallery owns the rights to that work’s image, it seems more likely that he purchased the work from his own gallery. (The gallery did not return a request for comment.)
Then there is Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup Can Over Coke Bottle (1962), which was last sold at Sotheby’s New York in 2007 for $2.84 million. This time around the work carries a high estimate of $1.2 million, less than half its previous sale price. The 2018 catalogue for the Whitney Museum’s
“Andy Warhol―From A to B and Back Again” exhibition lists the work as in the Brant Foundation, founded by former ARTnews owner and mega-collector Peter M. Brant, who is also the consignor of the top lot at Christie’s 21st century evening sale, Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Baby Boom (1982), which has a $20 million estimate.
But that’s not all for Brant. As Artnet News’s Katya Kazakhina reported on Friday, Brant is also the consignor for John Currin’s Jaunty & Marne (1997), which has a $2.5 million to $3.5 million estimate, and an untitled 1988 Christopher Wool work that spells out “Helter Helter,” estimated at $3.5 million to $5.5 million. (The Wool work last sold at Christie’s in 2016 for $5.5 million.)
Meanwhile, at Sotheby’s The Now and Contemporary evening sale, Agnes Martin’s Untitled #11 (1997) will hit the block with an estimate of $2.5 million to $3.5 million. Last sold at Pace (then PaceWildenstein) in 2002, the work appears in Tiffany Bell’s Agnes Martin: Catalogue Raisonné: Paintings, listed as in the collection of Top 200 collector Aaron I. Fleischman. The work at Sotheby’s should not be confused with a different work by Martin, also titled Untitled #11, consigned by the Bass House at Christie’s 20th century evening sale next week. That work, completed in 1975, carries an estimate of $3.5 million to $5.5 million.
Lastly, at Phillips, the David Hockney oil painting The Twenty-Sixth V.N. Painting (1992) heads to the block with a $2.5 million to $3.5 million estimate and a portion of proceeds earmarked for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The work has been in the same collector’s hands since it was sold by LA Louver Gallery. In 2017-2018, it appeared in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s “David Hockney” exhibition, where it was listed as in the collection of tech entrepreneur and philanthropist David C. Bohnett. Bohnett’s foundation confirmed to ARTnews that it owns and has consigned the piece.
Christie’s, Sotheby’s, and Phillips all declined to comment on the identity of consignors to their respective sales. Consignors named here aside from Bohnett were also contacted for comment, none responded at press time.