Art News. Vasari Codex

trending_up market schedule Nov 29, 2025 visibility 14 link 6 artists

sothebys london lifts lid on its old master and 19th century evening sale with half of works unseen for a century

Sotheby's London has announced the full lineup for its Old Master and 19th century evening sale on December 3, featuring 31 works defined by exceptional scholarly significance and rare discoveries. Half of the lots have been hidden from public view for over a century, and 12 have not appeared on the secondary market in 40 years. Top lots include Hans Eworth's portrait of Thomas Howard (estimate £3 million), Pieter Brueghel the Younger's The Census at Bethlehem (£5 million), a rediscovered Peter Paul Rubens oil sketch (£3 million), and a Rembrandt portrait of Saint John on Patmos (£7 million). The sale also includes works from the collection of Dr Hinrich Bischoff, such as Lucas van Valckenborch's Autumn: Landscape with Archduke Matthias of Austria (£800,000).

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trending_up market schedule Nov 19, 2025 visibility 14 link 13 artists

alexander calder painted wood mobile christies

Alexander Calder's painted wood mobile "Painted Wood" (ca. 1943) sold for $20.4 million at Christie's 20th-century evening sale in New York, exceeding its $15–$20 million estimate. The work, from the collection of Patricia Phelps de Cisneros, was acquired over 30 years ago and made its auction debut. Bidding was competitive among Christie's staffers Alex Rotter, Max Carter, and Patrick Saich, with Saich winning the lot for a client after a brief technical hiccup. The result is the second-highest price ever for a Calder at auction, behind "Poisson volant (Flying Fish)" (1957) which sold for $25.9 million in 2014.

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trending_up market schedule Nov 19, 2025 visibility 12 link 2 artists

klimt waldabhang unterach attersee lauder sale

Gustav Klimt's landscape painting *Waldabhang in Unterach am Attersee* (1916) sold for $70.8 million at Sotheby's on Tuesday night, hammering at $61 million. The work was the third Klimt painting sold by Sotheby's from the collection of the late mega-collector Leonard A. Lauder, and was the first Klimt landscape Lauder ever purchased. The sale comes after Lauder's other Klimt landscapes achieved record prices, including *Blumenwiese* ($86 million) and his portrait of Elisabeth Lederer ($236.4 million).

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trending_up market schedule Nov 19, 2025 visibility 15 link 6 artists

gustav klimt blumenwiese blooming meadow lauder sale

Gustav Klimt's 1908 landscape painting *Blumenwiese* (Blooming Meadow) sold for $86 million at Sotheby's, slightly above its $80 million-plus estimate. The work was part of the Leonard A. Lauder Collection, a major consignment also featuring pieces by Matisse, Munch, and Martin. Lauder had acquired the painting in 1985, drawn to Viennese modernism and Klimt's Attersee period. The sale marks the second-highest price ever for a Klimt landscape, trailing the $104.5 million record set by *Birch Forest* in 2022.

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trending_up market schedule Nov 18, 2025 visibility 16 link 4 artists

picasso panama papers ganz collection

The Panama Papers leak has revealed that the 1997 sale of the Victor and Sally Ganz collection at Christie's New York was secretly orchestrated by billionaire currency trader Joseph Lewis. Lewis had already purchased the top works from the collection through a Christie's subsidiary, Spink & Son, months before the auction, and structured a guarantee that shared profits above $168 million. The sale, which set a private collection auction record at $206 million, included Pablo Picasso's "Women of Algiers (version O)" fetching $31.9 million. The documents also confirm that a Modigliani painting involved in a Nazi restitution case belongs to the Nahmad family.

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trending_up market schedule Nov 11, 2025 visibility 12 link 2 artists

gerrit dou headlines christies london old masters sale

Christie’s will offer Gerrit Dou’s "The Flute Player" (ca. 1636) as the leading lot in its Old Masters Evening Sale on December 2 in London. The painting, Dou’s first depiction of a musician, carries an estimate of £2 million to £3 million ($2.6 million–$4 million). It has been in an English collection for 125 years, previously owned by William Proby, Fifth Earl of Carysfort, and is appearing on the market for the first time in over a century.

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article culture schedule Oct 28, 2025 visibility 14 link 2 artists

barnett newman mayoral run new york city

A new biography titled *Barnett Newman: Here*, written by art historian Amy Newman, reveals that the Abstract Expressionist painter Barnett Newman ran for mayor of New York City in 1933—long before he became a famous artist. At age 28, with no paintings to his name, Newman campaigned on a vague, socialist-utopian platform that included a free city-run art school, waterfront parks, cleaner waters, and public ownership of utilities. He ran specifically to oppose the spread of Communism among intellectuals, but he admitted he did not expect to win. He lost, and his candidacy became a family joke.

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museum exhibitions schedule Oct 22, 2025 visibility 23 link 6 artists

erotic art top 200 collector beth rudin dewoody opens miami museum of sex

The Museum of Sex in Miami’s Allapattah neighborhood has opened “Hard Art: Unruly Selections from the Beth Rudin DeWoody Collection,” an exhibition of erotic artworks from the collection of ARTnews Top 200 collector Beth Rudin DeWoody. The show features sculptures, paintings, collages, photography, and installations from the 1930s to the present by artists including Judith Bernstein, Cecily Brown, Nancy Grossman, and Jimmy DeSana. It is co-curated by Maynard Monrow and Laura Dvorkin, DeWoody’s in-house curators, and runs through May 2026.

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trending_up market schedule Oct 16, 2025 visibility 19 link 3 artists

fake paintings india investment banker farmer charge sheet

Indian officials have released a charge sheet in an ongoing investigation into the sale of forged paintings attributed to major modern Indian artists M. F. Husain, S. H. Raza, Manjit Bawa, and F. N. Souza. The alleged scheme involved a poor farmer, Raghavendra Parmar, who posed as a maharaja to sell fake works, aided by lawyer Vishwang Desai, who presented himself as a collector to persuade investment banker Puneet Bhatia to purchase the pieces. The paintings, collectively valued at around ₹17.9 crore ($2 million), were allegedly funneled through Mumbai's Rare Art Gallery, run by Rajesh Rajpal, and the related firm Art India International. A former IAS officer, Subroto Banerjee, is also implicated but denies involvement.

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trending_up market schedule Sep 22, 2025 visibility 18 link 11 artists

frida kahlo auction record broken sothebys el sueno la cama

Sotheby's announced the consignment of Frida Kahlo's 1940 self-portrait *El sueño (La cama)*, estimated at $40–60 million, for a November 2025 single-owner sale titled "Exquisite Corpus." The work is expected to break Kahlo's auction record of $34.9 million set in 2021 and potentially surpass the $44.4 million record for a woman artist held by Georgia O'Keeffe. The painting depicts Kahlo lying on a floating bed with a skeleton above, created during a turbulent period following Leon Trotsky's assassination and her divorce from Diego Rivera.

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trending_up market schedule Sep 22, 2025 visibility 15 link 6 artists

unknown pablo picasso painting dora maar for sale

A Pablo Picasso painting of Dora Maar, titled *Bust of a Woman in a Flowery Hat (Dora Maar)*, has been consigned to the Paris auction house Lucien Paris after not being seen publicly for 80 years. Painted in 1943 and last exhibited in 1944, the work was inherited by the anonymous seller from a grandparent. It is currently on view at Hôtel Drouot and will be auctioned on October 24 with an estimate of approximately $9.5 million. Photographic evidence of the painting appears in 1944 photos by Brassaï of Picasso’s studio.

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trending_up market schedule Sep 22, 2025 visibility 15 link 15 artists

christies kawamura memorial dic museum art monet renoir

Christie’s has been consigned to sell works from the collection of the Kawamura Memorial DIC Museum of Art, including pieces by Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Marc Chagall, Henri Matisse, and Henry Moore, as part of its fall marquee auctions. A top highlight is Monet’s oil painting *Nymphéas* (1907) with a low estimate of $40 million. The museum, located in Sakura, Japan, and owned by the DIC Corporation, decided last December to downsize and relocate, selling 75 percent of its 384 artworks valued at $77.5 million. The sale includes eight works in Christie’s 20th Century Evening Sale in November, with additional pieces in day sales for Impressionist and Modern Art as well as Post-War and Contemporary Art.

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trending_up market schedule Sep 17, 2025 visibility 10 link 1 artist

josh baer collectors emerging artists prices first works

Art adviser and Baer Faxt founder Josh Baer has proposed specific price limits for works by "ultra-emerging" artists—those fresh out of school, such as an MFA graduate from Yale. In his No Reserve newsletter, Baer advises collectors to pay no more than $15,000 for a large work and $5,000 for a small piece at a first solo show in a reputable gallery. The advice comes amid ongoing debate about inflated prices for young artists, following a column by Artnet News editor-in-chief Naomi Rea that questioned the market's pricing logic. LA gallerist Charlie James endorsed Baer's thresholds, though some collectors argue that pricing cannot be so neatly codified.

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trending_up market schedule Aug 19, 2025 visibility 21 link 14 artists

barbara hepworth sculpture uk national collection

The Hepworth Wakefield and Art Fund have successfully raised £3.8 million to acquire Barbara Hepworth’s sculpture *Sculpture with Colour (Oval Form) Pale Blue and Red* (1943). The wood and string artwork, previously in private hands and rarely seen publicly, was sold at Christie’s in London last March for £3.5 million. A temporary export bar imposed by the UK government gave the museum time to raise funds, with the deadline set for August 27. The funding came from over 2,800 donations and major grants, including £1.89 million from the National Lottery Heritage Fund and £750,000 from the Art Fund, along with private support.

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article news schedule Jul 25, 2025 visibility 15 link 3 artists

anish kapoor lists 56 leonard street apartment new york

Artist Anish Kapoor is selling his New York apartment at 56 Leonard Street in Tribeca for $17.75 million. The 3,576-square-foot unit on the 47th floor features four bedrooms, four-and-a-half bathrooms, private outdoor spaces, and a travertine marble bath. The building, designed by Herzog & de Meuron, houses a smaller version of Kapoor's famous sculpture Cloud Gate at its base. Kapoor purchased the apartment for roughly $14 million in 2016 and previously listed it for about $18 million last year. The listing is held by Serhant's Krista Nickols and Martin Garcia.

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trending_up market schedule Jul 22, 2025 visibility 15 link 9 artists

maripol sophie bramly joopiter marketplace sale

Maripol, the French-born photographer who documented downtown New York's 1980s cultural scene, is selling selections from her archive through Joopiter's Marketplace platform in a sale titled "Downtown Archive: '80s – '90s New York." The sale includes her Polaroid portraits of icons like Jean-Michel Basquiat, Madonna, Grace Jones, Debbie Harry, and Andy Warhol, as well as ephemera such as an invitation to Fiorucci's 15th anniversary party at Studio 54. Also featured are artifacts from Sophie Bramly, creator of "Yo! MTV Raps," including her custom bomber jacket and photographs of hip-hop pioneers like Kool Herc, Run-DMC, and Keith Haring. The sale is rounded out with vintage designer fashions from Chanel, Thierry Mugler, Bob Mackie, and Donna Karan, curated by retailer Vintage Grace.

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article news schedule Jul 16, 2025 visibility 13 link 13 artists

simon de pury artnet hans neuendorf

Simon de Pury pays homage to Hans Neuendorf, the visionary founder of Artnet, following the announcement of Artnet's sale at the end of May. De Pury recounts Neuendorf's background as a successful art dealer who championed underappreciated artists like Francis Picabia, and describes how Neuendorf revolutionized the art world by creating the world's most comprehensive auction results database in 1989 (initially called Centrox). The article contrasts the pre-digital era of manually filing auction results with the instant access Artnet now provides, and notes that Neuendorf later expanded the platform with Artnet News and Artnet online auctions.

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trending_up market schedule Jul 11, 2025 visibility 16 link 6 artists

man ray rediscovered

A rediscovered watercolor sketch by Man Ray, created in 1913 when he was in his early twenties, has resurfaced after decades in an attic and sold for £18,000 ($24,000) at Dreweatts auction house in Newbury, England, on July 10. The work, titled *Nude Playing Musical Instrument [Study for “Tapestry Painting”]*, is a preparatory study for a lost larger oil-on-linen tapestry and offers rare insight into the artist's pivotal transition from traditional painting to avant-garde experimentation inspired by European modernism encountered at the 1913 Armory Show.

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article local schedule Jul 7, 2025 visibility 16 link 8 artists

manhattans beloved elizabeth street garden is saved

New York City has abandoned plans to demolish Soho's Elizabeth Street Garden for affordable housing, instead rezoning three nearby sites to build 620 units while preserving the garden. The deal, brokered with council member Christopher Marte—a former garden volunteer—ends a years-long campaign backed by celebrities like Martin Scorsese, Robert De Niro, and Patti Smith, as well as artists JR and Dustin Yellin and curator Klaus Biesenbach. The garden, filled with antique architectural remnants, was created by the late Allan Reiver and his son Joseph Reiver, who continued the fight after Allan's death in 2021.

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trending_up market schedule Jun 18, 2025 visibility 11 link 2 artists

picasso ceramics auction geneva

A rare collection of seven unique Picasso ceramics, hand-painted between 1947 and 1964 at the Madoura Pottery Workshop in Vallauris, France, will be auctioned at Piguet in Geneva on Thursday. The pieces, including plates and platters featuring animals and motifs from Picasso's oeuvre, have been in private hands for nearly 40 years after being gifted from the Picasso estate to a friend in the 1980s. Estimates range from 20,000 to 50,000 Swiss francs, with a pigeon platter expected to fetch the highest price. Two additional works on paper by Picasso from the same owner are also included in the sale.

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trending_up market schedule Jun 17, 2025 visibility 11 link 3 artists

sothebys picasso ceramics

Sotheby's London held a 'white glove' sale of 126 one-of-a-kind ceramics by Pablo Picasso, all from the collection of his granddaughter Marina Picasso. The auction achieved a 100% sell-through rate, generating £12.3 million ($19.4 million), with the top lot—a painted goat-shaped vase titled *Cabri* (circa 1947)—selling for £485,000, nearly quadrupling its estimate.

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museum exhibitions schedule Jun 12, 2025 visibility 13 link 5 artists

eames past prologue san francisco

An exhibition titled "Past as Prologue: The Last Decade of Furniture Design by Ray and Charles Eames" opens June 7 at the Transamerica Pyramid Center during San Francisco Design Week. Curated by Llisa Demetrios, the couple's granddaughter and chief curator of the Eames Institute of Infinite Curiosity, the show highlights the Eameses' often-overlooked final decade of collaboration (1968–1978). It features iconic designs like the side chair, executive chair, chess stool, and chaise, alongside rarely seen models and materials that reveal their iterative design process.

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trending_up market schedule May 30, 2025 visibility 13 link 1 artist

david lynch personal items auction

Hundreds of items from filmmaker David Lynch’s personal estate are being auctioned by Julien’s in Los Angeles, with online bidding already exceeding $56,000. The nearly 450 lots include movie props, musical gear, Polaroids, and more, spanning Lynch’s career. Top-performing items include his personalized director’s chair (bidding at $15,000), a red curtain from Twin Peaks ($2,750), a photo of a nuclear explosion from Twin Peaks: The Return ($6,000), a personal 35mm print of Eraserhead ($7,000), a vintage boomerang sofa ($4,500), and a signed Man Ray photograph ($3,500). The sale also features musical instruments from his home studio, such as a custom five-neck Ferrington guitar and a Roland synthesizer. The auction officially ends on June 18 and is held in collaboration with Turner Classic Movies.

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trending_up market schedule May 28, 2025 visibility 17 link 4 artists

lost gustav klimt portrait african prince tefaf maastricht

A long-lost Gustav Klimt portrait of an African prince, missing since World War II, has resurfaced and is now on view at TEFAF Maastricht with a €15 million ($16.4 million) price tag. The painting, titled *Prince William Nii Nortey Dowuona* (1897), was brought to W&K – Wienerroither & Kohlbacher Gallery in 2023 in poor condition, but a stamp from Klimt's estate led to its identification by catalog raisonné author Alfred Weidinger, who had searched for it for two decades. The work depicts an Osu prince from present-day Ghana, created after Klimt attended an ethnographic exhibition at Vienna's Tiergarten am Schüttel where Osu people were put on display. The painting had been owned by Ernestine and Felix Klein, Jewish collectors who fled the Nazis, and is now being shown after a restitution settlement with Klein's heirs.

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trending_up market schedule May 20, 2025 visibility 17 link 9 artists

mary tyler moore art mementos doyle auction

Doyle Auctions will sell over 300 lots from the estate of Mary Tyler Moore, including memorabilia from her iconic television shows, collected artworks, and furnishings from her homes in New York and Greenwich, Connecticut. The auction follows a Beverly Hills preview from May 16 to 20 and takes place at Doyle New York on June 4. Highlights include sketches by Al Hirschfeld, photographs by Annie Leibovitz, works by Peter Max and Mimmo Paladino, pre-Columbian pottery, and the golden "M" from *The Mary Tyler Moore Show* (estimated at $5,000 to $8,000).

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trending_up market schedule May 14, 2025 visibility 10 link 2 artists

frank lloyd wright lamp sothebys auction

A rare Frank Lloyd Wright lamp, the Double-Pedestal lamp, sold at Sotheby’s Modern Evening Auction on May 13 for $7.5 million, far exceeding its $3–5 million estimate after an 11-minute bidding war. Designed in 1902 for the Susan Lawrence Dana House in Springfield, Illinois, the lamp is one of only two surviving examples; the other remains in the house’s collection. The sale set a new auction record for a Wright work, surpassing the previous high of $2.9 million for a 1902 ceiling light sold in 2023.

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article news schedule May 8, 2025 visibility 12 link 1 artist

smith partner art investment firm 11m fraud

Smith and Partner, a London-based art investment firm, has been accused of defrauding over a thousand investors out of $11 million through a scheme involving high-pressure sales of limited edition art prints with promises of future returns that rarely materialized. The company, founded by Austrian citizen Peter Paul Adam in 2015, faced complaints from 2020 onward, leading to its bank freezing accounts and an investigation by British Trading Standards. Liquidators are seeking $17 million in compensation, and a High Court judge has upheld asset freeze orders against former director Luke Sparkes and his company Zeno Fine Art, which allegedly inflated print prices by nearly 500 percent.

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trending_up market schedule May 5, 2025 visibility 18 link 6 artists

lalanne auction london

A rare complete set of Claude Lalanne's green-painted 'Ginkgo' dining suite will be auctioned at Christie's London on June 5, 2025, as part of a single-owner sale from the collection of Baron Diego von Buch. The 12-piece set, sold as four individual lots, is expected to fetch over £1 million ($1.4 million) total, with individual estimates ranging from £100,000 to £300,000 per lot. The sale includes 100 lots from von Buch's homes across Europe, featuring works by François-Xavier Lalanne, Fernand Léger, Fernando Botero, and Lee Ufan.

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museum exhibitions schedule May 2, 2025 visibility 9 link 4 artists

east fork matisse collection

Alex Matisse, the great-grandson of Henri Matisse and co-founder of the ceramics company East Fork, has launched a permanent collection in partnership with the estate of Henri Matisse. The collection features plates, platters, and mugs adorned with iconic motifs from the artist's work, including his "Nu Bleu" series, cut-outs like "Femmes et singes" (1954), and drawings such as "Le Platane" (1951). Alex Matisse, who deliberately avoided painting and drawing to forge his own path in clay, describes the project as a coming-full-circle moment that merges his family lineage with the craft that has defined his creative life.

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museum exhibitions schedule Apr 23, 2025 visibility 9 link 6 artists

a controversial caravaggio debut in india

A Caravaggio painting, *Mary Magdalene in Ecstasy* (ca. 1606), has been publicly exhibited in India for the first time, hosted at the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (KNMA) in Delhi. The exhibition, organized in partnership with the Italian Embassy’s cultural center, coincides with a visit by Italy’s deputy prime minister Antonio Tajani and runs through May 18. It includes a VR experience and a documentary series about the artist. The painting was only rediscovered in 2014 and authenticated by scholar Mina Gregori, though some experts still debate whether it is a 17th-century copy rather than an original Caravaggio.

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