Christie’s has secured the consignment of a rare wooden mobile by Alexander Calder, titled *Painted Wood* (1943), which will lead its 20th Century Evening Sale next month. The work, offered from the collection of prominent Latin American art collector Patricia Phelps de Cisneros, carries an estimate of $15–20 million—the highest ever for a Calder at auction. It is the largest and most significant of Calder’s wooden Constellation mobiles to appear at auction and was featured in his landmark 1943 retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, where he became the youngest artist to receive a solo show at that institution.
The sale matters because it tests the market for early, rare Calder works against the artist’s current auction record of $25.93 million set in 2014. The consignment also highlights the enduring prestige of the Cisneros collection and coincides with heightened institutional attention on Calder, including the newly opened Calder Gardens in Philadelphia and a centennial exhibition of *Calder’s Circus* at the Whitney Museum of American Art. A strong result could reaffirm Calder’s blue-chip status and signal continued strength in the high-end modern art market.