New York Fall Auction Week Opens Nov 16: Klimt Landscape Leads Evening Sales at $60-80 Million
Sotheby's and Christie's, the two auction houses headquartered in Manhattan, New York City, New York, will hold the core evening sales of this fall's New York auction week from November 16 to 19. According to Christie's, its 20th Century Evening Sale on November 17 is led by Litzlbergkeller, a landscape by Austrian painter Gustav Klimt, estimated at $60 million to $80 million, among the most watched lots of the global art season.
Painted in 1915-16, the oil on canvas measures 110.5 cm square and depicts the Litzlberg cellar on the northern shore of Lake Attersee in Austria. The painting last sold at Sotheby's New York in May 1997 for $14.74 million, an auction record for Klimt at the time, and has remained in the same private collection for nearly three decades, spending years on long-term loan to the Leopold Museum in Vienna. Christie's showed the work in Hong Kong from October 27 to 29; it goes on public view at Rockefeller Center from November 7 until the sale.
Sharing top billing in the same sale is Betonte Ecken (1922-23), Wassily Kandinsky's Weimar Bauhaus-period abstraction, also estimated at $60 million to $80 million. Christie's says the estimate positions the work to reset Kandinsky's auction record of $44.8 million, set by Murnau mit Kirche II at Sotheby's London in 2023. Christie's 21st Century Evening Sale follows on November 19 at 7 p.m. at Rockefeller Center, led by Jean-Michel Basquiat's 1983 Untitled (Leonardo and His Five Grotesque Heads), estimated at around $30 million; the 84-inch-square canvas has not been publicly exhibited in more than two decades.
Sotheby's New York Sales open on November 16 at 6 p.m. with the 'Vision: The Extraordinary Collection of Theodore and Ruth Baum' evening auction, followed at 7 p.m. by The Now and Contemporary Evening Auction. The Baum day sale and the Contemporary Day Auction follow on November 17; on November 18, the 'Legendary: The Blaquier-Arrieta Collection' evening sale at 6 p.m. precedes the Modern Evening Auction at 7 p.m., which includes works from Armand Hammer's private collection, by Mary Cassatt, Edgar Degas and Camille Pissarro, sold to benefit the Armand Hammer Foundation. The Modern Day Auction closes the week on November 19 at 11 a.m. Sotheby's says the Baum collection totals more than 130 works with an overall estimate in excess of $100 million, co-led by Mark Rothko's 1967 red-and-orange work on paper and Ed Ruscha's Dimple (1964), each estimated at $10 million to $15 million. Sotheby's public exhibitions open on November 7, with entry by reservation.
New York's fall auction week is one of the global art market's most important selling windows. Last November, Klimt's Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer sold at Sotheby's New York for $236.4 million, a record for the artist. With both houses running head to head this year and two single lots carrying $80 million top estimates, the week's totals will be watched as a barometer of the high-end art market.
Source: GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 古斯塔夫·克里姆特《Litzlbergkeller》（1915—1916年，布面油画），11月17日将在佳士得纽约20世纪晚拍上拍，估价6,000万至8,000万美元。佳士得供图。 / Gustav Klimt, Litzlbergkeller (1915-16), oil on canvas, offered in Christie's New York 20th Century Evening Sale on November 17 with a $60 million to $80 million estimate. Courtesy of Christie's.
