Christie’s achieves £219m in ‘steady, solid’ London sales
The Peter Simon Collection became the highest value single-owner collection ever sold at Christie's London bringing in £107.5m
Christie's London auction week in October kicked off with a four-hour sale at its King Street premises. The evening generated a combined total of £178m (£218.6m after fees) from the 20th/21st Century Evening Sale and the Peter Simon collection, which Christie's referred to as a "steady, solid" sale. The sale featured works from blue-chip 20th-century artists, with Wassily Kandinsky's 1907 Das bunte Leben leading the pack at £27m (£31.6m with fees), surpassing its pre-sale high estimate of £25m.
Another standout piece was Piet Mondrian's 1920 Composition III, which sold for £21.5m (£25.2m after fees). Both the Kandinsky and Mondrian were third-party guaranteed. The "Monsoon" sale of Peter Simon's collection totaled £86.9m (£107.5m after fees), selling 41 of 46 lots and achieving a 98% sell-through rate with 43% of lots selling above the high estimate.
Francis Bacon's 1978 painting Figure in Movement, which Simon acquired in 2006, was the top lot in the 20th/21st Century Evening sale, fetching £14.5m (£17.2m after fees). Other notable sales included Liubov Popova's Painterly Architectonic (1918) for £6.2m (£7.6m with fees), a record for the Russian artist, and Hurvin Anderson's Last House (2013) for £4.6m (£5.7m after fees), more than double its presale low estimate.
The auctions, including the 20th/21st Century Evening sale, set records for various artists and reinforced London's position as a key international market for museum-quality masterpieces.
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