Christie’s, Sotheby’s and Phillips: Auction Results During Frieze Week

Frieze, held in Regent’s Park, made London one of the key meeting points of the international art market. Alongside the galleries participating in Frieze London and Frieze Masters, the week’s programme included modern and contemporary art auctions held by three of the world’s most established auction houses: Christie’s, Sotheby’s and Phillips. Here are some of the week’s key results.

Christie’s

On 14 October, Christie’s held two evening sales of 20th- and 21st-century art, which totalled £218,603,400, a 103% increase on the equivalent sales the previous year. The auctions sold 91% of lots and achieved 96% of their aggregate low estimates, setting auction records for seven artists.

One of the highlights was the Monsoon: The Peter Simon Collection Evening Sale, which realised £107.5 million, making it the highest-value single-owner collection ever sold by Christie’s in London. The 41 lots achieved sell-through rates of 98% by lot and 99% by value.

British businessman Peter Simon, founder of the fashion brand Monsoon, spent four decades assembling a collection spanning European modernism, Abstract Expressionism and contemporary art. Artists represented included Francis Bacon, Frank Auerbach, Piet Mondrian, Joan Miró, Andy Warhol, Pablo Picasso and Brazilian artist Beatriz Milhazes.

Francis Bacon’s Figure in Movement (1978) was the highest-priced work in the Peter Simon collection, selling for £17,185,000. Acquired by Simon in 2006, the painting had featured in exhibitions at Tate Gallery, the Hayward Gallery and the Yale Center for British Art. Piet Mondrian’s Composition A, with Double Line and Yellow (1935) achieved £9,710,000.

Wassily Kandinsky: The Story of Das bunte Leben

One of the evening’s major highlights was Wassily Kandinsky’s Das bunte Leben (The Colorful Life, 1907), which sold for £31,560,000. It was the highest-priced lot in the 20th/21st Century: London Evening Sale.

Painted in Paris, the work dates from a period before Kandinsky fully established his abstract language. Figures, architecture and scenes inspired by Russian folk tales come together in a vividly coloured composition, where figurative references coexist with chromatic experiments that foreshadow the development of abstraction in his work.

The painting also has a history shaped by Nazi persecution and restitution. It belonged to the Dutch Jewish couple Emanuel and Hedwig Lewenstein and was deposited at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam from 1933. In October 1940, it was sold at auction without the family’s consent, under circumstances that were later questioned. Acquired by the German bank BayernLB in 1972, the work was subsequently displayed at the Lenbachhaus museum in Munich. In 2023, following a recommendation for restitution by a German advisory panel, the bank returned the painting to the Lewenstein heirs.

Its sale at Christie’s in 2026 adds a new chapter to the history of a work that combines artistic significance with historical memory.

Other notable results came from works that exceeded their estimates and set new auction records. Piet Mondrian’s Composition III (Komposition No. XIII) (1920) sold for £25,235,000, the second-highest result of the evening.

Liubov Popova’s Painterly Architectonic (1918) achieved £7,640,000 against a low estimate of £1.8 million, following around eight minutes of bidding from buyers in the room and on the telephone. The result set a new auction record for this Russian artist, known for her pioneering role in the Russian avant-garde and the development of Constructivism, which brought together geometric abstraction and a focus on the relationship between art, design and architecture. Bridget Riley’s Streak 2 (1979) sold for £5,214,000, surpassing her previous auction record. David Bomberg’s San Miguel, Toledo, Afternoon (1929) achieved £3,262,000, also setting a new record for the artist.

The programme continued over the following days with daytime sales. On 15 October, the Monsoon: The Peter Simon Collection Day Sale realised £10,236,800, with 97% of lots sold by both number and value. The same day, the Post-War and Contemporary Art Day Sale totalled £11,816,960, with sell-through rates of 77% by lot and 83% by value.

On 16 October, the Impressionist and Modern Art Day and Works on Paper Sale realised £12,120,576, with 132 works sold. Online sales further expanded the offering: the Peter Simon collection sale featured 82 lots and closed on 20 October, while the online post-war and contemporary art sale included 184 lots and was scheduled to close on 21 October.

Sotheby’s

Sotheby’s focused part of its Frieze Week programme on two evening sales: the Modern British & Irish Art Evening Auction on 14 October and the Contemporary Evening Auction the following day.

The first realised £8.9 million, with 24 lots sold out of the 34 initially announced. The highlight was Paul Henry’s The Potato Harvest (1918), which achieved approximately £890,000, more than twice its low estimate. A work by Magdalene Odundo also substantially exceeded its estimate.

At the contemporary sale on 15 October, Michael Andrews’s Butterfly Fish (1978) achieved £704,000. The acrylic painting on paper had been estimated at £80,000–£120,000, with the final price reaching nearly six times the high estimate.

Andrews was associated with the School of London, an informal group of artists who explored the human figure and everyday experience in the post-war period. Although less familiar to the general public than contemporaries such as Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud, he developed a distinctive approach to figurative painting, characterised by close observation.

In Butterfly Fish, Andrews explores the collective movements of fish, which can be interpreted as a metaphor for human behaviour. The work examines repetition, individual differences and group organisation, combining naturalistic observation with an almost dreamlike atmosphere. According to Sotheby’s, the current owner acquired the painting directly from the artist around 1978.

Another highlight of the contemporary sale was Willem de Kooning’s Untitled (1977), which sold for approximately £9.8 million, setting an auction record for the artist in Europe. The results also highlighted differences in performance across the sale, with some works achieving strong prices while others failed to find buyers.

See below for further Sotheby’s highlights:

Phillips

Phillips took part in Frieze Week with modern and contemporary art auctions in London on 15 and 17 October, alongside an online sale running from 13 to 23 October.

The Modern & Contemporary Art Evening Sale, held on 15 October, realised £14,840,000, with 20 of the 23 lots initially announced finding buyers. The highest-priced work was Gerhard Richter’s Mathis (1983), from the collection of Marcel Brient, which sold for £5,839,000, below its low estimate of £6 million.

Other notable results included Banksy’s Keep Ou T (2019), sold for £1,612,500, and David Hockney’s Red and Black Fruit, which achieved £993,300. The sale also set auction records for Joseph Yaeger, whose Once, always sold for £645,000, and Eva Helene Pade, whose Yellow Nights achieved £167,700.

On 17 October, the Modern & Contemporary Art sale totalled £6.58 million, within its overall pre-sale estimate range. A highlight was Georg Baselitz’s Transmission (2004), which sold for £645,000, more than three times its high estimate of £200,000.

In total, 37 works exceeded their high estimates, representing 40% of the lots sold. The sale also set a new auction record for Hassan Sharif: his work Slippers (2016) achieved £122,550.

Alongside the live auctions, the Modern & Contemporary Art: Online Auction, running from 13 to 23 October, features 165 lots by artists including Louis Fratino, Rose Wylie, Andrew Cranston, Tracey Emin, Nicolas Party, Günther Förg, Sol LeWitt, Richard Serra and Antony Gormley. With estimates ranging from a few thousand to tens of thousands of pounds, the sale offers buyers a broad selection of artists and price points.

The concentration of auctions during Frieze Week reinforces London’s position as one of the international art market’s leading centres. Christie’s, Sotheby’s and Phillips continue to play an important role in the circulation of artworks and the formation of collections. The results this year, however, show that performance varies across artists and works: while some pieces substantially exceeded their estimates, others sold below expectations or failed to find buyers. Provenance, rarity, historical significance and collector demand remain among the factors shaping prices.

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