The artwork market received some brilliant information Wednesday night when Sotheby’s sale of British socialite and humanities patron Pauline Karpidas’s assortment shattered its $53 million excessive estimate, totaling $100 million. Whereas Surrealism carried a lot of the load, one of many night time’s clearest alerts of collector demand got here from François-Xavier and Claude Lalanne.
9 works by the artist-designer couple—often known as Les Lalanne—achieved $18.5 million, greater than 5 instances their mixed excessive estimate of $3.5 million. Put one other approach, they have been anticipated to account for simply over 6.5 % of the night sale’s complete however ended up contributing practically 20 %.
The consequence tracks with an ARTnews analysis in April that discovered costs for Les Lalanne sculptures have surged lately. 4 of the highest 10 public sale outcomes for François-Xavier have been recorded in 2024 alone. Specialists on the time pointed to the duo’s unusually broad collector base, in addition to their historic ties to Surrealism. François-Xavier and Claude Lalanne lived close to Constantin Brancusi in Paris, and through him met Man Ray, Max Ernst, and different artists related to the motion.
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In that respect, the Karpidas sale was the right venue for his or her work. The sale was full of 23 Surrealist works, together with 11 by René Magritte. Sotheby’s went as far as to name Karpidas’s assortment “the best assortment of Surrealism to emerge in latest historical past.”
Whereas no works rivaled François-Xavier’s report of $19.4 million, set at Christie’s Paris in 2023 for Rhinocrétaire I, they constantly outperformed expectations. The highest consequence got here from Claude Lalanne’s Construction végétale mirror and wall gentle, which bought for $4.8 million towards a $615,000 excessive estimate, her second-highest value at public sale. A set of crocodile stools fetched greater than $1.3 million, additionally properly above the $340,000 excessive estimate.
Past the 9 Lalanne works in Wednesday’s night sale, one other 53 appeared in a Thursday day sale and an online-only public sale that closes Friday.
The day sale works equally carried out properly: 23 items of bijou made by Claude totaled $695,900 on a $134,000 collective excessive estimate; Claude’s Distinctive Feuilles Body bought for $90,100 on a $20,300 excessive estimate, and François-Xavier’s bronze Ganesh bought for $623,700 on a $95,000 excessive estimate.
Lalanne mania shows little signal of cooling. In October, Di Donna Galleries will stage a significant New York exhibition of greater than 50 works by Magritte and Les Lalanne, organized in collaboration with London’s Ben Brown Wonderful Arts.
