Kahlo, Klimt and Calder in the frame for New York's November art sales

Big names headline November's New York art sales, writes Des O'Sullivan

'El Sueno (La Cama)' or 'The Dream (The Bed)' by Frieda Kahlo at Sotheby's.

With Klimt, Calder, Kahlo, Magritte, Rothko and Van Gogh among headliners at sales by Christie's and Sotheby's in New York this month, the global art market is not short of exciting promise. Leading lights like this ensure that the market for art will never be dull, even when it is in a state of flux.

There is resilience in the face of global uncertainty and looming threats like war, inflation and market collapse. The November sales have been carefully assembled. Many of the major works on offer have been exhibited at leading museums or come from major collections like that of Leonard Lauder at Sotheby's. This reflects the fact that the focus of the market is less speculative than in headier times.

'Portrait of Elizabeth Lederer', Gustav Klimt, at Sotheby's.

A masterpiece by Klimt, the striking full-length Portrait of Elizabeth Lederer, leads the auction series and could bring in as much as $150 million. The sale of the Lauder collection on November 18, described by the auctioneers as a once-in-a-generation collection of 20th-century masterpieces, will inaugurate Sotheby's new global headquarters at the Breuer Building, formerly the Whitney Museum. 

The cosmetics magnate, who died at the age of 92 last June, donated around $1 billion worth of cubist art to the Metropolitan Museum in New York.

'Painted Wood' by Alexander Calder at Christie's.

The most significant constellation work by Alexander Calder, Painted Wood, is a leading highlight at Christie's 20th-century evening sale on November 17. Measuring nearly seven feet in height and width, it is the largest of his early painted wood mobiles to come to auction. 

The wood, string, wire and paint construction, made in 1943, is guiding at $15 million-$20 million (€17.25 million-€25.87 million) — the highest-ever auction estimate for a Calder.

Sotheby's will offer the Cindy and Jay Pritzker collection of Modern and Impressionist art with Van Gogh's Romans parisiennes (Les Livres jaunes), Parisian novels (the yellow books), from 1887 at its heart. 

The collection features a monumental triptych by Matisse of Leda and the Swan and a Pont-Aven canvas by Gauguin. Frieda Kahlo's psychologically charged El Sueno (La Cama) or The Dream (The Bed) is an intimate meditation on identity and mortality from an important private collection of surrealist art. 

There are pioneering visions by Dorothea Tanning, Kay Sage, Remedios Varo and Valentine Hugo and other artists whose work expanded the range of surrealism.

Piet Mondrian's 'Composition with Red and Blue' (1939-1941), from the Weis collection at Christie's.

Picasso, Mondrian, Rothko, Matisse, Franz Kline, Miro, Max Ernst and Braque feature in the Weis collection in a dedicated sale at Christie's on November 17. This will precede the 20th-century evening auction celebrating vanguard artists from the Parisian studios of the Impressionists to the downtown lofts of post-war New York. 

The sale offers masterpieces by Monet, Renoir, Chagall, Picasso, Leger, Calder, Richard Diebenkorn and David Hockney with monumental sculptures by Henry Moore, Isamu Noguchi and David Smith.

The 21st-century evening sale at Christie's on November 19 offers masterworks from the past 60 years, including standout works by Richard Prince, Ed Ruscha, Jeff Koons and Andy Warhol.