New York art sales generate nearly €2 billion in a week

Connoisseurs drove the recovery of the market in the last quarter, writes Des O'Sullivan

Sat, 20 Dec, 2025 - 03:22

Des O’Sullivan

The recovery in the international art market, which became apparent in the last quarter of 2025, is driven by real art lovers, not speculators or peddlers of bitcoin looking to make a quick buck. The big November art sales in New York generated $2.2 billion (€1.89 billion) in just one week.

At Sotheby's first auction at its new HQ at the Breuer Building, previously the Whitney Museum, Gustav Klimt's Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer made $236.4 million (€203 million), the second-highest price ever paid for a work of art at auction, as well as the most expensive painting sold this year. The first auction at their new home in New York brought in €706 million (€606,450), the highest total ever achieved by Sotheby's for a one-night auction.

Gustav Klimt's 'Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer' sold for $236.4m (€203m).

Opening-night sales at Christie's in the same week totalled $689,795,000 (€592.45 million). Mark Rothko's No. 31 (Yellow Stripe) made $62.1 million (€53.34 million), and Claude Monet's Nymphéas made $45.4 million (€39 million).

Mark Rothko's 'No. 31 (Yellow Stripe)' made $62.1m (€53.34m).

A total of 12 paintings sold for more than $20 million each. This follows three years of layoffs at auction houses, closing galleries and sales, which in 2024 were down by 12%. Aided by a booming stock market, the November art sales in New York generated a 77% increase over the same sales last year.

Frida Kahlo's 'The Dream (The Bed)' set a new world record for a female artist.

Prices for women artists were up. Frida Kahlo's 1940 self-portrait, The Dream, the Bed, sold for $54,660,000 (€46.9 million) at Sotheby's to become the most expensive work by a female artist ever sold at auction. Kahlo surpassed the record for Georgia O'Keeffe's Jimson Weed/White Flower No. I, made $44.4 million (€38.14 million) in 2014.

Earlier this year, a painting by Marlene Dumas became the most expensive painting by a living female artist ever when it sold for $13.6 million (€11.68 million) at Christie's in New York. This month, the Louvre in Paris announced that the South African-born born Amsterdam-based Dumas has completed a commission for a vast wall on the Porte des Lions atrium.

The work, Liaisons, consists of nine paintings of faces on canvases of a size that matches the marble low-reliefs that once hung on the wall. "My faces are a mixture of the past and the present. I cannot paint the horrors of the ongoing genocides of our times directly, but their shadows did affect the mood under which these faces were made," the artist said in an interview.

'Liaisons', by Marlene Dumas, at the Louvre.

The president director of the Louvre, Laurence des Cars, described Dumas as one of the greatest painters of our time. "When we were thinking about a work for the entrance to the Portes des Lions, which is both the access to the Gallery of the Five Continents and the Department of Paintings, she seemed the obvious choice: she defends and illustrates the medium of painting like few others, and her work is conceived as a space for bringing together different sensibilities and origins.

"That is exactly what we aimed to do with this redesigned space. We are proud of the outcome of this magnificent project. Marlene Dumas' work is a repertoire of ways of painting and drawing, as well as an invitation to confront our humanity," he said.

The art market always needs new buyers. Right now, the omens are good. In October Christie's achieved the highest total of £106.9 million (€121.93 million) for a Frieze week London evening sale in seven years, with world records for Paula Rego, Suzanne Valadon, Annie Morris and Esben Weile Kjaer. In Paris in October, the Modernist and Surrealism and its Legacy sales brought in €89.7 million at Sotheby's, up more than 50% on the same series in October 2024.

These are among the trends that continued into the big November auctions. Another emerging trend is that more women artists are going to get more recognition as galleries strive to become less stale and white male and more inclusive of artists of any gender and ethnicity.