If the prevailing art market mantra in recent months has been that, while buyers may be more selective, true quality will always sell, then what unfolded last night at Sotheby’s Modern Evening Auction delivered a sobering counterpoint. The evening’s centerpiece—Giacometti’s bronze bust of his brother Diego, the only known hand-painted version and a highlight of the 1956 Venice Biennale—was a dramatic pass. Despite being billed as the star lot, Grande tête mince (Grande tête de Diego), consigned by the Soloviev Foundation to benefit its charities, stalled after a few rounds of chandelier bidding and fell short of its $70 million estimate, dissolving into the uneasy silence of a muted salesroom. The work went to the rostrum without a guarantee or an irrevocable bid—a bold, some might say reckless, move in a market where such mechanisms are increasingly treated less like optional safeguards and more like essential life preservers. The lingering question is whether the consignors were too eager to test the waters unprotected. The estimate itself may have been ambitious enough to dissuade even the most ardent trophy hunters, though this time, the trophy was undeniably the real thing. “It simply wasn’t its moment,” said Julian Dawes, Sotheby’s head of Impressionist and modern art in the Americas. “Our belief in the work remains undiminished.” Sotheby’s CEO Charles Stewart echoed the sentiment, calling the result “an organic, genuine auction moment,” and stressing, “It wasn’t financially engineered at all. It was the seller believing in the work and willing to sell at a price.”

In recent years, Giacometti has cemented his position as a reliable cornerstone of the auction market—a blue-chip name that consistently performs and seldom disappoints, even during periods of economic turbulence. But as auction houses increasingly err on the side of caution, it’s possible the market has been oversaturated this season. Last night at Sotheby’s, the house also offered Femme debout (Poseuse I) from the collection of Hollywood film producer Joseph H. Hazen—one of the evening’s standout consignments. Opening at $3.4 million, the sculpture ignited a prolonged bidding battle, ultimately hammering down after more than five tense minutes for $5.6 million ($6.8 million with premium), landing comfortably above its $4-6 million estimate.

SEE ALSO: Despite Quiet Bidding, Christie’s Evening Sales Brought in $489M

Despite the Giacometti miss, which admittedly cast a long shadow over the evening, Sotheby’s still brought in a respectable $186.4 million across sixty lots—albeit short of its presale estimate of $240.3 million to $318.7 million. The sale felt noticeably livelier than Christie’s the night before, with deeper competition across several lots despite a few sharp disappointments. Of the works that did sell, roughly 40 percent exceeded their high estimates, and twenty-six lots were guaranteed—twenty-four of them backed by third parties.

Ten lots failed to sell, leaving Sotheby’s with a final sell-through rate of 83 percent. Notably, 40 percent of the offerings were fresh to the market—and those works generally outperformed the rest. That was true for one of the evening’s top lots, Alexander Calder’s Four Big Dots, held in the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art’s collection for more than 60 years and offered to support future acquisitions and collection care. It sold to a bidder in the room for $8,285,000. Similarly, Georgia O’Keeffe’s Leaves of a Plant (1942), making its auction debut, surpassed expectations by fetching $12,972,500 against an $8-12 million estimate. Acquired by the seller in 1978, the work had debuted in O’Keeffe’s 1943 retrospective at An American Place and was later exhibited widely, including in the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum’s inaugural show in 1997. Among the other top performers was Picasso’s Homme assis (1969), which brought in $15 million—one of the strongest results for the series.

Still, to achieve that sell-through rate, Sotheby’s quietly withdrew at least four lots before the sale, including Wassily Kandinsky’s Study for Improvisation 10 (1910), estimated at $6–8 million. During the auction, auctioneer Oliver Barker noted that Rufino Tamayo’s Brindis (1949) likely failed to find a buyer, despite growing interest in the artist, as its $1-1.5 million estimate appeared overly ambitious.

Sparking moments of bidder excitement were several standout lots from the Joseph H. Hazen Collection, beginning with Robert Delaunay’s Nature morte (1936), which exceeded expectations, hammering at $1.6 million ($2 million with fees) after a lively exchange between bidders in the room and on the phones. Four bidders also chased the next lot, a luminous František Kupka, Flux et reflux (1923), which surged to $4.8 million ($5.9 million with fees)—helped, no doubt, by the Guggenheim’s recent survey on Orphism that reignited interest in the artist’s work. Backed by both a guarantee and an irrevocable bid, the painting—also included in the catalogue for Kupka’s 1975 Guggenheim retrospective—came with the kind of institutional pedigree that may have given it an edge over the following lot, Kupka’s Formes flasques (1919-25), which sold below estimate at $4.3 million ($5.2 million with fees).

Tension resurfaced when Fernand Léger’s La Jeune fille au bouquet (1921), also from the Hazen Collection, failed to meet its $5-7 million estimate, stalling at $4.3 million. A few lots later, Barker reopened bidding and hammered it at $3 million—a clear signal that the seller had adjusted expectations to meet the market where it stood.

As Barker worked to regain momentum following the Giacometti flop, fireworks returned later in the evening. Edvard Munch’s portrait of Heinrich C. Hudtwalcker drew five phone bidders and hammered at $1.5 million ($1.8 million with fees), selling to a collector in Asia. Immediately after, a heated bidding war broke out over one of the earliest portraits of Cézanne’s partner and future wife, Hortense Fiquet. Portrait de Madame Cézanne (1877) opened at $3.9 million and hammered at $6 million ($7,370,000 with premium). With only two other portraits of Fiquet having come to auction in the past 25 years, the result marked the second-highest price ever achieved for the subject.

Sotheby’s sale also saw notably heightened participation from Asian clients. Among the highlights was Henri Matisse’s Le Bouquet d’anémones, dated 1918 and painted during the pivotal early years of the artist’s celebrated Nice period. Acquired by a Chinese collector, the work had been held in the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art’s collection for over 75 years and was offered to support the museum’s acquisitions fund. It sold swiftly for $1.2 million ($1,514,000 with premium).

Far less enthusiasm greeted a Mark Rothko from 1968, despite its strong provenance—long part of the collection of Carla Panicali, the influential Italian gallerist who oversaw Marlborough Gallery’s Rome branch in the 1960s. Opening at $2.8 million, the work hammered at $4.2 million, right within its $3.5–5 million estimate ($4,930,000 with premium).

Before the evening wrapped, Barker had the satisfaction of closing on one of the night’s most memorable moments with An Important Double-Pedestal Lamp by Frank Lloyd Wright, originally commissioned for the Susan Lawrence Dana House in Springfield, Illinois, over a century ago. Though more esoteric, appealing to a narrower collector base, the lot ignited a prolonged bidding battle and hammered after ten minutes at $6.1 million ($7,492,000 with fees). As the most important Wright work ever brought to auction, it not only doubled its low estimate but shattered the architect’s previous record of $2,903,500—selling for nearly four times the price it achieved when last offered at Sotheby’s in December 2002.

In the final stretch of the sale, both Henry Moore sculptures landed within estimate: Mother and Child on Ladderback Chair brought in $523,400, while Seated Woman on Bench sold in-room for a modest $482,600. Meanwhile, momentum appears to be building around another British sculptor, Lynn Chadwick. With Perrotin recently staging a slate of major exhibitions beginning in Paris during Art Basel, the final lot of the night—Three Elektras, one of the largest Chadwick works ever brought to auction—closed the sale on a high note, hammering at $2,002,000, well above its $1.2-1.8 million estimate.

A tense night at Phillips delivers records with women artists shining

Opening the evening earlier at 5 p.m., Phillips launched the week’s sales with a noticeably cautious tone. In a market where the once-reliable lure of youthful, fresh paint has lost momentum—at least in evening sales—the house leaned more heavily on established, blue-chip names for its Modern and Contemporary Evening Sale. Even so, the auction house managed to deliver a surprisingly confident result, bolstered by the fact that 90 percent of the lots were either fresh to market or hadn’t appeared at auction in more than 15 years. The sale achieved a total of $51,952,350 across thirty-six lots, after four were withdrawn and another four went unsold.

Leading the night at Phillips was Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Untitled, originally acquired by Swiss dealer Bruno Bischofberger and now offered from the personal collection of David Bowie. Opening at $3.8 million, the work landed at $5.4 million in the room ($6,594,000 with premium), exceeding its $4.5-6.5 million estimate. Another Basquiat work on paper from 1985/1986 also outperformed expectations, selling for $2,964,000.

Women artists shone throughout the evening, with Phillips strategically spotlighting new or historically overlooked names—an approach that sparked regional bidding far beyond the U.S. That was the case with Colombian artist Olga de Amaral, who made her evening sale debut with an early piece from her Images Perdidas series, inspired by pre-Columbian weaving traditions and spiritual symbolism. Opening at $220,000, the work quickly attracted multiple bidders online and in the room, doubling its estimate in under three minutes. It ultimately hammered at $920,000 to a bidder in the room, setting a new auction record for the artist at $1.2 million with fees—four times its $300,000-500,000 estimate. The result follows several years of mounting international interest in de Amaral’s work, bolstered by her representation with Lisson Gallery and further consolidated by her major exhibition at Fondation Cartier in Paris.

Another standout was Austrian artist Kiki Kogelnik, who made her auction debut with a 1973 painting—the same year as her first exhibition in Austria. Opening at $85,000, the lot quickly climbed to $280,000 amid active international bidding online and over the phones, ultimately closing at a record $355,600 with fees.

The night also delivered a new record for Grace Hartigan, a long-overlooked and now rightly reassessed female force within Abstract Expressionism. The Forth, a large-scale, animated abstraction from 1959, hit the rostrum with authority. Described in the catalogue as “an explosive convergence of American identity, postwar ambition and painterly force,” the fourteen-foot-wide canvas opened at $400,000 and soared to $1.3 million after ten minutes of spirited bidding ($1,633,000 with premium). The work came with distinguished provenance, having once belonged to banker, philanthropist and former U.S. Ambassador to Belgium William A. M. Burden Jr., who exhibited it in Brussels the following year through the U.S. State Department’s Art in Embassies program, which placed works by leading American artists in diplomatic residences abroad. Last sold at Christie’s in 1997 for just $24,000, the painting more than doubled its $600,000 low estimate and marked an 18 percent jump over Hartigan’s previous record, set by Early November (1959), which sold for $1.38 million at Christie’s on May 12, 2022. Could this finally signal Hartigan—youngest of the Ab-Ex circle—is on course to join the market rise of Joan Mitchell and Helen Frankenthaler?

A new record was also set last night at Phillips for another Colombian contemporary artist, Ilana Savdie, who has been making her New York debut with White Cube since the gallery announced her representation in 2023. The vibrant hues and layered textures of her Imperial diet, y otros demonios (2021), opening at $80,000—more aligned with her primary market pricing—sparked a fierce contest between online and phone bidders, culminating in a showdown between a bidder in Lebanon and another in Austin. The latter ultimately secured the work for $228,600, setting a new auction record for the rising artist.

The opening lot, a painting by Japanese artist Yu Nishimura, fell short of his recent high of $296,100 set at Sotheby’s this past February, hammering after a few muted bids at $220,000 ($279,400 with fees), despite the buzz surrounding his addition to David Zwirner’s roster. Perhaps a sign the market isn’t ready to sustain a meteoric ascent when prices stray too far, too fast from the primary range. James Turrell, by contrast, set a new record at Phillips with Ariel from his ongoing Glass Series, which hammered at $520,000 ($660,400 with fees), marking the Light and Space pioneer’s Evening Sale debut.

Some of the evening’s most anticipated lots just scraped past their low estimates. Ed Ruscha’s Alvarado to Doheny sold after a few limp bids for $4.9 million with fees—likely to its guarantor, via the house’s head of private sales. Lot 16, Gerhard Richter’s portrait of Sigmar Polke—once in the collection of Blinky PAlermo—similarly hovered at its threshold, selling for $4,174,000 after a slow rise from a $2.3 million opening bid, with Phillips’s global chairman ultimately taking it home.

But the night’s most visibly rattled moment came with Richard Prince’s Killer Nurse. As auctioneer Henry Highley approached the lot, he was handed a note that visibly threw him off balance—something had gone awry. A bidder may have backed out or retracted a commitment. After a tense few minutes of “dialing for info,” the work finally hammered at $2.6 million, shortly after Highley, with forced cheer, relayed a “great message from private sales” that appeared to salvage the situation, bringing the final price just over the low estimate at $3,206,000 with fees.

Still, the tension lingered, and Highley struggled to fully recover his rhythm. Although the Thiebaud cake found a home (selling for just short of its low estimate at $1,270,000 to Korean dealer and collector Hong Gyu Shin), most of the final lots were passes—including a seminal Frank Stella from the 1970s, a gilded mirror by Jeff Koons and a Richard Prince from his Cowboy series.

The May auction marathon continues tonight with Christie’s 21st Century Evening Sale and tomorrow with Sotheby’s The Now and Contemporary Evening Auction.