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3w ago

Pauline Karpidas’s Surrealist Trove to Fetch Record £60 Million in Mid-September London Auction

London exhibitions will display 250 Surrealist, postwar works led by Magritte’s La Statue volante ahead of a mid-September sale estimated at £60 million.

Karpidas' Warhol works feature Marilyn Monre (left) and the artist Man Ray (right).
In the living room salon hang paintings by Pablo Picasso, René Magritte, Francis Picabia, Leonora Carrington and Yves Tanguy, among others.
A Dalí drawing of his wife, Gala, is among the works on paper up for auction.
Pauline Karpidas has amassed a singular collection of 20th-century art and furniture, and she's selling nearly all of it in September.

Overview

  • Sotheby’s London auction is set for September 17–19 following previews of the 250-item collection opening earlier in the month.
  • The auction aims to raise around £60 million, which would mark the highest estimate for a single-owner collection in Sotheby’s European history and surpass her 2023 Hydra sale.
  • René Magritte’s La Statue volante is the standout lot with a £9–12 million estimate, joined by ten other Magritte pieces and works by Warhol, Dalí and Picasso.
  • Offerings extend beyond paintings to include design pieces such as Claude Lalanne’s sculptural copper ‘structure végétale’ bed and custom furnishings from Karpidas’s London apartment.
  • Pauline Karpidas assembled her collection since the late 1970s with guidance from Alexander Iolas, building a trove whose provenance traces back to figures like André Breton, Paul Éluard and Picasso’s family.