Kandinsky and Mondrian lead London’s 20th/21st Century sales, which reach £240m and counting

This was followed by Piet Mondrian’s Composition A, with Double Line and Yellow (1935). Created from just three lines and as few colours, it dates from a late period of the artist’s intense examination of spatial volumes and equilibrium. Its first owner, James Johnson Sweeney, a curator at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, paid Mondrian 3,000 francs for the work after seeing it in the artist’s Paris studio. In 1945, Sweeney included it in Mondrian’s seminal posthumous retrospective at MoMA. In the London sale, it achieved £9,710,000.

The third highest price was paid for Joan Miró’s 1925 work Peinture (Les amants — Adam et Eve). Part of the artist’s revolutionary ‘Dream’ series, in which he appears to abandon narrative and logic, this depiction of a pair of amorphous lovers realised £8,560,000 at its auction debut.

Bridget Riley’s Streak 2 (1979) made £5,214,000, breaking the artist’s previous record of £4.3 million set at Christie’s in 2016. A monumental work from the height of Riley’s period of exploration into curves, and one of the last from this phase of her career in private hands, it was previously in the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection.

The sale saw several other record prices for women. After eight minutes of competitive bidding, in the room and on the phones, Painterly Architectonic (1918), a rare painting by Liubov Popova, the Russian Cubo-Futurist who died aged 35, made £7,640,000 against a low estimate of £1,800,000, demolishing her previous record of £1,700,500 set in 2007.

Strong bidding was also witnessed for the Zimbabwean artist Portia Zvavahera, whose 2020 painting This is where I travelled [3] — lot number 1 of the sale — made £307,200, breaking her previous record of £286,258.

Barbara Hepworth’s The Hands and the Arm (1948), from the rare series of figurative works she made in surgical theatres, achieved £537,600, breaking her record for a painting.

Elsewhere, David Bomberg’s response to an El Greco landscape, San Miguel, Toledo, Afternoon (1929), made £3,262,000, smashing his previous record of £1.4 million set at Christie’s in 2022.

The collection’s showcasing of key figures in British art continued with works by Hurvin Anderson, as well as London School and St Ives School artists. Weeks after it hung in Anderson’s acclaimed Tate Britain retrospective, his painting Last House (2013) sold for £5,702,000, almost triple its low estimate.

Frank Auerbach’s charcoal portrait Head of Helen Gillespie (1961) achieved £1,981,000; Howard Hodgkin’s evocation of the blazing warmth of an afternoon in the ‘Sunshine State’, Florida Garden (1996-97), made £1,152,000; and Christ Church, Stormy Day, Summer (1994), Leon Kossoff’s impasto of the Spitalfields landmark, went for £896,000. All these results were more than double the works’ low estimates.

Continuing the theme, compelling results were realised by Ben Nicholson’s hand-carved monochrome wood panel 1934 (relief) (1934), which made £1,664,000; Michael Armitage’s painting on lubugo bark cloth Elephants (2015), which achieved £1,126,400; Peter Doig’s snowscape Reflection (1997), which sold for £832,000; and Wyndham Lewis’s Study in Blue (1912), which made £89,600 — all above their high estimates.

Also breaking its high estimate, Fernand Léger’s Jazz Age Le siphon (1924), made £5,33600. Moments later, the related work on paper fetched £179,200, more than double its high estimate.

20th/21st Century: London Evening Sale

The 20th/21st Century: London Evening Sale saw 46 lots offered, selling 85 per cent by lot and 93 per cent by value. The highest-value lot sold was Wassily Kandinsky’s 1907 work Das bunte Leben (La vie mélangée), which was offered following a landmark restitution to the heirs of Hedwig Lewenstein-Weyermann in 2023. Taking the folk tales of his native Russia as his subject, and acid hues as his palette, the artist created a panoramic landscape pulsing with life, which paved the way for his turn towards pure abstraction. On the evening, after almost six minutes of bidding, it made £31,560,000 — becoming the most expensive work sold at auction during Frieze Week in the past five years.

The second highest price was paid for another Neo-Plastic work by Mondrian: Composition III (Komposition No.XIII) from 1920. One of only eight works he made during this pivotal year, it marks the moment the artist reduced his pictorial language to its purest essence of line and form. Five of the other works from his annus mirabilis are held by institutions, including Tate in London, MoMA in New York and the Stedelijk in Amsterdam. Fresh to auction, it achieved £25,235,000.

The sale opened with two of Josef Albers’s iconic square paintings. The red R-I d-1 (1968) made £588,800 against a low estimate of £250,000; and the yellow Study for Homage to the Square: Warm Silence (1971) made £742,400 against a low estimate of £380,000. Both come from Radiant Modernism: Signac to Albers, the landmark collection offered in London and Paris.

Shortly afterwards, Paul Klee’s jewel-like watercolour Kleine Erinnerung an Nymphenburg (1921), from Lines of Light: An Important Italian Collection of German Modernism, achieved £537,600 against a low estimate of £200,000.

The next lot was René Magritte’s gouache on card Le seize septembre (circa 1955-56), which made £3,262,000, almost triple its low estimate. It was immediately followed by David Hockney’s oil painting of his dachshund Stanley, Dog Painting 17 (1995), which more than doubled its low estimate to achieve £3,506,000. The following lot was Flora Yukhnovich’s two-metre-wide Capriccio (2019), painted during a residency in Venice. It made £2,286,000, more than double its low estimate.

Towards the end of the sale, more records were broken. Igshaan Adams’s 2026 work The certainty of being a rose (ii), which was being sold to benefit ClientEarth and Gallery Climate Coalition, broke the artist’s previous record of £78,765 to make £96,000; and the penultimate lot, Gerhard Richter’s tapestry Abdu (2009), realised £1,152,00 — a new record for the artist in the medium.

Elsewhere, offered from the Collection of Antonio Homem Sonnabend, Gilbert & George’s Dead Boards No 19 (1976) made £153,600, more than triple its low estimate. Meanwhile, Pablo Picasso’s early still life Paquet de tabac, vase à fleurs, journal, verre, bouteille (1918) realised £2,042,000, and Fernand Léger’s foliate Des fleurs dans un élément mécanique (1943) made £1,152,000 — both more than doubling their low estimates.

Competitive bidding continued throughout the evening. Henri Matisse’s nearly four-metre-wide screenprint on linen Océanie, la mer (conceived in summer 1946; executed in 1948) made £3,384,000, August Macke’s vivid Kolonnade mit Segelboot II (1913-14) sold for £2,530,000, Paul Delvaux’s surreal Etude pour Alésia (1973) realised £1,408,000, Edvard Munch’s landscape Bjørkestammer (Birch Trunks) (1914-15) achieved £1,280,000, and Alexander Calder’s standing mobile Zigzag (1972) made £1,088,000 — all above their high estimates.

Paris 20th/21st Century Art auctions

Also on 22 October, Christie’s in Paris presents remarkable works by Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Alfred Sisley in Durand-Ruel, Generations of Vision, followed by the 20th/21st Century: Paris Evening Sale including Thinking Italian, featuring important works by Lucio Fontana, Joan Mitchell and Amedeo Modigliani.

The following day in Paris, Art Moderne — Vente du Jour, including Works from the Durand-Ruel Collection and Works from the Marlene and Spencer Hays Collection takes place. The 216 lots are led by Pierre Bonnard, Raoul Dufy and Pablo Picasso. That afternoon, Art Contemporain — Vente du Jour brings a further 141 lots, led by Josef Albers, Gerhard Richter and Alexander Calder.

Explore Christie’s 20th/21st Century Art Paris auctions, 22 and 23 October 2026