Stories

You don’t get a “new” Michelangelo every day in the art market. So it is astonishing news to hear Christie’s announce the sale of a previously unknown drawing by Michelangelo, A nude young man (after Masaccio) surrounded by two figures, executed early in his career.

Amid a 1977 de Kooning boomlet, the auction house offers a sought-after work with a $20m whisper number

Works from Philip Guston’s late period have been making rapid progress on the masterpiece market for several years now. Six of the artist’s top ten prices come from works made after he abandoned Abstract Expressionism in favor of the controversial—and highly personal—figurative vocabulary of his works from the 1970s.

This morning Christie’s announced that it will be holding a single-owner sale of 12 works from the estate of Anne H. Bass. The works were featured in her Manhattan apartment, including a pair of Mark Rothko paintings that were displayed as “sentinels” in her living room.

Claude Monet made one trip to Venice in 1908 rather late in his life. He was 68 when he arrived. While he was there he started 37 pictures which he would take several years to eventually finish, exhibit and sell. Sotheby’s is mimicking Monet’s desultory route to market for his Venetian views with today’s announcement.

Thomas and Doris Amman's Shot Sage Blue Marilyn offered to fund foundation. The Warhol market has been quiet at the very top for several years with the most significant works selling privately but few high-value Warhol paintings coming to auction.

Five years ago, a lost bust by Antonio Canova was rediscovered. The work had been made when the noted Old Master sculptor visited Caroline Bonaparte and her husband Joachim Murat. The portrait bust of Murat had been held in the aristocrat's family for generations.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art was gifted a cast of Pablo Picasso’s Tête de femme (Fernande) by Leonard Lauder. The well-known bronze head of Fernande is being sold to fund new acquisitions

Estimated at $70 million, the key work has the potential to re-set the market. In a little more than a month, Jean-Michel Basquiat’s family is going to open an exhibition of his work and the family’s holdings in lower Manhattan.

Georgia O’Keeffe’s A Sunflower from Maggie (1937) will be a highlight of Christie’s 20th Century Art Evening sale this May in New York. The painting comes from the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA); it is being deaccessioned to benefit the museum’s future acquisitions.

Following last November’s blow-out sale of works by Vincent van Gogh, $160 million in only four works by the artist were sold in the New York sales, Christie’s has announced a major landscape for the May sales.

The three-part work from the 1982 Fun Gallery show is priced at more than $30 million