Sotheby’s has revealed the headline lots for the blockbuster sale of British socialite and arts patron Pauline Karpidas’ collection, which is due to hit the auction block on September 17, 18, and 19 in London.
The day, evening, and online auctions, comprising the contents of her “one-of-a-kind” London home, have been described by the house as the “greatest collection of Surrealism to emerge in recent history.”
René Magritte’s oil painting La Statue volante (1940-41) is the showstopper and estimated to fetch £9-12 million ($12-16 million). The work was first acquired directly from the artist by the late Greek American gallerist Alexander Iolas, who inspired Karpidas to start collecting 50 years ago after a chance encounter. Before entering her collection in 1985, it featured in two shows “that were instrumental to Magritte’s international success,” Sotheby’s said, “at Iolas’ New York gallery in 1959 and as part of Magritte’s first-ever museum retrospective in the US, at the Dallas Museum of Art, in 1960.”
With the auction’s 250 lots expected to bring in £60 million ($81 million), the highest estimate ever placed on a single collection at Sotheby’s in Europe, a lot rests on La Statue volante selling well.
There are 10 more Margritte works in the sale, including La Race blanche (1937) (estimate: £1-1.5 million/$1.3-2 million), a vibrant blue bust titled Tête (1960) (estimate: £300,000-500,000/$400,000-650,000) that occupied Karpidas’ bookshelf, and Les Menottes de Cuivre (1936) (estimate: £300,000-500,000). The latter is a reproduction of the Venus de Milo, which was probably created for inclusion in the seminal “Surrealist Exhibition of Objects” held in Paris in 1936.
Four major works by Andy Warhol, who became a close friend of Karpidas, will also go under the hammer. “Surrealism’s unlocking of the unconscious laid the groundwork for contemporary artists to rethink how they perceive and portray the world around them,” Aleksandra Ziemiszewska, Sotheby’s head of contemporary day sales, said in a statement. “Its echoes are present in Warhol’s work, particularly in his preoccupation with mortality and the exploration of his existential fears.”
Warhol’s Madonna and Self-Portrait with Skeleton’s Arm (After Munch) (estimate: £1.5-2 million/$2-2.6 million) and The Scream (After Munch) (both 1984) (estimate: £2-3 million/$2.6-4 million) were inspired by Edvard Munch, his favorite artist after Henri Matisse. “These paintings hail from Warhol’s ‘Art from Art’ series, where he transformed some of art history’s most recognisable and iconic images to become unmistakably his own through his signature Pop aesthetic—from Botticelli’s Birth of Venus to Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper,” Sotheby’s said.
Oliver Barker, the house’s chairman of Europe, will helm the rostrum next month. “Pauline is imaginative, bold, daring, and she’s also the embodiment of the great collector, which means that every single work she’s ever acquired has something special about it,” he told ARTnews. “It’s either best in kind, carries with it the most amazing history of ownership, was made especially for her by an artist or designer she enjoyed a true friendship with, or a combination of all those things.”
Barker said that Magritte’s La Statue volante “has to be one of the greatest works by the artist ever to surface on the market.” The sale also includes furniture and design pieces. Barker pointed to the “unique structure végétale bed” by the late French sculptor and designer Claude Lalanne. “It so brilliantly incorporates Pauline’s signature motif, the owl,” he said. ‘Every time I see it, I’m reminded of Peggy Guggenheim and the bed that Alexander Calder made especially for her. Pauline and Peggy—two extraordinary patrons, both of whom didn’t just live and breathe art, they slept in it too.”
Works by Pablo Picasso, Niki de Saint Phalle, Yves Tanguy, Salvador Dalí. Leonora Carrington, and Dorothea Tanning will also be on the block. Tanguy’s Surrealist landscape Titre inconnu (1929) has an estimate of £1-1.5 million ($2-2.6 million), while Dalí’s Portrait de Gala Galerina (1941) (estimate: £350,000-450,000/$465,000-600,000) is a rare pencil drawing of his wife and muse, Gala, who he met in 1929 in an encounter that he described as love at first sight.
“One of the things I find endlessly surprising about Karpidas is just the person she is,” Barker said. “You could say she’s a ‘grand dame’ of the art world, but she’s also a magnetic force: feisty, fun, energetic, intelligent, endlessly curious. The sort of person you want to be around—which is definitely one of the reasons so many great artists and designers chose to be. The first day I met Pauline, I was immediately drawn to these very qualities. I have learnt so much from her and it’s truly an honour to be a part of her world.”
Barker said being involved in the sale has been one of his “career highlights.”
Karpidas, who is known for building close friendships with many of the artists she collected, was born in a modest house in Manchester before she moved to Athens in the 1960s, where she met her future husband, Greek shipping magnate Constantinos Karpidas.
In October 2023, Sotheby’s Paris sold works from the couple’s home on the Greek island of Hydra. The two-day auction realized more than €35 million ($40 million), marking the highest single-owner sale in France that year.
Last year celebrated the centennial of the birth of Surrealism (the Surrealist Manifesto was published in October 1924). Major shows were put on at the Centre Pompidou in Paris and the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, among other museums, while auction prices for Surrealist artists have soared recently. In 2024, Christie’s sold Magritte’s L’empire des lumiéres (1954) for $121.2 million in New York, a record for the painter at auction.
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