Saturday, April 25, 2026

Christie's Masterpieces: The Private Collection of S.I. Newhouse May 18

  Christie's has announced Masterpieces: The Private Collection of S.I. Newhouse, a seminal group of 16 works that will be offered in a single-owner sale headlining Spring Marquee Week in New York. The works are from the personal collection of S.I. Newhouse, among the most historically significant collectors of all time, and are anchored by two exceedingly rare works: a painting by Jackson Pollock and a sculpture by Constantin Brancusi, with 14 additional masterpiece artworks by cross-generational icons including Francis Bacon, Jasper Johns, Henri Matisse, Joan Miro, Piet Mondrian, Pablo Picasso, Robert Rauschenberg and Andy Warhol. The full selection will be on view in an exhibition taking place at Christie's Rockefeller Center galleries in May ahead of the sale on May 18. The lots will be presented in chronological order, starting with the earliest object and ending with the most recent. The sale is a visual unveiling of one watershed moment after another, showcasing the inception of all-important movements, styles and techniques ranging from Cubism and Neoplasticism to Action painting and Pop Art. In total, the group is expected to realize in the region of $450 million.


Tobias Meyer, advisor to the Newhouse family, remarks: “Si always looked for the highest quality, regardless of what he was looking at: works of art that expressed what the artist, whether Picasso, Brancusi, Pollock or Johns, wanted to say at the peak of his creative output, and extraordinary provenance and rarity. He was also fearless in editing his collection. He owned the most important paintings by the most important artists, selling at times, buying things back at others, over many years of study and rigor putting together a collection without parallel.”

Max Carter, Global Chairman of 20th and 21st Century Art, Christie's: “Georges Braque famously compared the creation of Cubism with Picasso to mountaineering. Si Newhouse's collection is nothing but peaks, representing the distilled genius and taste of the 20th century's greatest artists and collectors—from Picasso and Brancusi to Pollock and Johns, from Gertrude Stein and Rene Gaffé to Katharine Graham and Emily and Burton Tremaine. In sixteen lots, the selection traces the genesis of Cubism, the birth of modern sculpture, the reinvention of easel painting and the making of Pop art at the highest level. The Newhouse Brancusi, one of modernism's few truly perfect objects, was the world record for any sculpture by any artist when it was acquired at Christie's in 2002, and Pollock's Number 7A, 1948 is by far and by any measure the most important painting by the artist to appear at auction in decades. What defines “a Newhouse masterpiece”? To be the first, the best and the most essential.”


JACKSON POLLOCK (1912-1956) Number 7A, 1948, oil and enamel on canvas, 35 x 131½ in. (88.9 x 334 cm.) Painted in 1948, Estimate on Request, in the region of $100 million

Among the two top lots in the sale is Number 7A, 1948 by Jackson Pollock, a monumental and breathtaking canvas that measures 131 ½ inches (334 cm.) wide, making it the largest example of his monumental drip paintings remaining in private hands. The work represents a critical moment both in the artist's career as well as in the history of painting in its entirety; it was conceived during a pivotal three-year period for the artist that began in 1947, when he first fully embarked on the creation of purely abstract paintings, with his drip paintings standing as his most celebrated canonical contribution—now icons of post-war American painting. The cultural and historical significance of Number 7A, 1948 cannot be overstated. It has a rich history of provenance, beginning with the photographer Herber Matter, to whom Pollock gifted the work, followed by renowned collectors Kimiko and John Powers. For nearly half a century, the work has been unseen by the public, exhibited most recently at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1977. This will be the first and only large-scale drip painting to ever appear at auction, presenting collectors with a truly once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

A second pillar of the incredible collection is Danaïde, an extraordinarily rare sculpture by a master of modernism whose work seldom appears on the market, Constatin Brancusi. Conceived and cast in 1913, Danaïde is transcendent, a golden idol synthesizing visual cultures across ancient civilizations and the modern era. It references Egyptian sculpture in stylistic structure, Greek mythology in title, and East Asian statue in its delicate gold leaf and black patina. Of the six bronzes cast of this model, four are held in institutional collections: the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Philadelphia Museum of Art; Tate, London; and Kunst Museum, Winterthur. This sculpture is the only gilded example left in private hands. The work was originally acquired by Eugene and Agnes Meyer in 1914 at Brancusi's first one-man show at Alfred Stieglitz's 291 Gallery in New York City, then passed to their daughter who sold it to S.I Newhouse at Christie's in 2002, where it established a new record for any work of modern sculpture at the time.

An unmatched selection of four works by Pablo Picasso presents the best of the iconic artist across mediums and eras, led by the groundbreaking sculpture Tête de femme (Fernande) from 1909, representing the inception of Cubist sculpture. Homme à la guitare is Picasso's most significant painting from 1913, a pivotal year in the history of Cubism. Formerly in the collections of Gertrude Stein and the Museum of Modern Art, the work features the beloved motif of the guitar juxtaposed with vibrant colors, patterns, and letters, standing as a bold declaration of the arrival of Synthetic Cubism.

Three exemplary works by living legend Jasper Johns trace an outline of S.I. Newhouse's nuanced understanding of the contemporary icon's practice. In 1954, Johns famously destroyed all of his previous work and started anew, employing numbers, letters, targets, and flags—rudimental building blocks of communication that have become hallmarks of the artist's most coveted works. Mr. Newhouse's first acquisition was the brightly colored Alley Oop from 1958 which he purchased in 1988, followed by the purchase of the 1955 canvas Figure 2 in 1997. His final acquisition was Gray Target in 1998, which is among the artist's greatest masterpieces. The work was acquired by the legendary dealers Ileana and Michael Sonnabend in 1960, and when Mr. Newhouse purchased it in 1998 he became the only other owner of the work. It has been a pillar of his collection for nearly 30 years, demonstrating both his deep intellect as well as his sophisticated eye for quality.


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PABLO PICASSO (1881-1973)

Tête de femme (Fernande)

Estimate
USD 40,000,000 – USD 60,000,000



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