Dalí, The Temptation of St Anthony (1946) : Changes caused by amber and zinc white

The analyses carried out as part of this study confirm that the work is no longer at any risk today

As part of the FED-tWIN Face-to-Face project, a multidisciplinary team bringing together the European Centre of Archaeometry (University of Liège, ULiège), the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium (RMFAB), CNRS-Sorbonne University and Ca’ Foscari University of Venice has published a study on the conservation condition of The Temptation of St Anthony (1946) by Salvador Dalí, a major work held by the RMFAB since 1965. The research shows that the visual changes observed today (irregular transparency, loss of binding medium, roughness) are not solely the result of aesthetic intentions: they correspond to degradation phenomena that began very early, probably during the drying and maturation of the paint layers, and were already visible before the painting was acquired in 1965.

Video

For several decades, certain areas of the painting, in particular the figure of St Anthony, his rock, architectural elements (including El Escorial), an angel, as well as details of the elephant procession, have shown a heterogeneous appearance: uneven gloss, increased transparency and a “crusted” or micro-cracked surface. The challenge was twofold: to determine whether this was an effect deliberately sought by Dalí or material alteration, and to identify the materials and mechanisms responsible for the alteration.

 

Caption

The comparison between a 1947 photograph, a current photograph, and a UV image of the painting reveals a notable increase in transparency in certain areas. These alterations affect specific elements executed during the final stages of the painting process. The affected areas display surface irregularities, with uneven transparency and a rougher texture. Under ultraviolet light, they show a distinct bluish-white luminescence, unlike the more purplish adjacent areas. This contrast in luminescence suggests an alteration of the binding medium used in these parts of the painting.

Credit

The 1947 photograph comes from the Emile Langui Collection, Archives de l’Art contemporain en Belgique. The other two were produced by the team at the European Centre for Archaeometry of ULiège.

To achieve this, the team combined multi-technique scientific analyses carried out in situ at the museum with photographic archives (historic photographs from 1947 and 1965).

The study combined a wide range of imaging and analytical tools, including:

• high-resolution visible-light and UV photography, and digital microscopy,
• MA-XRF elemental mapping (macro X-ray fluorescence),
• Raman and FT-IR spectroscopy,
• X-ray diffraction (XRD),
• and Py-GC-MS (pyrolysis-gas chromatography-mass spectrometry) on targeted micro-samples.

This combined approach made it possible to observe both pigment distribution, stratigraphy (layer superposition) and degradation products.

Changes in appearance within 20 years of execution

Comparison of the photographic documents shows that the increase in transparency and certain visual changes were already present before 1965, indicating early degradation, probably initiated during the polymerization and hardening of the paint films, rather than simple slow ageing over several decades.

Moreover, under UV light, the altered areas display a very characteristic bluish-white luminescence, distinct from the rest of the painted surface, consistent with binder alteration in the presence of zinc white.

The analyses identified pigments such as zinc white (ZnO) and lead white (cerussite/hydrocerussite), carbon black, earth pigments, cobalt blue and cerulean blue, chromium greens, ultramarine, strontium yellow, as well as a ground containing titanium dioxide (anatase) and anhydrite.

An important analytical result is that the MA-XRF maps showed a spatial correlation between visibly altered zones and the presence of zinc white, with some nuances:

• the alterations mainly affect ZnO-rich layers applied over lead-white layers,
• whereas passages containing ZnO directly on the ground do not show degradation.

The study also highlighted, in certain underlying areas beneath the lead white, indications of drying/setting problems that may have favoured ionic mobility and interactions between layers.

Amber, Dalí’s “sublime medium”… and a key factor in degradation

Beyond pigments, the research also confirms a central element of Dalí’s practice: the use of an amber-based medium (fossil resin). By Py-GC-MS, the scientists detected succinic acid, a characteristic marker of Baltic amber, and linked these results to samples of historical solutions associated with the recipes of the Belgian artists’ colour maker Jacques Blockx.

In his writings, Dalí refers to amber as the most precious vehicle, describing it as a “sublime” medium. More concentrated in the final layers, amber appears to have played a key role in the degradation process.

The role of chlorine contamination

Finally, the study considers the influence of chlorine detected across the entire surface and even on the original frame, pointing to environmental contamination. The highest concentrations coincide with areas rich in ZnO, zinc white. The researchers suggest a plausible scenario involving exposure to chloride salts (marine environment) during the transatlantic transport of the work shortly after it was shown in New York, at a time when some layers may still have been drying.

The analyses carried out as part of this study confirm that the work is no longer at any risk today: the observed degradation occurred very early, even before its acquisition by the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium. It results from a particular combination of factors: interactions between different paint layers, the use of an amber-based medium, and exposure to a chlorine-rich environment. As these processes are now stabilized, no special measures are necessary for displaying the painting to the public.

As a jewel of the museum collection, the work will once again be on view to visitors of the Royal Museums when it is reinstated in the new visitor route.

“The degradation occurred very early in the life of the work and is now stabilized: there is no risk whatsoever in displaying it to the public, stresses Catherine Defeyt, art historian, researcher at the European Centre of Archaeometry at ULiège and FED-tWIN Face-to-Face researcher at the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium (RMFAB).”

“This research also sheds light on Dalí’s technique: his use of amber, which he considered a “sublime” medium, played an unexpected role in the evolution of the painting, notes David Strivay, professor in the Faculty of Science and researcher at the European Centre of Archaeometry at ULiège.”

As a federal scientific institution, the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium study and promote an exceptional scientific, artistic and historical heritage. In this respect, Francisca Vandepitte, curator of modern art within the institution, welcomes the dual approach of this study, which made it possible to meet conservation requirements:

“A close link was established between the material and technical analyses carried out in the laboratory and the classical art-historical research conducted in archives and libraries. The unusual signs of ageing observed in the paint layer can be explained by the intrinsic nature of the work and by its history. These alterations have now stabilized, ensuring that visitors will continue to be able to appreciate the work fully in the future.”

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Journal

Heritage

DOI

10.3390/heritage9020085 

Method of Research

 

Maria Lassnig and Edvard Munch Flow of Paint = Flow of Life

 Hamburger Kunsthalle

until 30 August 2026

Kunsthaus Zürich 

in a slightly modified form 

2 October 2026 to 21 February 2027

The Hamburger Kunsthalle is for the first time showing works by Austrian artist Maria Lassnig (1919–2014) and Norwegian painter Edvard Munch (1863–1944)  in a major double exhibition. Although the two artists are separated by half a century, they show some astounding parallels that allow us to trace Munch’s influence on Lassnig’s oeuvre and, conversely, to discover new aspects in the work of her predecessor. Nearly 200 paintings, works on paper, sculptures, films and photographs are presented on two floors of the Galerie der Gegenwart. 

They include famous paintings such as 

Edvard Munch’s Madonna (1893–1895) and lesser-known works such as 

Traditionskette (1983) by Maria Lassnig, which plays a key role in the show.

Edvard Munch (1863–1944) Vampire in the Forest, 1916–1918 Oil on canvas, 149 x 137 cm Munchmuseet, Oslo
© Munchmuseet, Oslo 

 

The exhibits provide insights into the two artists’ biographies while painting a multifaceted picture of the period in which they lived. Munch and Lassnig not only shared an idiosyncratic handling of colour as an expressive element; intriguing similarities can also be seen in their lively brushwork and free-form experimentation with painting techniques. Under their artistic gaze, subtle sensations and unique levels of perception are transformed into a new type of imagery. Inner and outer worlds interact to create a keenly felt emotional tension that holds the viewer in its thrall. While Munch focused on major emotions – grief, despair, anxiety, anger, joy – Lassnig devoted herself in particular to physical sensibilities. The subtitle of the exhibition, Flow of Paint = Flow of Life, was taken from the title of an artwork by Lassnig that expresses the inseparable interweaving of art and life.

 

Divided into 13 chapters plus a prologue and epilogue, the exhibition takes visitors on a tour that extends outward from early self-portraits to double portraits, gender relations and more, culminating in the dimension of outer space. Exemplary themes such as images of women, the relationship between humans and animals, nature as an echo chamber, inner visions, hands, sickness and death as well as life cycles form individual stations on this choreographed circuit.

 

The exhibition at the Hamburger Kunsthalle is being mounted in cooperation with the Kunsthaus Zürich – the two museums with the largest Munch collections outside Oslo – and in collaboration with the Maria Lassnig Foundation in Vienna and the Munchmuseet in Oslo. Works brought together for the first time from these institutions are supplemented by loans from other international museums and private collections.

Curators: Dr. Brigitte Kölle (Hamburger Kunsthalle); Prof. Dr. Hans Dieter Huber (Guest Curator); Dr. Sandra Gianfreda (Kunsthaus Zürich) | Assistant Curator: Dr. Johanna Hornauer

Maria Lassnig (1919–2014) Married Couple, 2001
Oil on canvas, 100 x 125 cm Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus and Kunstbau Munich, KiCo Collection © Maria Lassnig Foundation / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2026

The exhibition is accompanied by an extensive catalogue (DISTANZ Verlag, 304 pages, 204 illus., German and English editions) Edited by Brigitte Kölle and Sandra Gianfreda

A comparative study of the Expressionist painters Maria Lassnig and Edvard Munch.

The Austrian artist Maria Lassnig and the Norwegian painter Edvard Munch were equals in the radical and unsparing scrutiny of their own work. Each also had a ­singular way of handling paint as a powerful medium to express feelings of grief, love, loneliness, trepidation, joy, and pain, and to communicate physical sensations. This richly illustrated volume accompanies the grand dual exhibition of the two exceptional artists’ oeuvres. It presents intimate insights into the artists’ practice, highlighting both parallels and differences between what are arguably two of the most celebrated oeuvres in modern art history. With writings by Andreas Eriksson, ­Sandra Gianfreda, Sheela Gowda, Johanna Hornauer, Hans Dieter Huber, Siri Hustvedt, ­Brigitte Kölle, Maria Lassnig, Edvard Munch, Johanna Ortner, Ulrike Ottinger, Ashley Hans Scheirl, Luc Tuymans, and others.

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Cézanne to Modigliani: Gifts of Modern Art from the Pearlman Collection

Brooklyn Museum 

October 2, 2026–April 18, 2027

See also 

The Henry and Rose Pearlman Foundation to Gift Its Collection to MoMA, LACMA, and the Brooklyn Museum

The historic Henry and Rose Pearlman collection, featuring European masterpieces by Cézanne, Degas, Gauguin, Manet, Modigliani, Pissarro, Soutine, Toulouse-Lautrec, Van Gogh, and others, comes to the Brooklyn Museum for its final full-collection tour. 

Amedeo Modigliani. Jean Cocteau, 1916. Oil on canvas. Gift of the Henry and Rose Pearlman Foundation and Family. (Photo: Bruce M. White) 

This fall, the Brooklyn Museum will open Cézanne to Modigliani: Gifts of Modern Art from the Pearlman Collection. The exhibition, which follows LACMA’s presentation on view in early 2025, showcases more than fifty modern European works from the late nineteenth to mid-twentieth century, drawn from the renowned collection of Henry and Rose Pearlman. Featuring paintings, sculptures, and works on paper, Cézanne to Modigliani celebrates the transformative gift of this stellar collection to the Brooklyn Museum.

Amedeo Modigliani, Leon Indenbaum,1916. Oil on canvas. Gift of the Henry and Rose
Pearlman Foundation and Family. Photo: Bruce M. White.

. The Pearlman Foundation’s decision to entrust the stewardship of these treasures to be shared across three institutions is the ultimate manifestation of their family’s generosity and commitment to sharing their prized artworks with a wide public. This will be the Brooklyn Museum’s sixth exhibition of works drawn from the collection, honoring the Museum’s longtime relationship with the Pearlmans. The gift of twenty-nine of the Pearlman artworks to Brooklyn marks one of the most significant gifts of European art in the Museum’s history. 

“The Pearlman Collection is an exquisite selection of modernist works, and we are thrilled to offer our visitors in Brooklyn a final opportunity to see them all together,” says Lisa Small, Senior Curator, European Art. “We are particularly excited to spotlight the works that are entering our collection and commemorate a truly momentous gift for our institution.” 

The artworks on view exemplify the radical new styles, subjects, and art world economies that began to disrupt centuries of academic traditions and hierarchies in the nineteenth century. It features artists from a range of backgrounds—including several Eastern European immigrants—who explore the complexities of representation, abstraction, materiality, and illusion. Brooklyn’s presentation will foreground narratives of encounter and connection: between Pearlman and the artists he collected (including fascinating provenance and conservation stories); between artists and their subjects; and among the artists themselves. 

The exhibition opens with the painting that inspired Pearlman’s passion for modern European art and would guide the rest of his approach to collecting: 

Chaïm Soutine’s View of Céret (1921–22), which is among Brooklyn’s gifts. 

Another Brooklyn gift, a notable early canvas by Toulouse-Lautrec that parodies a classicizing Salon painting, emphasizes the tensions between tradition and innovation—in subject and form—that characterize all the artworks Pearlman collected. 

The show also features the first two Amedeo Modigliani paintings to enter the Brooklyn Museum’s collection, portraits of Jean Cocteau (1916) and Léon Indenbaum (1915), as well as a rare limestone bust by the artist. 

Other works entering the Brooklyn Museum collection that will be on view include paintings, works on paper, and sculptures by Gustave Courbet, Honoré Daumier, Edgar Degas, Paul Gauguin, and Camille Pissarro. The Pearlmans collected Paul Cézanne in depth, including several major landscapes, figural works, and a cache of watercolors by the artist. 

Additional artworks by Édouard Manet, Alfred Sisley, and Vincent Van Gogh further reveal the Pearlman collection’s status as an elite grouping of modern European masterworks. In addition to the artworks, Cézanne to Modigliani will have a special focus on the Pearlmans’ personal story, including Henry’s collecting vision and relationships with artists like Oskar Kokoschka and Jacques Lipchitz, each of whom created a portrait of him. 

Through photographs, letters, and archival documents, Brooklyn’s presentation will also spotlight the Pearlmans’ lasting connection with the borough of Brooklyn and its museum. Henry, the son of Russian-Jewish immigrants, was raised in Park Slope and with only a high school education became a successful businessman during World War II, when he founded the Eastern Cold Storage Insulation Company. Rose immigrated to the United States from Minsk, Belarus, at age four, grew up in Brooklyn, and was a savvy practical advisor to Henry as he built the collection. 

Starting in the 1950s, the Pearlmans made many long-term loans to the Brooklyn Museum, and their collection was the focus of six special exhibitions here, the last one of which took place in 1986.

 CREDITS 

Cézanne to Modigliani: Gifts of Modern Art from the Pearlman Collection is co-organized by the Brooklyn Museum and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The Brooklyn Museum presentation is curated by Lisa Small, Senior Curator, European Art.

The Symptomatic Surreal

 Freud Museum

25 March 2026 to 28 June 2026

Image credit: Leonora Carrington, Down Below, 1940. Private Collection, Mia Kim. Image Courtesy of Gallery Wendi Norris, San Francisco © 2026 Estate of Leonora Carrington / ARS, NY and DACS, London.

The Symptomatic Surreal will be the first institutional exhibition dedicated to Leonora Carrington’s drawings from her Santander sketchbooks, offering a unique vantage point from which to reconsider the artist’s wartime output.

British-born Mexican artist Leonora Carrington (1917–2011) is one of the most celebrated figures associated with Surrealism. She was a painter, novelist, and visionary whose sustained enquiry into the psyche informed her interests in mythology, psychology, alchemy, tarot, and other esoteric traditions.

Told through her sketchbook drawings and letters from 1938 to 1941 prior to her permanent emigration to Mexico, this exhibition follows Carrington’s flight from Nazi occupied France, her hospitalisation in Sanatorium Morales in Santander, Spain, and her journey through Madrid to New York, where she was reunited with the Surrealists in exile in 1941. It was then that she entrusted the Santander sketchbooks to collector Julien Levy, which were held in his collection for over sixty years, until the sketchbook drawings were sold in 2004 and dispersed into various private collections.

This exhibition brings together material from Carrington’s stay in Santander, placing her recurring motifs of horses and the underworld in dialogue with Sigmund Freud’s collection of antiquities devoted to these themes. The exhibition is anchored by the presentation of Down Below (1940), a seminal early painting produced during Carrington’s hospitalisation in Santander, offering a rare opportunity to view the work as it has never been exhibited in London before.

The Symptomatic Surreal is curated by Vanessa Boni.

Sotheby's Mnuchin collection: 11-lot dedicated evening Auction this May in New York

Renowned across the art world for his discerning eye for the artists represented in his personal collection - including Mark Rothko, Franz Kline, and Willem de Kooning - the superlative quality of the examples that Mnuchin chose for himself reflect this extreme level of connoisseurship. Acquiring the works that resonated with him in their ambition and achievement, the group of works is led by Mark Rothko’s towering Brown and Blacks in Reds from 1957 (estimate $70-100 million). 

Collection Highlights 

Mark Rothko 

The collection is led by two paintings by Mark Rothko, both dating to pivotal years of the artist’s career. Standing nearly 8 feet tall, his 

1957 Brown and Blacks in Reds hails from the artist’s most important decade, when he developed his signature rectangular bands of color (estimate $70-100 Million). Executed in Rothko’s coveted red, the painting illustrates the artist’s famed mastery of color. Acquired circa 1957 by Joseph E. Seagram & Sons, Inc., the color palette of this work surely would have played an important influence in the development and conceptualization of the seminal Seagram Mural commission in the years to follow. This painting is one of 15 monumental (90+ in.) canvases created in 1957, most of which reside in museum collections including the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Offentliche Kunstsammlung Basel; Australian National Gallery, Canberra; and The Panza Collection at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, among others. Held in Mnuchin’s collection for more than two decades, Brown and Blacks in Reds has been exhibited in some of the most important exhibitions dedicated to the artist, from the 1978-79 traveling retrospective organized by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum; Rothko, Tate London, 1987; to the celebrated recent show at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris. 

Distinguished by its bright, vivid palette, Rothko’s 1949 No. 1 dates to a critical year of transition in the artist’s practice, as he made the shift from the nebulous multiforms of the late 1940s to the iconic stacked bands of color that would define his mature output from the early 1950s onward (estimate $15-20 million). In this work, both formats coexist, presenting a rare combination of his two most significant bodies of work. Included in a seminal 1950 exhibition at Betty Parsons Gallery, the early champion of the Abstract Expressionists, No. 1 stands at the very threshold of Rothko’s breakthrough. 

Willem de Kooning 

The selection on offer this May presents a retrospective encapsulation of de Kooning’s career, featuring works spanning four decades from the 1950s through the 1980s. It is led by the artist’s

 

1983 Untitled XLII, a superb example of his late, lyrical style distinguished by fluid passages of blue, red, pink and violet. Making its auction debut, the painting is the most significant work from de Kooning’s final decade to appear since Untitled IV achieved over $18.9 million in the landmark Macklowe Collection sale in November 2021. 

Franz Kline 

Held in Mnuchin’s collection for more than two decades, 

Franz Kline, Harleman, 1960. Oil on canvas, 53 x 102 inches. Courtesy Mnuchin Gallery. © 2025 The Franz Kline Estate and Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Timothy Doyon.

Harleman is the finest work by the artist to come to auction in a decade. Executed in 1960, the work is a monumental. Named after the artist’s friend Stanley Harleman, the work subtly anchors his radical abstractions in the figures and places of his Pennsylvania hometown. 

Jeff Koons 

Robert Mnuchin was among Jeff Koons’s earliest supporters, demonstrating the ambition and conviction of a commercial gallery by boldly staging what was effectively the first major retrospective of the artist’s work in New York. The artist’s 

Louis XIV is an icon of the artist’s celebrated Statuary series, and stands alongside his most important early works. Koons first adopted his signature polished stainless steel in this seminal body of work, which would become synonymous with his practice. Inspired by a fiberglass bust the artist encountered on Canal Street, Louis XIV marks Koon’s first direct engagement with canonical “high” art. Moving beyond domestic commodities and advertising imagery, Koons turned to art history as the subject. The work has been included in nearly every major retrospective of his work. This example is the artist’s proof from an edition of 3, plus one artist’s proof. The rest of the editions are held in museum collections, including the Nasher Sculpture Center, The Broad, and the DESTE Foundation for Contemporary Art.

Basquiat's Monumental 'Museum Security (Broadway Meltdown)' To Highlight Sotheby's May Contemporary Evening Auction

“Intense and electrifying, Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Museum Security (Broadway Meltdown) embodies the qualities that define the artist at his very best: executed at the height of his career, on an impressive scale, and charged with the imagery and language that made his work instantly recognizable. A storied masterpiece within his oeuvre, I have long dreamt of bringing this work to auction, and it is a truly rare privilege to do so this spring.” 

Grégoire Billault, Chairman, Contemporary Art, Sotheby’s New York “This work dances between the written and the drawn. On a monumental scale, Basquiat unites images, words and symbols, folding them together so that the words and their meanings begin to blur and shift. There’s an immediacy from his head to his hand to the line.” Lucius Elliott, Head of Contemporary Art Marquee Sales, Sotheby’s 

Few masterworks so powerfully capture the themes, concerns, and personal history that defined Jean-Michel Basquiat’s career as his 1983 Museum Security (Broadway Meltdown). This May, this masterpiece will star in Sotheby’s Contemporary Evening Auction with an estimate in excess of $45 million, appearing at auction for the first time in more than a decade. The work belongs to the most soughtafter moment of his career, when his visual language reached an extraordinary level of clarity, ambition, and scale, unfolding here at a particularly exceptional degree of gesture, color, and compositional complexity. 

 Belonging to a suite of 12 monumental canvases that Basquiat painted in 1983, Museum Security (Broadway Meltdown) stands among the most ambitious works of this celebrated group. At the center of this group are Museum Security (Broadway Meltdown) and the closely related painting, Hollywood Africans —now in the collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York—which together present the most layered and conceptually rich explorations of Basquiat’s iconography and language. 

Museum Security (Broadway Meltdown) has been the subject of institutional interest, shown in nearly every major exhibition of the artist’s work including Jean-Michel Basquiat: New Paintings at Larry Gagosian Gallery in Los Angeles, where seven works from the suite were presented together. Museum Security (Broadway Meltdown) was on long-term loan to the Fondation Beyeler in Riehen from 2013-18. Subsequently, the work featured prominently in Fondation Louis Vuitton’s monumental retrospective (2018- 19), followed by the Brant Foundation’s Jean-Michel Basquiat presentation from March-May 2019. Most recently, the work served as a centerpiece of the major exhibition Signs: Connecting Past and Future at the Zaha Hadid-designed Dongdaemun Design Plaza Museum in Seoul (2025-26), where it appeared on the cover of the exhibition catalogue for the retrospective. 

Further testament to the work’s importance within his oeuvre, the work is featured on the cover of the acclaimed monograph, Jean-Michel Basquiat, edited by Dieter Buchhart and Anna Karina Hofbauer. 

“The Fondation Beyeler had the honour of holding the first major retrospective in Europe of Jean-Michel Basquiat’s work on the anniversary of his 50th birthday in 2010. The exhibition traced the development of this extraordinary, ground-breaking artist in over 150 paintings, drawings and objets d’art. One of the most important paintings was Museum Security (Broadway Meltdown) (1983), which took a prominent place in the comprehensive retrospective. I was able to study the painting on an almost daily basis for the threemonth duration of the exhibition and it came to be one of my personal favourites. It is a key work in JeanMichel Basquiat’s oeuvre, a modern-day ‘writing on the wall’ in the metaphorical and literal sense, and one of the great masterpieces of contemporary art.” Sam Keller, Director of Fondation Beyeler quoted in Dieter Buchhart and Anna Karina Hofbauer, eds., Jean-Michel Basquiat, Munich 2015, p. 10 

Among the most complex, conceptually rigorous and historically significant works in the artist’s body of work, Museum Security (Broadway Meltdown) presents a dictionary of Basquiat’s iconic signs, symbols and text, taking head on the themes that preoccupied the artist throughout his lifetime. At an operatic scale, the work unfolds as a vast, epic window into the young artist's innermost reflections on success and exploitation, fame and abjection, value and merit, race, class, and colonialism, colliding and engaging with one another in rich, saturated oil stick. 

Created just a few years after Basquiat emerged from the downtown New York scene, the painting reflects the artist’s growing engagement with structures of cultural authority. With phrases such as “Museum Security” and “Priceless Art,” Basquiat stages a charged confrontation between artistic value, institutional gatekeeping, and the commercial forces shaping the contemporary art world. As he rapidly entered the global spotlight, the work’s title is an exceptionally direct reference to Basquiat’s introspection of his status in the art world as he inserts himself into the canon, while simultaneously questioning the systems that determine who is permitted to enter it – a dichotomy which lies at the heart of the work. 

Towering nearly seven feet in height, Museum Security (Broadway Meltdown) exemplifies Basquiat’s extraordinary ability to translate the immediacy of street culture onto canvas on a monumental scale. Incredibly complex and heavily worked, from collages, frenetic scrawls to dripping paint to collaged elements, the surface teems with the artist’s signature symphony of text and images which thread themselves throughout his body of work. Among them are “Priceless Art,” “Museum Security,” “Yen,” “Asbestos,” “Hooverville” and “Five Cents,” all alongside the three-point crown, star symbols, and a haunting skull-like head whose red-rimmed eyes anchor the composition. Absorbing and transforming multiple visual languages at once, Museum Security (Broadway Meltdown) fuses the entanglement of the immediacy and urgency of the present with an acute awareness of the weight of art history behind and before him.

Christie's London to offer David Hockney's Largest Editioned Print

 

Autour de la maison, été  

The 12 metre work will headline Christie's London's Contemporary Edition: London online sale, along with major editions by Banksy | Spring season Prints and Multiples sale to include more important works by Hockney, Joan Miró, Pablo Picasso, Bridget Riley and Andy Warhol

Photographs & Prints

LondonEMEA13 March 2026

David Hockney, Autour de la maison, été (2019, estimate: £200,000-300,000)

LONDON – Christie's announces its Prints and Multiples and Contemporary Edition: London online sales, scheduled to take place from 12-26 March and 17-31 March, respectively. An exhibition of the sales will be held at Christie's London until 31 March. With estimates ranging from £500 to £300,000, the sales offer collectors at every stage the opportunity to acquire important works.

The headline lot of the Spring season will be David Hockney's monumental Autour de la maison, été (2019, estimate: £200,000-300,000), measuring an astonishing 12 metres in length. Printed on a single sheet of paper, it is one of the largest works ever created by the artist, and his largest editioned print. It depicts Hockney's home in Normandy, France, with his garden in the height of summer, the vibrant greens of the grass, trees and hedgerows in contrast with the architecture of the medieval barns and contemporary elements such as a swing set, treehouse and parked vehicles.

Parallels can be drawn between the present work and the Bayeux Tapestry, which the artist notes later inspired him to create A Year in Normandie (2020–2021), a 295-foot (90-meter) iPad painting printed on paper composed of separate images arranged in a continuous frieze. Its presentation in London is particularly timely, coinciding with Hockney's current solo exhibition at the Serpentine Gallery and anticipating the forthcoming display of the Bayeux Tapestry at the British Museum.

James Baskerville, International Head of Contemporary Edition, Christie's: “With Autour de la maison, été, Hockney expands the possibilities of printmaking to an almost cinematic scale. Measuring an extraordinary twelve metres across and realised on a single sheet, the work invites the viewer to move through the artist's Normandy garden as though reading a continuous pictorial frieze. The composition echoes the storytelling of the Bayeux Tapestry, while anticipating the monumental vision of A Year in Normandie. It is a tour de force within Hockney's printed oeuvre and comes at a moment when the market for Hockney's prints continues to demonstrate exceptional strength, with collectors increasingly drawn to ambitious, large-scale works that exemplify the artist's innovative approach to the medium.”

Prints and Multiples – 12 to 26 March 2026
This season's Prints and Multiples sale – open for bidding online until 26 March – presents works by some of the most influential artists of the 19th and 20th centuries.

Among the main highlights of the sale is Pablo Picasso's Visage de Marie-Thérèse, 1928 (estimate: £20,000-30,000). In 1927, Picasso met Marie‑Thérèse Walter on a Paris boulevard, beginning one of the most significant artistic relationships of his career. She became his muse for the next decade, inspiring a celebrated body of work. This elegant lithograph is among the artist's earliest portraits of Marie-Thérèse, capturing the distinctive features that would come to define his depictions of her.

Joan Miró Gargantua (1977; estimate: £40,000-60,000) is a monumental print created in collaboration with printmaker Robert Dutrou using Henri Goetz's innovative carborundum technique. Inspired by François Rabelais's Renaissance tale of the giant Gargantua, the composition combines bold black forms with vivid reds, blues and yellows. Miró's dynamic arrangement of floating elements creates a powerful sense of movement and scale.

Created in 1995, Vertical Dogs by David Hockney (estimate: £20,000-30,000) is a lively etching and aquatint that depicts the artist's beloved dachshunds, Stanley and Boodgie. The work reflects the warmth and intimacy of the artist's domestic life in Los Angeles, capturing the playful character and distinctive personalities of his canine companions.

Bridget Riley's Silvered 2 (1981; estimate: £12,000-18,000) is a precisely structured composition of parallel bands, in which the artist explores the perceptual effects of line and colour. Moving beyond the stark black-and-white optical patterns of her early work, she introduces luminous colour relationships that seem to pulse and shift across the surface, demonstrating her mastery of optical abstraction.

The sale is also completed by important works from Andy Warhol, Henri Matisse, Roy Lichtenstein, Edgar Degas, Edvard Munch, and Paula Rego, among others.

Contemporary Edition: London – 17 to 31 March 2026
Contemporary Edition: London – open for online bidding from 17 to 31 March - highlights sought-after editions by internationally recognised artists alongside emerging talents, with works spanning the late 20th century to the present day.

In addition to the leading highlight – David Hockney's largest editioned print Autour de la maison, été (2019, estimate: £200,000-300,000), the other key highlight of the sale will be Banksy's Bunch of Flowers (2021; estimate: £100,000-150,000) a hand-finished screenprint from 2021. This work has not been publicly exhibited or offered for sale before. It was gifted directly from the artist to the present owner, accompanied by a personal note. The work closely relates to Banksy's iconic image Love is in the Air, which he revisited in 2019 with the Flower Thrower Triptych (Grey), an example of which is also included in the sale (2019; estimate: £100,000-150,000).

Further highlights include Banksy's Kate Moss (2005; estimate: £70,000-100,000), presented in the striking colourway inspired by Andy Warhol's Shot Sage Blue Marilyn. In this work, the artist superimposes the face of the contemporary supermodel onto Warhol's iconic image, creating a playful subversion of art history.

The auction features multiple works by Damien Hirst, encompassing his celebrated Spots, Butterflies, Kaleidoscopes, and Blossom Trees (estimates ranging from £1,500 to £70,000), as well as two monumental tapestries that translate his seminal spin painting designs into Jacquard form. His blossom series explores the fleeting beauty of nature, reflecting on themes of life and death, desire, and the way we interpret and transform the world around us, capturing the striking transience of a tree in full bloom against a clear sky.

Barbara Kruger's celebrated Untitled (We will no longer be seen and not heard) from 1985 (estimate: £30,000-50,000), draws attention to the power imbalances in society, and the importance of amplifying marginalised voices. The powerful images are created with her classic juxtaposition of text and image, and this set is offered in the artist-specified red frames.

HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE SALES

PRINTS AND MULTIPLES

CONTEMPORARY EDITION: LONDON

An exhibition of the sales will be held at Christie's London, alongside a selection of Prints & Multiples Private Sale Highlights, from 12 to 31 March 2026. The exhibitions are free and open to all.

Visuals

AllImages