Jadé Fadojutimi breaks auction record at Christie’s London.

Christie’s 20th and 21st century and “The Art of The Surreal” sales in London last Thursday yielded a combined total of £196.7 million ($250.4 million), comfortably within the estimate of £166 million to £233 million ($213.1 million to $299.2 million). The total represented a 17% rise from the equivalent sales held by the auction house last year. (All prices include fees.)

The sales set four new auction records, led by Jadé Fadojutimi’s The Woven Warped Garden of Ponder (2021), which sold for £1.6 million ($2 million). The sale marks the third time the British artist has set a new auction benchmark in the past five months, after Quirk my mannerism (2021) sold for $1.9 million at Phillips in New York last November.

Notable works to significantly surpass their estimates included Lucian Freud’s Plant Fragment (ca. 1977), which more than tripled its low estimate to sell for £982,800 ($1.3 million); Günther Uecker’s Untitled (Baum) (Tree) (1985), sold for more than triple its low estimate at £630,000 ($809,000); and Hannah Höch’s Dada photomontage Das schöne Mädchen (ca. 1920) sold for £453,600 ($582,393), more than double its high estimate.

The top five lots from the combined evening sales were as follows:

• René Magritte’s L’ami intime (The Intimate Friend) (1958) sold for £33.7 million ($43.3 million).
• Francis Bacon’s Landscape near Malabata, Tangier (1963) sold for £19.6 million ($25.2 million).
• David Hockney’s California (1965) sold for £18.7 million ($24 million).
• Claude Monet’s Matinée sur la Seine, temps net (1897) sold for £14.4 million ($18.5 million). Monet’s Prairie fleurie à Giverny (1890) sold for £6.3 million ($8 million).