Sonnabend Collection heads to Christie's with a $50 million estimate

The Antonio Homem Sonnabend Collection is heading to Christie's this fall with an estimate of more than $50 million, spanning works by Jeff Koons, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol. The pieces will be split across the house's 20th/21st Century Evening Sales in London, Paris and New York.

Antonio Homem Sonnabend died in March. He was the adopted son of dealers Ileana and Michael Sonnabend, and he had spent decades overseeing the family's holdings of postwar and contemporary art, photographs, prints, multiples and design before his death.

The works being sold date mainly from the late 1950s and 1960s, the period when the Sonnabends were shaping how Europe and America saw each other's artists. Christie's has not released individual estimates for the pieces, saying only that figures were unavailable at the time of press.

What is actually going under the hammer

The named lots include Mario Schifano's A de Chirico from 1962, Warhol's Campbell's Soup Can (Turkey Noodle) from the same year, and Rauschenberg's Triple Rauschenberg [Bob Rauschenberg #2], also 1962. Jasper Johns's Numbers, from 1957, and a second Rauschenberg, Untitled (Collage with Cuff), from the same year, are also going to sale.

Koons is represented by Ode to Love, a piece dated 2010 to 2017 that stands apart from the mid-century works around it. We covered Koons's design turn more directly when he built his first watch, a Hublot collaboration grounded in metaphysics, a project distinct from this sale but a reminder of how far his output now ranges.

A portion of the proceeds will go toward an endowment for the Sonnabend Collection Mantova, a museum in northern Italy that Antonio helped open in 2025. The museum currently holds works by Lichtenstein, Warhol and Koons, drawn from the same family collection now being partly dispersed.

Why the family is selling now

Antonio's son, Antonio Phokion Potamianos-Homem, said in a statement that his father spent his life "among these works, and parting with them is not done lightly." He framed the sale as continuing his grandmother's transatlantic project rather than closing it out.

Potamianos-Homem said the family is carrying on "Ileana and Antonio's transatlantic vision, ensuring a vital exchange of artists and artworks between Europe and America, and ensuring the eye that assembled this collection continues to be seen." The proceeds fund the Mantova museum rather than simply exiting the market.

Sara Friedlander, chairman of postwar and contemporary art at Christie's, said Ileana's role in the "trajectory of Post-War and Contemporary art cannot be overstated." She called the collection an example of "the very finest in post-war artistic movements across Europe and the U.S."

Ileana Sonnabend opened her gallery in New York's SoHo neighborhood in 1971, with Antonio's help, in a building she shared with fellow dealers Leo Castelli, John Weber and Andre Emmerich. That address put four major galleries under one roof at a formative moment for American contemporary art.

She was instrumental in introducing European audiences to Warhol, Johns, Lichtenstein and Rauschenberg, and in bringing Gilbert & George, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Schifano and Giovanni Anselmo to American collectors. The traffic ran in both directions, which is the transatlantic exchange her grandson now invokes.

The gallery moved to Chelsea in 2000. After Ileana's death in 2007, Antonio took over as director, then established the Sonnabend Collection Foundation in 2009 specifically to preserve the family's collected works for the long term.

What the estimate says about the market

A single-family collection carrying five blue-chip American and Italian names to a $50 million estimate is a notable event, closer in scale to the entries in our roundup of the most expensive paintings ever sold than to a routine evening sale.

Christie's has staged the sale across three financial capitals rather than one room, a spread that lets the house court American, European and Asian bidders in the same season without pitting the lots against each other on a single night.

We have tracked auction results and estimates across categories well beyond painting, from a barely driven Gordon Murray T.50 expected to fetch more than $6 million to the record prices Banksy pieces have commanded at sale.

The Sonnabend estimate places this collection among the larger contemporary art consignments we have covered this year, and the design lots folded into the same family holding, alongside the paintings and prints, underline how broadly the Sonnabends collected beyond canvas alone.

Koons's presence in the sale also threads back to our coverage of scene, where his design work beyond the canvas, including the Hublot watch project, has become part of how collectors and readers now track his output across formats and media. Ode to Love is part of a body of work that now spans sculpture, painting and horology under the same artist's name.

Christie's has not set exact sale dates for the London, Paris and New York evenings, and individual lot estimates remain unannounced. Those figures are expected closer to the sales this fall, alongside further details on how the Mantova endowment will be structured and which specific lots will fund it.