Why sell one multi-million-dollar painting by Mark Rothko when you could sell five? New York’s season of evening auctions of impressionist-to-contemporary art will see if that proves too many for a strained market to swallow.
“It’s a lot at one time, but they have different colour schemes, scales and price levels, so could reach different buyer pools,” says Mari-Claudia Jiménez, partner at Withers Art and Advisory and previously chair and president, Americas, at Sotheby’s.
Works by the American abstract painter all come to the block with prime provenance, topped by the vibrant “Brown and Blacks in Reds” (1957), a towering and dominantly red painting that is one of 24 works from the collection of the New York dealer and collector Robert Mnuchin. It is offered by Sotheby’s for between $70mn and $100mn.
Rothko’s ‘No. 15 (Two Greens and Red Stripe)’ (1964) — owned by Agnes Gund — is at Christie’s © Christie’s Images Ltd. 2026
Competing with this at Christie’s the following week is a brooding, later Rothko, also more than two metres high and with a thin red block on its dark background. “No. 15 (Two Greens and Red Stripe)” (1964) was owned by the philanthropist Agnes Gund and has an unpublished estimate of about $80mn.
