FRESH TO MARKET MASTERWORKS LEAD PHILLIPS’ EVENING SALE OF
MODERN & CONTEMPORARY ART IN NEW YORK
Early Highlights Announced from the November Sale, Including Headlining Works by Amedeo Modigliani, David Hockney, and Alexander Calder, Jackson Pollock, Helen Frankenthaler, and Derek Fordjour
NEW YORK – 13 OCTOBER 2026 – Phillips is proud to announce early highlights from its marquee Modern & Contemporary Art Evening Sale, taking place on 18 November in New York. The Evening Sale is anchored by Amedeo Modigliani’s Tête—among the largest examples in private hands from the artist’s landmark sculptural series—which is making its auction debut and estimated at $28-35 million. (A full press release on Tête is available here.) The sale brings together additional masterworks by distinguished artistic voices spanning the 20th and 21st centuries, including David Hockney, Alexander Calder, Jackson Pollock, Helen Frankenthaler, and Derek Fordjour, among others. Following a world tour of select highlights to London, Paris, and Los Angeles, the exhibition will be on view in New York from 7-18 November, offering collectors and the public alike the opportunity to see the works in person, with many coming to auction for the first time.
Robert Manley, Chairman, Modern & Contemporary Art, said, “As we approach our November Evening Sale, Phillips is poised to continue the momentum gained from our stellar spring season, aiming to steward the market towards continued growth and excitement. We have an incredible selection of groundbreaking works by artists who have shaped the art historical canon over the course of the past century, from Modigliani’s museum-quality Tête, to Hockney’s rare multi-canvas portrait, to Calder’s incredible Snow Flurry mobile. This Evening Sale is a testament to Phillips’ depth of expertise and the important relationships held by our specialists, particularly as we look to bring this landmark Modigliani sculpture to collectors worldwide.”
Leading the sale is Amedeo Modigliani’s masterwork Tête, 1911-1912, which belongs to the artist’s celebrated series of sculpted heads, a group widely recognized as the pinnacle of his sculptural achievement and among the defining monuments of early Modernism. Of the approximately 28 stone sculptures created by the artist during his lifetime, the vast majority are now housed in major museum collections, including The Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Tate, London; and the Centre Pompidou, Paris. This example at Phillips is among the most significant from the series and it is the largest of the few remaining examples in private hands, having been safeguarded in the same family collection for nearly half a century.
Also among the sale highlights, and coming to auction for the first time, is David Hockney’s David, Celia, Stephen and Ian, London, 1982, 1982, a monumental, eight-panel portrait created after Hockney returned to painting following his intensive engagement with composite Polaroid photography. The portrait belongs to a breakthrough group of multi-canvas works produced in London in 1982, through which Hockney translated photographic discoveries about perception, time, and simultaneity into paint. Composed of eight canvases of equal size, each figure divided into upper and lower halves, the work rejects the fixed stillness of conventional portraiture in favor of a dynamic, lived vision. It stands today as a marvel of postwar figurative painting and a touchstone within Hockney’s oeuvre—an iconic early example of his 1980s exploration of multiple artistic styles and a decisive moment in his long experimentation with Cubism.
John McCord, Deputy Chairman, Senior International Specialist, Modern & Contemporary Art, New York, said, “It is a privilege to bring David, Celia, Stephen and Ian, London, 1982 to auction for the very first time. A landmark work from Hockney’s celebrated series of multi-canvas portraits, it embodies the bold experimentation and intellectual rigor that define his practice. We are honored to present this exceptional painting to collectors and the public alike, first in London and then in New York, where audiences will have the opportunity to experience firsthand one of the most compelling works from this transformative chapter of the artist’s career.”
Alexander Calder’s Snow Flurry, May 14, 1959, a mobile comprising twenty-five spherical white discs that delicately flutter in space and mimic natural elements, will also be featured in the sale. Completely fresh to market and part of Calder’s highly coveted series of Snow Flurry mobiles, the work was originally gifted by the artist to his friend, the prominent Brazilian art critic Mário Pedrosa, in whose family’s collection it has remained ever since. Following Mr. Pedrosa’s death in 1981, the mobile passed to his daughter, the distinguished diplomat and art critic Vera Pedrosa, who toured the work in Brazilian embassies across the world and has played a critical role in safeguarding the documentation of Calder’s relationship with Brazilian artists and intellectuals. Believed to be one of only a handful of comparable Snow Flurry mobiles still in private hands, it also served as the model for a larger version now in the collection of the Denver Art Museum.
Additional highlights of the evening trace the evolving practice of abstraction throughout modern and contemporary painting. Jackson Pollock’s abstract and quasi-Surrealist painting Constellation, 1946, occupies a pivotal space in the artist’s stylistic trajectory, standing between the threshold of conventional easel painting and the whole-body performance of his signature drip technique, which came shortly after this period. The work is of significant provenance, passing from the personal collection of Peggy Guggenheim, the era's most influential champion of modern art, into that of Harold Rosenberg, its most searching critic of Abstract Expressionism. Helen Frankenthaler’s large-scale, serene Seabreeze, 1980, created by the artist’s signature method of pouring paint directly onto blank canvas, combines swaths of green and blue hues, evoking a fresh view of the sea on a sunny day. Carrying this lineage into the present, Derek Fordjour’s Haberdashery, 2018, fresh to auction, builds a fractured surface from hand-cut cardboard tiles and layered newspaper, torn, incised and reworked in charcoal, foil and oil pastel, to frame a nude Black man measured by white tailors in a pointed meditation on respectability and value.