Jackson Pollock’s Number 7A (1948) sold for $181.2 million at Christie’s in New York, setting a new auction record for the giant of Abstract Expressionism. Pollock is now in an exclusive club of artists whose auction prices have surpassed $100 million.
The painting came from the collection of media magnate S.I. Newhouse, who died in 2017 at the age of 89. Sixteen works owned by Newhouse made $630.8 million in under an hour at the house, far surpassing the $450 million estimate for the material.
The Pollock had been estimated at $100 million. Christie’s heralded it as the last “drip” painting in private hands. The winning bidder was on the phone with Alex Rotter, Christie’s global president. The hammer price was $157 million.
Pollock (1912–56) was 36 years old when he created the piece, one of his first drip paintings, on the floor of a barn near East Hampton, New York. The narrow horizontal canvas—11-foot-wide and 3-foot-tall—is the most monumental work by the artist to ever appear at auction.
Newhouse bought Number 7A privately from Sotheby’s then-owner A. Alfred Taubman in 2000. The previous auction record for Pollock, set in 2021, was $61.2 million, according to the Artnet Price Database.
A few minutes earlier in the auction, Constantin Brancusi’s 1913 bronze sculpture Danaïde (1913) went for $107.6 million, a new auction record for the Romanian modernist that also puts him in the nine-figure club. The pre-fee hammer price was $93 million. It is the second-highest price ever paid for a sculpture at auction. It had been estimated at more than $100 million. (The record for a sculpture at auction is held by a 1947 Alberto Giacometti that sold for $141.3 million at Christie’s in 2015.)
Constantin Brancusi, Danaïde (ca. 1913). Courtesy of Christie’s Images, Ltd. 2026.
The work has had only two owners. In 1914, Brancusi chose Danaïde for his first one-man show, at Alfred Stieglitz’s Little Galleries of the Photo-Secession in New York. It was purchased by Eugene and Agnes Meyer, who would become two of the artist’s most important patrons, as well as his lifelong friends, according to Christie’s. The work remained in the family’s collection until 2002.
Newhouse bought Danaïde, a bronze head with brown patina and gold leaf, for $18.2 million at Christie’s in 2002. At the time, it was a record for the sculptor—and for any sculpture at auction.
Christie’s has sold the seven most expensive works by Brancusi, led by La jeune fille sophistiquée (Portrait de Nancy Cunard), which earned a record $71.2 million in 2018, according to the Artnet Price Database.
A full report from this evening’s sales will follow.
