As auction houses scramble for quality consignments, many private collectors are holding tight in a climate of market uncertainty and waiting for top-tier collections from established dealers’ private holdings to hit the auction block this season. As part of the New York marquee auctions, Sotheby’s is poised to offer fifteen exceptional works from the private collection of Daniella Luxembourg, the Israeli art dealer and founder of the eponymous Luxembourg+Co gallery. Featuring work by some of the most prominent names of the Italian postwar period alongside American contemporary masters such as Alexander Calder and Claes Oldenburg, the collection is expected to generate $30 million. Titled “Im Spazio: The Space of Thoughts” in homage to the groundbreaking 1967 exhibition curated by Germano Celant that launched the Arte Povera movement, the single-owner sale will open Sotheby’s Contemporary Evening Auction in May.
“I have always seen collecting as an instinctive, deeply personal journey. I was never drawn to a single movement or name but rather to works that spoke to me viscerally—pieces with energy, tension, and stories waiting to be unraveled,” Luxembourg said in a statement. “These artists were carrying the flag of modernism in a different way by reinventing a new vocabulary. There is something so straightforward, sophisticated and beautiful—without wanting to be beautiful—and it touched me.”
Despite the chaos of tariffs and broader geopolitical and economic unrest, the dealer clearly sees this as the opportune moment to release these masterpieces—likely looking to capitalize on a rare drought of significant consignments, particularly in terms of postwar and contemporary heavyweights.
A common thread running through the collection is the pioneering investigation these artists pursued into space and materiality, challenging the dominance of the flat picture plane and dismantling painting’s conventional boundaries. Fueling these radical aesthetics was the era’s scientific ferment and groundbreaking discoveries—most notably, the space race and the seismic shift in visual imagination sparked by the first moon landing, which redefined the understanding of matter, light, energy and the very notion of space itself.
A defining piece in this sense is the rare gold Concetto Spaziale, La Fine di Dio by Lucio Fontana, which comes to auction with a remarkable estimate of $12-18 million. The work is part of his iconic thirty-eight-piece series La Fine di Dio (The End of God), created between 1963 and 1964 for seminal exhibitions in Zurich, Milan and Paris.
Among the rarest series to appear on the market—particularly in its gold version—the work’s seemingly lunar surface, punctuated by craters, exemplifies Fontana’s pursuit of a new space within and beyond the picture plane. “I do not want to make a painting; I want to open up space,” the artist famously stated. “Create new dimensions, tied in the cosmos as it endlessly expands beyond the confining plane of the picture.” Last May, Sotheby’s offered another Fine di Dio from the esteemed Rachofsky Collection, a 1964 example in yellow—one of only four—which sold for $22,969,800 against a $20-30 million estimate. The current record for the series remains the $29.2 million result set at Christie’s New York in 2015 for another yellow version.
Another major highlight of the sale is the monumental black Cretto by Alberto Burri from 1976, which Sotheby’s will offer with a $2.5-3.5 million estimate. Part of a series of thirty-seven large-scale works—and among only nineteen the artist created entirely in black—the piece is the first monumental example to appear at auction in over a decade and one of the largest ever offered on the secondary market. Evoking rifts and fissures left by traumatic tectonic movements and earthquakes, the Cretto series stands as a culmination of Burri’s poetic and alchemical exploration of materials, transforming the natural cracking of pigment into a powerful conceptual and psychological metaphor for an entire historical moment.
On the American side, Sotheby’s will offer a signature example of Alexander Calder’s aerial and organic approach to sculpture, exploring how form interacts with and responds to its surrounding environment, much like living organisms in nature. Presented with a $5-7 million estimate, the black mobile Armada from 1945 testifies to Calder’s singular ability to merge engineering and lyricism in a balanced orchestration of motion, space and sculptural harmony.
Other standout lots include a vinyl soft sculpture by Claes Oldenburg (estimate: $1,000,000-1,500,000); an early mirror piece by Michelangelo Pistoletto from 1969 titled Maria nuda, inspired by neoclassical nude figures (estimate: $1,000,000-1,500,000); and Luciano Fabro’s Sullo stato (1970), a critical and material investigation of the shape of Italy, which has an estimate of $700,000-1,000,000.
Art dealer collections are expected to lead the May auction season
Daniella Luxembourg’s art collection won’t be the only one hitting the block this May. While no official announcement has been made yet, rumors have been circulating that both Sotheby’s and Christie’s have been in negotiations to secure Barbara Gladstone’s private collection after the legendary dealer passed away last summer. As Artnet senior reporter Katya Kazakina reported last month, a large part of the dealer’s collection is comprised of seminal works by the artists her namesake gallery represents, including era-defining names such as Joan Jonas, Matthew Barney, Carroll Dunham, Ugo Rondinone, Shirin Neshat, and Wangechi Mutu. The gallery also represents major estates, including those of Robert Mapplethorpe, Robert Rauschenberg and Jannis Kounellis.
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Gladstone was also known to own a rare black flower painting by Andy Warhol, seen in photos of her home, and was an avid collector of Richard Prince, having acquired significant examples from his Nurse and Jokes series, according to sources. As of publication, Gladstone’s estate attorney, Michael Stout, has not responded to calls or emails seeking comment. Sotheby’s and Christie’s have likewise declined to comment, but many in the industry expect the announcement that Gladstone’s collection will headline the May sales to appear any day now.
