Day gross sales are normally the place the market’s actual temperature is taken—the place developments sharpen and the center market both holds or crumbles. On Thursday, Christie’s Put up-Warfare and Up to date Artwork day sale introduced in a wholesome $88.7 million, with sell-through charges of 88 % by lot and 90 % by worth. These day gross sales will not be as attractive as their moonlit night counterparts, however they usually ship the clearest alerts—for those who’re paying consideration.
The loudest sign this time got here from a canvas that appeared nothing just like the week’s blockbuster tons: Keller Honest II, a 1960 portray by Lynne Drexler that offered for $2,027,000, shattering her earlier public sale document by practically $500,000 and much exceeding its $800,000–$1.2 million estimate. For a second-generation Summary Expressionist who spent a lot of her profession in obscurity, the outcome suggests a market shifting into a brand new section.
Amongst these monitoring Drexler carefully, the value wasn’t a shock. Sources advised ARTnews that non-public gross sales have already hit greater numbers. What made Keller Honest II stand out was its high quality. Advisors, sellers, and public sale specialists agreed: this was a uncommon, distinctive instance from Drexler’s early Nineteen Sixties output, the dense, pulsating interval that Mnuchin Gallery and Berry Campbell foregrounded of their widely-watched 2022 joint exhibition.
“It appears completely different once you’re constructing a market, which is a gradual and regular course of,” Christine Berry, co-founder of Berry Campbell, advised ARTnews. Her gallery makes a speciality of underrecognized postwar artists like Drexler. At first, Berry mentioned, curiosity in Drexler got here primarily from “deep within the trade”—sellers and advisors steeped in postwar abstraction. “However now it’s changing into clear to the mainstream collector that individuals ought to be paying consideration,” she mentioned. The market seems to have matured.
There’s exhausting information behind that. Earlier than 2020, Drexler had by no means crossed the $10,000 mark at public sale. By 2022, her work was touchdown in seven-figure night gross sales at Sotheby’s and Christie’s, usually blowing previous estimates. That momentum owes a lot to the 2022 Mnuchin/Berry Campbell present “The First Decade,” a wide-ranging survey of her 1959-1969 abstractions that reframed Drexler not as a rediscovered footnote however as a modernist drive. One other key second got here earlier that 12 months with “Shatter,” an exhibition at Artwork Intelligence World’s Hong Kong house, organized by Saara Pritchard. That present launched main early works to a brand new collector base hungry for postwar girls painters. “Shatter” was additionally Drexler’s first main present exterior Maine.
However since then, sourcing top-tier Drexlers has been tough. In line with Pritchard—a collector, advisor, and former specialist at each Christie’s and Sotheby’s—there are solely 30 to 40 canvases at Keller Honest II’s scale or bigger, and greater than 1 / 4 are already in museums. Many others have situation points, like floor cracking, and water injury that’s particularly seen in her densely labored 1959–62 canvases.
“That is actually certainly one of her finest work,” Pritchard advised ARTnews. She known as it a “unicorn”—a piece with brilliant, layered coloration, a balanced composition, and unusually robust situation. In distinction, many latest Drexler tons have had floor cracking or duller palettes. “What’s come to public sale not too long ago has not been fabulous work,” she mentioned. This canvas, she added, “is pretty much as good because it will get.”
Berry echoed that. The demand she sees now—in personal gross sales, inquiries, and cross-period curiosity—extends far past the handful of “trade high-powered gamers” who sparked Drexler’s first surge. “We have been promoting issues at $45,000, then instantly it was $100,000, after which $300,000,” she remembers. “And that was 4 years in the past. What’s taking place now’s the results of regular, constant progress in between.”
In that sense, Thursday’s outcome appears much less like a spike and extra like a public affirmation of what’s been taking place quietly in personal gross sales.
It’s price noting that the consignor of Keller Honest II seemingly took a loss. One well-placed supply advised me that the identical portray offered privately 4 years in the past for roughly the identical value. That context complicates the obvious upward momentum. The Drexler market, like each market, nonetheless has pockets of volatility. However, as we noticed throughout the auctions this week, collectors are keen to pay top-tier costs for top-tier materials. Within the case of Drexler, the ceiling for these works hasn’t but solidified.
The query now’s provide, not demand. Works of the identical caliber as Keller Honest II are scarce, and the pipeline from Drexler’s property is proscribed. The 2022 Mnuchin/Berry Campbell exhibition revealed what the highest of the market might appear to be however it didn’t open a floodgate. As extra museums proceed to amass and exhibit her work—and with a touring retrospective starting in 2026 on the Muscarelle Museum of Artwork in Williamsburg, Virginia —the variety of main work circulating privately is more likely to shrink additional.
For now, a brand new benchmark is about. The market has despatched its sign. And the gang that after wanted to be persuaded to look twice at Drexler now appears able to compete for her finest.
