Christie's 25th Art of the Surreal Evening Sale sold all 26 lots on King Street for £43.0 million, led by Magritte's Les grâces naturelles at £8.5 million.
Christie’s sold all 26 lots of its 25th Art of the Surreal Evening Sale at Christie’s King Street in St James’s on Thursday 5 March 2026, for £42,978,950.
The sale is devoted to Dada and Surrealism and to the artists who followed them. This edition traced Surrealism from its Symbolist and Dada beginnings to post-war work.
James Christie founded the house in 1766. This was one of three evening sales it held that Thursday, which together made £197.5 million.
René Magritte’s Les grâces naturelles, painted around 1961 and built on his leaf-bird motif, led at £8,520,000. Joan Miró’s Peinture of 1949, from the Renker Collection, made £4,808,000, and Paul Delvaux’s La Ville lunaire of 1944 made £4,320,000.
Two women Surrealists each set an auction record. Dorothea Tanning’s Children’s Games of 1942 sold for £4,686,000, and Toyen’s Le devenir de la liberté of 1946 sold for £3,710,000.
Picasso’s Figure of 1929, also from the Renker Collection, made £2,612,000. Max Ernst’s collage on canvas Sun over the desert, made in 1925, reached £863,600 against an estimate of £300,000 to £500,000.