Phillips' Modern & Contemporary Art Evening Sale made £10.3 million on Berkeley Square in Frieze week 2025, led by Jean-Michel Basquiat's Untitled (Pestus).
The first of Mayfair’s two Frieze Thursday evening sales was the Modern & Contemporary Art Evening Sale, called at Phillips Berkeley Square in Mayfair on Thursday 16 October 2025.
Harry Phillips founded the house in Westminster in 1796. Where the older houses built their names on old masters and estates, Phillips reorganised itself around twentieth and twenty-first century material. The evening sale tests that decision each October.
Four of the 26 lots were withdrawn before the sale began, and 18 of the remaining 22 sold. The auctioneer Henry Highley took it in 45 minutes. It made £10,332,200, down 32 per cent on the year before.
Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Untitled (Pestus) led at £2,374,000 on the telephone, against an estimate of £2,000,000 to £3,000,000. Flora Yukhnovich’s My Body knows Un-Heard of Songs made £1,276,000, and Sean Scully’s Wall of Light Summer Night 5.10 made £967,500.
Emma McIntyre’s Seven types of ambiguity, a painting 11 feet wide, set a world auction record for the artist at £167,700. Olivia Thornton, the house’s head of modern and contemporary art in Europe, pointed to the appetite for younger names such as Sasha Gordon.
Sotheby’s held its own sale later the same night, a few streets away.