On April 30, Gagosian will open its own show of Frankenthaler’s monumental works, an echo of MoMA’s event. It will be the 11th selling exhibition that the foundation has held with the gallery, this time featuring the artist’s large, colorful works from the 1960s to the 1990s. As you can imagine, Gagosian being Gagosian, the prices for the works are substantial.

Frankenthaler’s market moved up another level over the last decade after a series of sales raised the artist’s auction average. In May 2015, four works broke through the million-dollar glass ceiling—with Saturn Revisited, a saturated blue-and-yellow composition from 1964, selling for more than $2.8 million. Three years later, Blue Reach, from 1978, improved her top price slightly, to $3 million. In 2020, the deep orange Royal Fireworks, from 1975, reset the market at nearly $7.9 million.

Frankenthaler’s top auction price has remained just shy of $8 million ever since. But as often happens in an artist’s auction market, the meaningful change took place in the price band below the new record. Ten more works have sold in the intervening years for prices between the old auction high of $3 million and the new threshold of nearly $8 million. That sets the price for a high-quality Frankenthaler in the $4 million to $6 million range. And Ysenburg told me that the foundation, where many of the best works still reside, has been able to regularly get better prices selling privately through Gagosian than collectors have been able to yield at auction.

That doesn’t mean potential Frankenthaler collectors are totally priced out, however. In next week’s midseason sales at Christie’s and Sotheby’s, there are six different Frankenthaler works on offer with estimates ranging from $60,000 to $600,000. And they come primarily from longtime holders, several of whom bought directly from the André Emmerich gallery, which represented the artist for more than four decades. That means that while the works may not have the pristine provenance of the foundation, they’re not very far removed from the artist herself.

Sotheby’s has two paintings on offer next week. The more valuable one is Mauve Hill, a 1966 work estimated at $600,000. (Sotheby’s offered another untitled 1966 work with a $500,000 estimate in September, and the painting ended up making $825,000 with fees.) As Haleigh Stoddard, Sotheby’s head of the Contemporary Curated sale, explained to me yesterday: “1960s Frankenthaler in this mid-scale size—and especially under $1 million—was really top of our wish list for this sale platform.” Stoddard also has a small 1959 work, Non-Symmetry, with an estimate of $120,000, which comes from a “Midwestern” collector who bought it from Emmerich in 1975. “I think André Emmerich probably did a very good job in the ’70s of making sure that all of his collectors had something of hers in their homes,” said Ysenburg.

Christie’s will have four Frankenthalers, the most significant of which is Strike, from 1965, estimated at $600,000. The work was part of the famed IBM art collection until 1995, when Big Blue divested much of its art during the company’s significant stumble. The consignor bought the painting then and has held it for 30 years, which isn’t uncommon for Frankenthaler collectors. Indeed, one of the big questions about this market now is who the new buyers are—and where their tastes lie.

Ysenburg told me that his shows have attracted more than just the sort of Boomer collectors you might expect to be interested in Frankenthaler. The lead-up to her centennial celebration will likely expand her fan base further. Speaking of a show of work from the 1990s, Ysenburg remarked, “The paintings looked amazingly fresh, and our public for that show—which was weird—was very much of a younger generation who weren’t even born when they were made.”

Obviously, the 1960s works are where the auction houses are putting their prospecting efforts. But, as Christie’s Rachel Ng explained to me, there’s also growing interest for works from other periods. “We had someone come in today to look at the ’80s painting,” she said, referring to The Way Home, estimated at $300,000. The collectors could not wait for the exhibition to open on Friday. “They were very eager,” Ng said. So she pulled the work out and had Christie’s team put it on view. “They were like, ‘We’re getting on a flight tonight!’”