There have been even more de Kooning works on the private market. At Pace Di Donna Schrader’s TEFAF debut, the dealer had a small 1976 work priced at $4.25 million that sold. David Schrader told me de Kooning was among the most-requested artists by potential clients in the past two months. To follow that sale, Schrader had brought a large 1984 painting by de Kooning to Art Basel. Over at Gagosian, another 1984 picture with a pristine provenance sold within the first hours of the fair to an Asian buyer for a price in the high seven figures. Even after the robust volume of sales in New York, there are clearly still plenty of serious buyers looking for de Koonings.

That wasn’t always a given. For comparison, look at the de Kooning auction sales in May 2025, when 10 works were sold for a little more than $12 million. Or last November, when de Kooning’s work all but disappeared from the auction market, with three works selling for less than $1.4 million. Last May, the stakes were lower but the bidding was higher: The work with the largest presale estimate that month was offered at $4 million, and hammered close to $6 million. That’s a far cry from this May, when the top lot was priced at $25 million and sold to the guarantor with essentially no one bidding.

Of course, just because the painting was sold to the guarantor doesn’t mean no one wanted to bid. At Sotheby’s, on the first night of the May auctions, I spoke to a very well-connected art advisor after the 1975 abstract painting sold to the irrevocable bid for a nice, round $26 million with fees. The advisor had come to the auction with plenty of dry powder, but held fire when the chandelier bidding continued without a solid offer from a serious player. The advisor insisted that a prominent art dealer who happened to be seated in the same row in the salesroom had also come to bid with determination. This happens sometimes when the market is cautious and no one wants to tip their hand.

Yes, it’s easy to say you were going to bid and had plenty of money to spend after sitting on your hands. But I’m inclined to believe the advisor, who claimed to know the identity of the third-party guarantor and noted that this person was also in the trade. It doesn’t get discussed much any more, but the trade still prefers to settle its business in private. I’m sure if either the dealer or the advisor’s clients were keen on the picture, it would be easier to negotiate a reasonable profit for the guarantor rather than work out who wanted it most through aggressive bidding.

The 1975 abstract painting is connected to de Kooning’s market upswing in other important ways. Twenty years ago, a group of Russian buyers latched on to the landscape-inspired abstract paintings that de Kooning had made in the 1970s as an alternative to his untouchable works from the peak of abstract expressionism in the 1950s, most of which were either already in museums or sold for phenomenal sums. In 2006, Steven Cohen paid $63.5 million (about $100 million in today’s dollars) for a 1955 painting called Police Gazette. Nine years later, David Geffen sold another 1955 painting, Interchange, to Ken Griffin in a deal that valued it at $300 million. It’s not apples to apples, but one reason these abstract paintings were so incredibly valuable is that de Kooning’s star had risen quickly in the 1950s. Most of the works from that period were snapped up by museums or sold to collectors who donated them to museums.

If you were a new collector flush with cash entering the market 20 years ago, your choices in the de Kooning catalogue were somewhat limited: Either compete with ferocious buyers like Cohen and Griffin for the few 1950s works available, or branch out into the maestro’s 1970s resurgence. After leaving New York in the early 1960s, de Kooning custom-built a studio in East Hampton that was completed in 1971, and a whole new phase of his work began, culminating in a period in 1975 when the artist painted some 20 large abstract canvases with fluid brushstrokes in about six months. These were the works collectors started competing for at auction.

A 2005 sale at Christie’s began establishing a new price point for the 1970s works, with an untitled 1975 work that sold for $3.6 million. A year later, in the same November sale, Untitled XXIX from 1977 sold for $8 million, followed five lots later by the $27 million sale of Untitled XXV. Once the art market recovered from the global financial crisis of 2009, more of these works traded publicly around the $25 million mark. Then, in 2016, Untitled XXV returned to auction and made $66 million. That’s a great art trade.