Long-Unseen Mondrian Heads to Auction as the Artist’s Market Heats Up

Auctions Long-Unseen Mondrian Heads to Auction as the Artist’s Market Heats Up A pivotal painting from the artist's oeuvre is hitting the block at Christie's, carrying a high estimate of $40.8 million. Piet Mondrian’s market is experiencing a rare hot streak—and could reach new peaks, as his Composition III (1922) comes to auction for the first time at Christie’s London this Frieze Week. It’s expected to fetch between £20 million to £30 million ($27.2 million to $40.8 million). The work hails from the fourth decade in the Dutch abstractionist’s oeuvre, following his experiments with Impressionism and Cubism. By this time, he had returned to Paris’s avant-garde art scene after spending World War I stuck in his homeland, where he co-founded De Stijl and formulated the neo-plasticism style that made him a household name. Composition III displays several hallmarks of this formative period, including less decisive lines (as opposed to the bold black ones of later works), and colorful areas eclipsing every available white space. Brushstrokes reveal themselves upon closer inspection, complicating the illusion of machine-like perfection that these famed paintings initially present. With this work, said Keith Gill, Christie’s vice chairman of 20/21 art, Mondrian “reached a new, radical abstract idiom that profoundly reshaped the language of modern art.” The artwork has changed hands 11 times since Mondrian consigned it to German art historian Sophie Küppers in 1924, passing through the care of noted collectors including architect Armand P. Bartos and dealer Harold Diamond, father of Beastie Boy Mike D. Christie’s is touting the work as “the most important Mondrian offered at auction in Europe since 2009,” when the house sold Composition I (1920) and Composition avec bleu, rouge, jaune et noir (1922) from the collection of Yves Saint Laurent and his lifelong partner Pierre Bergé. The pieces went for €7 million ($8.16 million today) and €21.5 million ($25.13 million), respectively. Mondrian’s current auction record sits at $51 million for Composition No. II (1930), which sold at Sotheby’s in 2022, according to the Artnet Price Database. His market is notoriously characterized by spikes, which occur as trophy lots hit the market, such as when Composition No. III, with Red, Blue, Yellow, and Black (1929) realized the then-record $50.6 million at Christie’s in 2015. But it’s 2025 that proved a banner year for the artist’s market, when 10 Mondrians came to auction, bringing in more than $71 million. That sum was driven in large by Christie’s springtime sale of Composition with Large Red Plane, Bluish Gray, Yellow, Black and Blue (1922), which fetched $47.6 million, making it the year’s eighth-most expensive artwork to hit the block. So far, 2026 has seen seven Mondrian works go under the gavel, with Composition with Large Red Plane, Blue, Gray, Black and Yellow (1921) selling for $39.7 million at Christie’s record-breaking S.I. Newhouse event. The running total stands at nearly $45 million. Even if Composition III simply hits its low estimate, it will give the Mondrian market one of its strongest two-year stretches in more than two decades.