Christie’s Brings Brâncuși’s Danaïde to a New Auction Record
A bronze head by Constantin Brâncuși (1876–1957) has set a new benchmark for the artist at auction. On Monday night at Christie’s, Danaïde sold for a hammer price of $93 million, reaching $107.6 million with fees and surpassing Brâncuși’s previous record. The work had been offered with a $100 million estimate upon request, a figure that signaled just how far Christie’s was willing to push the market.
The sale unfolded in a tightly watched room. The bidding began at $82 million, then moved through six bids before the sculpture was sold to a buyer represented by Maria Los, deputy chairman and head of client advisory Americas. The room responded with a brief round of applause, a restrained ending for a result that had been carefully staged for months.
What made Danaïde especially compelling was not only its price, but the density of its history. The sculpture dates to 1913 and belongs to a group of six bronze casts. Four are already in institutional collections: the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Tate in London, and Kunst Museum Winterthur in Switzerland. Christie’s said the example sold on Monday is the only gilded version still in private hands, a distinction that sharpened its appeal to collectors.
The work’s provenance is equally notable. Eugene and Agnes Meyer bought it in 1914 at Brâncuși’s first solo exhibition at Alfred Stieglitz’s 291 Gallery in New York. It later passed to their daughter before S. I. Newhouse acquired it in 2002 for $18.2 million, then a record for a sculpture sale. That chain of ownership gave the piece a level of historical continuity that is increasingly prized in the upper market.
Christie’s also treated the lot as an event, commissioning a two-minute advertisement featuring Nicole Kidman through Studio 11F. The campaign reflected the house’s confidence that Danaïde could command attention beyond the usual auction audience.
The result places Brâncuși once again at the center of the market for modern sculpture. More than a century after its creation, Danaïde continues to draw value from the same qualities that made it singular in the first place: formal restraint, rare material presence, and a provenance that links early modernism to the present-day auction floor.
