Next week, Sotheby’s stands to celebrate its most profitable single-owner collection ever sold in Europe—courtesy of famed art patron Pauline Karpidas. Some 250 works of art and design—from Picasso paintings and Jeff Koons sculptures to the world’s largest cache of custom Les Lalanne jewelry—will hit the block in London on September 17 and 18. Another 99 are knick-knacks like Yves Saint Laurent posters and an agate ashtray that are already available online. Karpidas has lived with these treasures for 15 years. Now she’s moving to New York. The trove is valued at £60 million (over $81 million at current exchange rates).
Karpidas was born 83 years ago in Manchester, England to humble means. She started modeling after secretarial school, at 19, moving to London in the 1960s. After then moving to Athens in the 1970s to open a boutique, Karpidas met Greek shipping magnate Constantine “Dinos” Karpidas, whose construction company rebuilt the port of Benghazi in 1961. They wed in 1975.
Dinos was older, twice-married, and “a highly accomplished collector” with a penchant for Impressionism, per Sotheby’s, In 1974, he and Karpidas visited the Athens abode of Greek gallerist Alexander Iolas, who gave Warhol his first show. Iolas’s extensive art collection featuring leading Surrealists like Salvador Dalí and René Magritte mesmerized Karpidas. She convinced him to leave retirement and teach her how to collect, pledging $500,000 to the cause.
Karpidas started focusing more on contemporary art after Iolas died of AIDS in 1987. Ten years later she acquired property on the island of Hydra, where she opened a gallery, took over the Boudouris Mansion, and hosted the art world’s hottest annual retreat each July. The last such salon happened in 2017. Karpidas sold her Hydra home’s contents off with Sotheby’s in 2023.
The collector’s hard-earned taste, backed by years and years of diligent reading, animates her forthcoming sale. Magritte’s puzzling painting “La Statue Volante” (1958) leads the lots with an estimate of £9,000,000 to £12,000,000 ($12,150,000 to $16,200,000)—followed by French artist Francis Picabia’s sensual scene “Deux Amies,” created around 1940, which is slated to sell for £2,200,000 to £2,800,000 ($2,982,969 to $3,816,506).
The art market has been in freefall for two years now. Demand for surrealist art, however, is holding strong. A Sotheby’s Insight Report commemorating Surrealism’s 2024 centenary found that the movement’s market share grew from 9.3 percent to 16.8 percent between 2018 and 2024. Sotheby’s Europe Chairman Oliver Barker attributes Surrealism’s staying power to its trippy, timeless themes, which are attracting young collectors from North America, Latin America, and Asia.
Sotheby’s also found that sales for women Surrealists rose from $7.9 million in 2018 to $94.3 million in 2024. Overlooked icon Leonora Carrington, formerly famous for dating Surrealist Max Ernst, has enjoyed an especially ascendant market. Her numinous, Mexico-inspired scene “The Hour of the Angelus” (1949) could command up to $1 million amidst next week’s auction.
Relationships underpin Karpidas’s rigorous collection. Today, Les Lalanne designs are highly coveted, but Karpidas gave the couple some of their first business. Her buddy Andy Warhol also has four works in this sale—two from his “Art on Art” series appropriate masterpieces by Edvard Munch, another one riffs off Giorgio De Chirico, and the fourth depicts the legendary artist Man Ray. Other works boast starry provenance. For example, La Guerra (1916-17), which De Chirico painted while enlisted as a soldier, passed through the hands of founding Surrealist André Breton and could bring in excess of $2 million. Meanwhile, Dalí’s sketch of his wife, “Portrait de Gala Galerina” (1941), belonged to Surrealism’s critical champion, Edward James, and is expected to fetch between $474,6000 and $610,200.
In this market, artists and gallerists are moving away from collectors who buy and sell art for a profit in favor of patrons who purchase because they love artists. Karpidas is a true patron in the fading tradition of “Grand Dames” like Peggy Guggenheim. “There are, of course, other collectors who, in time, may well come to be seen in the same light,” Baker wrote to Maxim, “but they remain few and far between, which is exactly what makes [Karpidas’s] legacy so singular.”
One might think that legacy’s best immortalized in a museum. Alas, Karpidas is releasing her artworks back out on the market. “Pauline’s making sure their stories keep unfolding,” Baker explained. “She is allowing them to stay what they have always been: alive, moving, sparking new connections.” Perhaps they’ll even inspire young aficionados to adopt her ethos. That’s art’s only hope, and Sotheby’s is going all in on it, transforming their London home into a Karpidas theme park showcasing her wares before they hit the block.