Big names at surprising prices: Christie’s must-have finds under $50,000

Georges Vantongerloo’s Composition dans le cône avec couleur orange, no. 58 is a study for a larger oil painting of the same title, which is permanently housed in the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York. Vantongerloo, who was a founding member of De Stijl alongside Piet Mondrian, painted the present work in 1929, shortly after moving from Belgium to Paris. This piece marks the period just before he joined the Cercle et Carré group and cofounded Abstraction-Création, an international organization dedicated to promoting abstract art. Engaging with the minimalist language of De Stijl, Composition dans le cône avec couleur orange, no. 58 is composed of delicate lines of black India ink, creating a grid of stark geometric shapes invigorated by a dynamic touch of ochre at centre left. It was housed in the esteemed collection of designer and philanthropist Mica Ertegun for over 45 years.

When the Germans invaded France in 1940, Man Ray, an American-born artist of Russian-Jewish descent, was forced to flee Paris, where he had been living since 1921, and return to the United States. He arrived in New York in the summer of 1940 and settled in Hollywood by the end of the year. In his work Swift Walk over the Western Wave, which has been part of the same collection for nearly 25 years, the artist alludes to this escape and that of countless others during World War II. The painting depicts a ghostly figure cautiously leaping over a brick-like structure in a murky setting dominated by a foggy brown sky. The enigmatic, dreamlike composition captures the anxieties and darkness that shadowed the world during the onslaught of war.

Edouard Vuillard painted L’Homme au chapeau melon around 1889-1890, shortly after joining the Post-Impressionist group Les Nabis. Known for their bold contours, simplified drawing and flat swaths of colour, Les Nabis embraced patterned designs and were deeply influenced by Japanese prints. In L'Homme au chapeau melon, the artist depicts a gentleman in late-19th-century attire wearing a bowler hat. The man’s defined cheekbones, sharp jawline and curvilinear profile are delicately rendered with only a few fine lines of ink. His skin is tinted with beige watercolour and the upper lip is highlighted with a bright cherry-red pigment, making it pop against the caramel background. The work dates from an important period in Vuillard’s career and has been in the same private American collection since it was first acquired from the artist’s estate about 30 years ago.

Alberto Giacometti created the present drawing while preparing his etchings for Georges Bataille’s Kafkaesque book Histoire de rats (Journal de Dianus), published in 1947. The drawing portrays Bataille, who based the book’s hero, ‘D’, on a transgressive alter ego of himself. Bataille’s ‘D’ is a gaunt, frail, masochistic figure that continuously grapples with his inner drives and desires. Sitting atop a base within one of Giacometti’s signature drawn frames, Bataille’s head is heavily worked, with each pencil line revealing more layers to his disposition and inner nature. Coming from the Matisse family, where it has been since it was first acquired by Pierre Matisse in 1948, the work emphasises Giacometti’s interest in the human condition.

Sonia Delaunay painted this gouache in 1936 as part of a publicity project for the coloured neon cylinder lights known as ‘mica-tubes’ while working for the advertising agency Art et Lumière. Delaunay, a pioneer in abstract art and cofounder of the Orphism movement, was known for her innovative use of colour and geometric forms. Her work often blurred the lines between fine art, fashion, and design, making her a natural fit for a project like this, which combined commercial art with avant-garde aesthetics. When the designer and art collector Mica Ertegun encountered Projet publicitaire pour Mica-Tube in 2004 at Hôtel Drouot in Paris, she couldn’t resist acquiring the playful, kaleidoscopic gouache that bore her name. Delaunay’s use of bold, overlapping colours and dynamic shapes make this painting not only a striking graphic work but also a testament to her creative vision and ability to transcend conventional artistic boundaries.

Paul Signac painted this charming port scene in the summer of 1924 in Tréguier, a small town on the northern coast of France. Signac, a close associate of Georges Seurat, who advocated for Neo-Impressionism and helped develop the Pointillist technique, infused this painting with vivid hues and intricate details to emphasise the natural beauty of Tréguier’s landscape. Using short dot-like strokes reminiscent of Pointillist painting, Signac brought the English Channel to life with a shimmering turquoise glow. The vibrant pinks and reds of the sailboat and dock infuse the scene with energy, while the thick clouds and rolling hills capture the atmosphere of northern France.

Created in 1961, two years before the artist’s untimely death, Kay Sage’s Passionnément, pas du tout evokes the parlour games of André Breton’s Surrealist circle. The title, which translates to ‘passionately, not at all’, is drawn from the romantic game of chance effeuiller la marguerite — commonly known in English as ‘he loves me… he loves me not’. Sage was well-acquainted with Surrealist games, as her husband, Yves Tanguy, was credited alongside Breton and Marcel Duchamp for creating the beloved Cadavre Exquis (Exquisite Corpse). Sage made Passionnément, pas du tout after Tanguy’s death, while struggling with illness and severe cataracts. Due to her deteriorating sight, Sage stopped painting in 1960 and 1961, turning to intimate three-dimensional works crafted from nontraditional materials. After mounting a major retrospective of Sage’s paintings in 1960, Catherine Viviano Gallery organized an exhibition of these sculptural works in 1961, including Passionnément, pas du tout.

Pablo Picasso’s fascination with ceramics began in 1946 during a visit to Madoura Pottery in Vallauris, a small coastal town near Cannes known for its ceramics. Through this medium, Picasso's imagination took on a new tactile form, transforming everyday objects into vibrant artworks that often featured his signature motifs, such as faces and bulls. That same year, the artist Michel Sima introduced Picasso to another motif that would come to dominate his ceramics: the owl. Having found a wounded owl near the Musée d’Antibes, Sima brought it to Picasso. The Spaniard was captivated by the bird and decided to adopt him, naming him Ubu, after the authoritarian antihero of Alfred Jarry’s play Ubu Roi. This encounter marked the beginning of Picasso’s enduring connection with owls. Often associated with wisdom and mystery, the animal’s symbolic richness and unique characteristics resonated with Picasso’s artistic vision. Their distinct features and expressive eyes provided a versatile motif that he could reshape and reinterpret through clay, glazes and painted details, blending both playfulness and depth.

Georges Valmier painted La fille de l’artiste a few years after joining Léonce Rosenberg’s Galerie de l’Effort Moderne, which was a leading force in promoting avant-garde art and Cubism after World War I. Alongside Picasso and Georges Braque, Valmier was amongst the earliest practitioners of Cubism. Unlike his contemporaries, who favoured muted pastel tones, Valmier infused his work with vibrant, refreshing colours. Held in the same private collection for over two decades, La fille de l’artiste is a study for the artist’s larger 1924 oil painting Jeune fille lisant. In this study, Valmier uses flat geometric shapes, bold primary colours and intricate dotted details to bring his subject to life.

Louis Valtat painted this intimate still-life, titled Pommes et poires, around 1925. Synthesising Impressionist and Fauvist approaches, Valtat embraced bold colours and expressive brushwork. In Pommes et poires, Valtat’s fruits are rendered in stylised straight and curved lines, giving the composition a rhythm and vibrancy characteristic of his work. Valtat adds depth and dynamism to the composition by creating a distorted, Cezanne-like perspective and through his use of contrasting colours. Here, the artist plays with spacial tension by painting the light-green and yellow pears larger than the bright-red apple placed directly in the foreground. The rich blue background also contrasts with the deep cherry-red surface, creating a continuous push-and-pull of colours within the composition. Pommes et poires showcases Valtat’s signature colour palette, energetic brushwork and thick impastos, all hallmarks of his modernist still-life painting.

Picasso created Cravate et couronne in November 1962 at a lively dinner party with his friend the British art historian, critic and collector Douglas Cooper. By this time in his career, Picasso’s work had taken on a sense of freedom and playfulness. The cut-out crown and tie are decorated with richly coloured wax crayons, embodying the festive spirit of the evening and reflecting Picasso's characteristic spontaneity and joy, which he found in later life. The cut-outs remained in Cooper’s family collection until 2000, when they were acquired by the present owner. Cravate et couronne is a testament to Picasso's versatile creativity and boundary-pushing artistry.