The 20th Century Evening Sale also went on mostly as expected, bringing in a total of $413 million. The night succeeded in falling between its estimated bracket of $342 million to $497 million, and was led by Hockney’s A Lawn Being Sprinkled (1967). The work, which had never before come to auction, sold for just above its low estimate at $28.6 million.

However, Sotheby’s Modern Evening Sale did have a surprise in store when Leonora Carrington set her auction record and became the highest priced UK-born woman on the market. Argentinian businessman and founder of the Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires (MALBA) was the one who secured Carrington’s 1945 piece entitled Les Distractions de Dagobert.

The surrealist work dashed the British-Mexican painter’s previous sale record of $3.3 million, and blazed over the piece’s high-estimate of $18 million when it sold for $28.5 million at the Wednesday night auction. Carrington is now only second to Frida Kahlo’s 1949 self-portrait, Diego y yo, as the most expensive artwork by a Latin American artist. The piece, also purchased by Costantini, sold for $34.8 million in 2021. 

In the end, Sotheby’s Modern Evening Sale made $198.1 million, still slightly behind in numbers from that of last year’s May auction.