Jeff Koons, widely recognized as one of the world’s most prominent living artists, is set to sell a private collection of artworks valued at over $100 million in a November auction in New York. The collection, spanning five centuries of art history, includes notable pieces by Pablo Picasso, Édouard Manet, and Dutch Golden Age painter Cornelis van Haarlem. Christie’s auction house, which is handling the sale, has described the seller only as a “distinguished private collector,” but sources familiar with the transaction have confirmed the consignor is Koons.
The auction is scheduled for November 17 under the title “Heroes and Lovers” and will feature nine paintings from Koons’s personal holdings accumulated over recent decades, primarily housed in his New York townhouse. Among the highlights is Picasso’s “Le Baiser” (1969), anticipated to be the sale’s top lot with an estimated value of around $40 million. The painting represents Picasso’s late-career focus on intertwined couples, a theme that explores the complex interplay between passion and violence.
Koons’s own artistic work has often engaged similar motifs. His “Made in Heaven” series from the early 1990s, which featured explicit images of himself and Ilona Staller, also known as Cicciolina, addressed themes of sexuality and attempted to remove associated social taboos. Koons and Staller were briefly married and share a son. In past interviews, Koons has praised Picasso’s late pieces as highly generous and transformative, describing the artist as a “shaman torchbearer” who expanded the possibilities of life through art.
Koons acquired “Le Baiser” at a Sotheby’s auction in 2008 for $17.4 million, equivalent to $27.1 million in inflation-adjusted terms today. He also purchased another Picasso from the same series in 2011 for $10.5 million, or about $15.6 million after inflation.
Despite Koons’s global renown, his market influence has waned since its peak in 2019, when his stainless steel “Rabbit” sculpture sold for $91.1 million. Auction data from ARTDAI indicates that the value of his works at auction has dropped approximately 60 percent over the past decade. Additionally, Koons has shifted galleries recently, moving from David Zwirner and Gagosian to Pace Gallery in 2021, before returning to Gagosian in 2025.
A source close to the Christie’s sale said that Koons’s decision to part with the collection is motivated by a desire to reinvest in his own artistic practice. Christie’s has provided a financial guarantee for the artworks, underscoring the significance of the sale.
The Koons sale provides a strategic boost to Christie’s during a competitive auction season in which Sotheby’s recently secured a high-profile collection of Impressionist artworks valued at $450 million from the estate of Argentine heirs Carlos Pedro Blaquier and Nelly Blaquier de Arrieta.
Among Koons’s collection is van Haarlem’s “Heroes,” a 1590 painting that depicts the mythological contest between Hercules and the river god Achelous. Koons purchased the piece in 2008 for $8.1 million, over four times its estimated value at the time. Christie’s expects it to fetch approximately $12 million. Koons has incorporated van Haarlem’s work into his own projects, adapting one painting into his gazing-ball series, which juxtaposes historical imagery with a modern reflective sphere symbolizing both the vastness of the universe and the immediacy of the present moment.