A Jackson Pollock painting fetched $181.2 million (€156.2 million) including fees at Christie’s in New York, setting a new auction record for the artist and making headlines during a blockbuster evening for the auction house. The work, Number 7A, 1948, is an oil-and-enamel on canvas measuring roughly 35 × 131.5 inches (88.9 × 334 cm). Painted in Pollock’s Long Island studio when he was 36, it is regarded as a pivotal early example of his floor-based drip technique.
Christie’s described the postwar canvas—dominated by black drips with sparse red accents—as the moment Pollock liberated himself from conventional easel painting to produce one of the first truly abstract paintings in modern art. The sale propelled Number 7A to the status of the fourth most expensive artwork ever sold at auction, surpassing Pollock’s prior auction high of $61.2 million set in 2021. While Pollock works have reportedly reached about $200 million in private transactions, this is his highest public-auction result.
The evening at Christie’s was extraordinary overall, producing $1.1 billion in total sales over a three-hour session. The 16 lots in the Newhouse collection contributed $630.8 million, and a separate sale of 20th-century works added $490.3 million.
Other notable results that night included Mark Rothko’s No. 15 (Two Greens and Red Stripe) at $98.4 million, Joan Miró’s Portrait of Madame K. at $53.5 million, and Constantin Brâncuși’s bronze Danaïde (ca. 1913), which sold for $107.6 million—making it the second most expensive sculpture ever sold at auction.
Jackson Pollock (1912–1956) was born in Cody, Wyoming, and moved to New York in 1930. He studied at the Art Students League under Thomas Hart Benton and worked on the WPA Federal Art Project from 1938 to 1942. Pollock later joined Peggy Guggenheim’s gallery and became a central figure in Abstract Expressionism; Life magazine famously profiled him as a leading American painter. Married to fellow artist Lee Krasner, Pollock struggled with alcoholism for much of his life and died in a single-vehicle crash in 1956 while driving under the influence. His paintings are now included in major museum collections worldwide.
Despite the new Pollock record, the highest auction price for a painting remains Leonardo da Vinci’s attributed Salvator Mundi, which sold for $450 million in 2017.