Market dispatch·Paris
Century-old Kupka abstraction tops Sotheby's Paris evening sale at an €8M high estimate
Sotheby's Paris offers Frantisek Kupka's 'Espace non-descriptif' (1914-1922) as lot 207 in its 40-lot 'Modernites' evening sale on 23 October 2026, estimated at 6-8 million euros. The meter-square canvas, described by the house as the largest Kupka ever to appear at auction, anchors a sale projected to total 32.8-47.9 million euros and also features a long-unseen Giacometti bronze head.
Sotheby's Paris will place Frantisek Kupka's Espace non-descriptif at the center of its Modernites evening sale on 23 October 2026. The oil on canvas, painted between 1914 and 1922 and measuring 112.5 by 114.7 centimeters, carries a pre-sale estimate of 6 to 8 million euros before fees. Listed as lot 207 and classified by the auction house as a premium lot, the meter-square abstraction comes from a European collection and is billed by Sotheby's as the largest work by the Czech artist ever to come up for auction.
The estimate puts the painting near the summit of Kupka's market. His auction benchmark remains Le Jaillissement II, painted in 1922-23, which sold at Sotheby's London in March 2021 for about 10.4 million dollars including fees. Espace non-descriptif traces an early provenance through Galerie Louis Carre in Paris, which bought it directly from the artist in 1951 and kept it until at least 1968; it later entered a private collection in Geneva before its present owner acquired it in 2015. Its authenticity has been confirmed by specialist Pierre Brulle, and it has a long exhibition history stretching from a 1946 Prague show through the touring The Spiritual in Art exhibition in Los Angeles, Chicago and The Hague.
The work anchors a 40-lot evening sale that the auction house projects will bring in between 32.8 and 47.9 million euros. Other leading lots include Alberto Giacometti's Tete crane, estimated at 2 to 4 million euros and emerging after nearly eight decades out of public view, and works by Pablo Picasso and Jean-Michel Basquiat. A separate section of the sale, titled My Act: A Parisian Collection, gathers works by American artists including Alexander Calder, Christopher Wool, Richard Prince, Donald Judd and Richard Serra, together estimated at about 10 million euros.
The sale is scheduled for 5 pm Paris time at Sotheby's Paris on the rue du Faubourg-Saint-Honore. It forms part of the autumn Paris sale week, during which the house is also holding a separate 33-lot auction devoted to Surrealism and its legacy.
