Update (April 22, 2026) – Claude Lalanne’s Important and Unique Ensemble of Fifteen Mirrors for Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé achieved $33.5 million, establishing a new auction record for the artist and surpassing François-Xavier Lalanne’s Hippopotame Bar, pièce unique result of $31.4 million from December 2025, eclipsing Sotheby’s own record for the highest price ever achieved for a work of design at auction. The lots were pursued by five bidders in a 10-minute bidding battle.
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Sotheby’s does not stage the most valuable single-owner design sale in its history without reason, and the de Gunzburg collection gives it to everyone.
Jean and Terry de Gunzburg spent four decades assembling approximately 135 works across French decorative arts, modern design, and contemporary painting, guided not by market trends but by instinct sharpened through two very different professional lives. Their New York apartment, arranged by decorator Jacques Grange, became the environment in which these works were lived with rather than preserved, a home the couple describe as “New York on the outside, Paris on the inside.”
Sotheby’s will offer 123 works from the collection in a dedicated single-owner design sale on April 22 at the Breuer building in New York, estimated at $30 to $44 million. A selection of modern and contemporary art follows in Sotheby’s marquee evening sales in May 2026. Combined, the two events carry an estimate of $67 to $99 million. The April sale is not only the most valuable single-owner design sale in Sotheby’s history but also the first standalone single-owner design sale the house has ever staged at the Breuer.
Florent Jeanniard, Sotheby’s Chairman and Co-worldwide Head of Design, said, “Over time, Jean and Terry de Gunzburg have shaped one of the most intellectually rigorous and aesthetically coherent design collections of our time, guided by an extraordinary eye and an exceptional freedom of taste. Their approach to collecting reflects a profound sensitivity not only to individual masterpieces, but to the dialogue that emerges between works when they are lived with over decades. Their New York home became a complete artistic environment, where seminal creations by the greatest artists and designers of the twentieth century exist in remarkable harmony. It is a privilege to present a collection of such clarity, conviction, and lasting significance.”
Terry de Gunzburg spent 15 years at Yves Saint Laurent Beauté, eventually serving as Creative Director, where she created the Touche Éclat concealer, one of the most enduring product innovations in modern beauty. Her work alongside photographers Helmut Newton and Guy Bourdin shaped the visual language of fashion imagery in the latter half of the 20th century, before she founded her own brand, By Terry, in 1998. Jean de Gunzburg trained at the Pasteur and Whitehead Institutes and held senior positions at INSERM and the Institut Curie, where his research advanced molecular biology and oncology before he moved into biotechnology. Two people professionally trained to recognize significance early, applied to collecting, produced precisely the kind of collection this is.
Claude Lalanne’s ensemble of 15 mirrors, estimated at $10 to $15 million, is the most historically loaded work in the April sale. Commissioned for the Salon de Musique of Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé’s Paris apartment, one of the most documented private interiors of the 20th century, the mirrors were executed entirely by hand between 1974 and 1985. The first two were the very first mirrors Lalanne ever made, created at Saint Laurent’s request, establishing a formal language she would return to for the rest of her career.
Over the following decade, 13 more were added, and the ensemble grew into a fully realized environmental installation. Both original mirrors were shown at the Centre National d’Art Contemporain in 1975 and traveled to the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen. The complete group was later included in the landmark 2010 retrospective of Claude and François-Xavier Lalanne at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs. Terry de Gunzburg first encountered the mirrors while working alongside Saint Laurent, a connection that eventually led to the couple acquiring all 15.
Jean Royère is represented by his “Ours Polaire” sofa and pair of armchairs, estimated at $600,000 to $800,000 each, alongside a pair of sideboards estimated at $700,000 to $1 million, assembled with the guidance of Pierre Passebon. Alexandre Noll’s pair of monumental mahogany cabinets, over six and a half feet tall, positioned in the de Gunzburg home alongside paintings by Francis Bacon and Mark Rothko, carry an estimate of $700,000 to $1 million. André Groult’s shagreen cabinet from circa 1926, estimated at $600,000 to $800,000, held a Picasso in its recessed central compartment and was flanked by Armand-Albert Rateau sconces.
Jean-Michel Frank’s pair of wrought-iron armchairs from circa 1928, estimated at $250,000 to $350,000, carry provenance from the San Francisco residence of Templeton Crocker, one of Frank’s most celebrated interiors. Paul Dupré-Lafon’s pair of parchment-and-bronze cabinets from the 1930s is estimated at $300,000 to $500,000. Jean Dunand is represented by a pair of red lacquer armchairs first shown at the 1927 Salon des Artistes Décorateurs, estimated at $150,000 to $200,000, alongside a selection of lacquered metal vases ranging from $10,000 to $70,000. Pierre Chareau, Marc du Plantier, Émile-Jacques Ruhlmann, Eugène Printz, and Alberto Giacometti are also represented across the sale.
A Mark Rothko from 1969, estimated at $10 to $15 million, leads the art selection in May. Painted in the penultimate year of his life, it carries a direct relationship to the Rothko Chapel commission in Houston and was included in the Menil Collection’s 1996 to 1997 exhibition revisiting that project. Its deep violet tonalities held personal resonance for Terry de Gunzburg, echoing a shade central to her creative identity at By Terry.
Agnes Martin’s Untitled #6 from 1977 is estimated at $3 to $4 million, one of only 15 works made that year and one of just three remaining in private hands, with others held by the Art Institute of Chicago, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Guggenheim, and the Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien. Robert Ryman’s Versions III from 1992, estimated at $2.5 to $3.5 million, is one of only four large-scale works from a 16-piece series, with the remaining works held by SFMOMA and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Pablo Picasso’s Buste de femme from 1955 is estimated at $3 to $5 million, painted in a refined monochrome palette during the period following his move to Villa La Californie and the beginning of his relationship with Jacqueline Roque. Paul Klee’s Gartenfigur from 1932, painted shortly after his departure from the Bauhaus and his appointment to the Staatliche Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf, carries an estimate of $2 to $3 million.
In December 2025, Sotheby’s Design Week at the Breuer building achieved nearly $60 million in total sales. François-Xavier Lalanne’s Hippopotame Bar realized $31.4 million, a new world auction record for the artist and the highest price ever achieved for a design object at auction. That result reflected a shift that has been building for years, with masterpiece-level 20th century design increasingly valued on terms that rival fine art, a correction the de Gunzburg collection anticipated long before the market arrived at the same conclusion. For the better part of a century, furniture and decorative objects occupied a secondary tier in the auction hierarchy, regardless of their art historical weight. Jean and Terry de Gunzburg were collecting across that divide well before it began to close.
“Collecting has been one of the great privileges of our lives, a journey guided entirely by instinct, curiosity, and the pleasure of living with works that moved us deeply. Over time, the collection came to reflect not only the artists and designers we admired, but the values that guided us — freedom of thought, creativity, and discovery,” said Jean and Terry de Gunzburg.
Collection of Jean and Terry de Gunzburg Design Masters takes place at Sotheby’s New York on April 22, 2026, followed by the modern and contemporary art works in Sotheby’s marquee evening sales in May 2026.
