Herbert Lust’s $50 Million Collection Heads to Christie’s: Giacometti’s “Figure, Demie Grandeur” Leads Auction With Estimate Up to $30 Million

Christie’s has won the race to sell the collection of Herbert Lust, estimated at around $50 million, with the works going under the hammer in New York this November. The auction house’s victory is particularly sweet given that Sotheby’s had looked like the favorite: its rival had sold several Robert Indiana works from the same collection in 2017 and had published a feature on Lust’s art-filled Greenwich, Connecticut home — but in the end Christie’s prevailed.

Lust, who died in May 2026 at the age of 99, was an investment banker and an eclectic collector who personally knew many of the artists whose works he bought. Nine major lots will be offered in the 20th-century art evening auction — including works by Frank Stella, Alexander Calder and Hans Bellmer — while more than 50 other works will go into a dedicated day sale.

The star lot is Alberto Giacometti’s “Figure, Demie Grandeur” (1949): a slender mid-size bronze, a rare nude with an expressively modeled face; Lust himself claimed the face combined the features of the artist’s wife and mistress. The work is the only known cast from the Alexis Rudier foundry in Paris — Auguste Rodin’s trusted workshop — and carries an estimate of $20 to $30 million. Vanessa Fusco, Christie’s head of Impressionist and modern art, described it as a beautiful rarity for Giacometti, from the period when he was moving away from Surrealism. For comparison: in 2022, a similar Giacometti, “Femme de Venise III” (1958) from the collection of Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, sold at Christie’s for just over $25 million.

Also from the collection comes “Chaise Jaune Dans l’Atelier” (1946) — one of Giacometti’s first paintings in color — estimated at $400,000–$600,000. German Surrealist Hans Bellmer is represented by “Jointure de boules (La Poupée)” (1934–36), estimated at $1.5–$2.5 million, well above the artist’s existing auction record ($942,000), so Christie’s expects a new record. Lust owned the world’s largest collection of Bellmer works — and, as he himself used to say, for the price of one large Magritte you could buy “50 great Bellmers.”

Other collection highlights include Calder’s “Pomegranate Pods” (1946) ($500,000–$700,000) and Robert Indiana’s “Love Wall” (1968) ($800,000–$1.2 million). Lust and Indiana were both Indiana natives and friends for decades, although Lust described Indiana as “one of the most difficult people in history.”

Source: Artnet News