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Inside Phillips’ Most Daring Sale Yet – From Bacon to a 67-Million-Year-Old Triceratops

Inside Phillips’ Most Daring Sale Yet – From Bacon to a 67-Million-Year-Old Triceratops November 6, 2025Art Auction, New YorkOff

A Night Where Art Meets Deep Time – Inside Phillips’ Boldest Sale Yet

Francis Bacon. Joan Mitchell. Jackson Pollock. And a 67-million-year-old Triceratops. Only in New York, only at Phillips.
This November, I stepped into a world where the past and present no longer existed in opposition, but in dialogue – a place where a prehistoric skeleton and post-war masterworks shared the same breath. Phillips’ Evening Sale of 20th Century & Contemporary Art, taking place on November 14 in New York, is less an auction and more a story of time, tension, and human desire.

This isn’t the predictable choreography of blue-chip sales. It’s a curatorial gamble – a reminder that collecting is, at its heart, a deeply emotional act, whether one falls for the violent quiet of a Bacon portrait, the sonic colors of Mitchell, or the austere gravity of a fossil that predates civilization entirely.

René Magritte – La folie des grandeurs (Megalomania), 1959
Estimate: $400,000 – 600,000

Mark Tansey – Revelever, 2012
Estimate: $2,500,000 – 3,500,000

Ruth Asawa – Untitled (S.230, Hanging Single-Lobed, Five-Layered – Continuous Form within a Form), circa 1960
Estimate: $400,000 – 600,000

Olga de Amaral – Alquimia 62, 1987
Estimate: $300,000 – 500,000

Kerry James Marshall – Study for Vignette 14, 2008
Estimate: $300,000 – 500,000

Joan Mitchell – Untitled, 1957-1958
Estimate: $10,000,000 – 15,000,000

Jean-Michel Basquiat – Exercise, 1984
Estimate: $3,000,000 – 4,000,000

Jackson Pollock – Untitled, circa 1947
Estimate: $2,800,000 – 3,500,000

Firelei Báez – Daughter of Revolutions, 2014
Estimate: $300,000 – 500,000

Camille Pissarro – Le pré et la maison d’Éragny, femme jardinant, printemps, 1901
Estimate: $1,200,000 – 1,800,000

The Works That Define the Sale

Francis Bacon’s “Study for a Portrait” (1979) is not just a painting on the roster – it feels like the emotional anchor of the evening. Saturated with psychological tension, it is Bacon at his most restrained and haunting, a post-war translation of what it means to be human in fragments. Estimate on request, naturally.

Equally magnetic is Joan Mitchell’s “Saint Martin” (1974), estimated at $10–15 million, a canvas that hums and shivers with layered light, movement, and the electric force that made Mitchell a legend beyond American borders. This work has never been at auction – there’s a certain intimacy in its first public arrival.

The roster expands: Grace Hartigan’s “Lilacs” from 1951, a statement from the only woman other than Mitchell to lead the Abstract Expressionist movement. Jackson Pollock’s “Number 19” – a smaller piece, but pulsing with the full complexity of drip logic. Lee Krasner’s “Siren” – a work that feels like the rebuilding of a voice after rupture. And Warhol in his own graphic tempo, pulled from his transformative Ladies and Gentlemen series.

Cera, A Complete Juvenile Triceratops Skeleton – 59 x 173 ¼ x 47 ¼ in., Late Cretaceous, ca. 66 million years

Estimate: $2,500,000 – 3,500,000

Francis Bacon – Study for Head of Isabel Rawsthorne and George Dyer

Estimate: $13,000,000-18,000,000

The Wild Card: Horus

And then there is Horus – the juvenile Triceratops whose skeleton is being offered alongside these giants of modern art. 67 million years old, 85% complete, discovered in Montana, now standing quietly in midtown Manhattan like a visitor from another world. You don’t just look at Horus. You feel the weight of time. You feel small. You feel awe.

The Preview Experience

Starting November 1, the full sale comes to life at 432 Park Avenue. It’s more than an auction preview – it’s a meeting place of story, scale, and substance. The kind of place where even silence feels curated.

Tags: 20th century art, Andy Warhol, art and science, art investment, blue chip art, contemporary art, fine art collecting, fossil auction, Francis Bacon, Grace Hartigan, Jackson Pollock, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Joan Mitchell, Lee Krasner, millennia of history, museum quality art, New York auctions, Olga de Amaral, Out of This World, PHILLIPS, postwar art, Triceratops Horus, What We Adore