VIENNA.- This year, Dorotheum, the largest auction house in the German-speaking world, is set to surpass the excellent results of the previous year and to achieve a new record total.

Decades of expertise in the online sector, together with the breadth of its departments – averaging two auctions per day – have ensured strong global visibility. Exemplary in this regard was the online sale of a collection of Warhol drawings from the 1950s in spring 2025, in which all 221 highly sought-after works were sold. Clients from more than 90 countries, including major international museums, participated in Dorotheum auctions in 2025.

The autumn season brought the most successful auction of Modern Art to date, as well as the strongest Contemporary Week in the history of Dorotheum. During that week, the year’s highlight, Egon Schiele’s work on paper depicting a nude from the back, was sold for the sensational sum of 3.23 million euros. Further top prices in the field of Modern Art were achieved, among others, by works of Giorgio de Chirico and Marc Chagall. In Austrian art, notable results were obtained by Alfons Walde and Carl Moll.

Two Czech artists led the field in Contemporary Art: Mikuláš Medek’s Kafka-inspired painting Two Inquisitors II reached 812,000 euros, and Zdeněk Sýkora’s Abstraction Line No. 109 fetched an outstanding 737,500 euros. In Austrian contemporary art, works by Maria Lassnig (Self-Portrait with Angel), Hermann Nitsch and Franz West stood out. Record auction prices to date were achieved for paintings by Herbert Brandl and Markus Prachensky.

The painting Hansl’s First Ride (Children Returning Home) by Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller, restituted from the Museum Wiesbaden to the heirs of the Jewish entrepreneur Grete Klein, was sold in October in the 19th-Century Paintings auction for 520,000 euros. 273,000 euros was bid for a painting by Juan Luna y Novicio, the artist born in the Philippines in 1857 (Lady in a Red Dress with a Manila Shawl), and 331,500 euros for a Cossack scene by Jósef von Brandt.

Outstanding results in Old Masters included the Salvator Mundi motif from the workshop of Leonardo da Vinci, by Fernando Llanos (650,000 euros); the Bust Portrait of the Young Duke Of Alba by Francisco de Goya (520,000 euros); and a work by the veduta painter Giovanni Paolo Panini (395,500 euros). Particularly notable in Flemish painting was Herri met de Bles’ Landscape with the Vision of the Apocalypse of St John on Patmos (351,000 euros).

Demand remained strong for wristwatches by sought-after brands, as well as for jewels. There was significant interest in jewellery from aristocratic ownership and in exceptional pieces from the collection of the German television doctor Antje-Katrin Kühnemann.