LONDON.- Christie's presents Modern Visionaries - The Roger and Josette Vanthournout Collection - one of the most thoughtful and discerning European collections to appear on the market in recent years. Meticulously assembled over six decades, and reflecting the curiosity, discipline and wide-ranging vision of its originators, the Collection spans almost 150 years of artistic creation. From Symbolism, Belgian Expressionism and Surrealism through to the Post-War avant-garde, Minimalism and Modern and Contemporary British art, it traces a dynamic and diverse story of modern art across continents.

A main highlight of the London 20/21 March Marquee Week, Modern Visionaries - The Roger and Josette Vanthournout Collection carries an overall estimate in the region of £40,000,000, and will debut with three dedicated auctions: an Evening Sale on 5 March, followed by a Day Sale on 6 March together with an online sale running from 25 February to 12 March 2026.

Roger and Josette Vanthournout were a Belgian couple whose shared passion for art shaped more than sixty years of collecting. Roger, trained in design and decoration and later the founder of a successful furniture manufacturing business, approached art with an architectural eye; Josette, a painter with a refined sense of colour and composition, brought an artist's sensitivity to every acquisition. Together, they embodied Belgium's long-standing tradition of looking outward – a spirit rooted in the country's history as a cultural and commercial crossroads. In the tradition of Belgian collectors who looked beyond their borders, they embraced diverse artistic currents, with an outward-looking spirit which recalls the prominence of Flanders in the 15th and 16th centuries, when the region stood alongside Venice, Genoa and Amsterdam as a major hub of European trade with the East. That same entrepreneurial openness animated the Vanthournouts' own journey. From the mid-1950s onwards, they travelled widely, engaging directly with artists, dealers and galleries, and embracing diverse artistic currents with a quietly confident eye. Their taste evolved continually: early interests in Chinese ceramics and Flemish Expressionism gave way to Surrealism, Minimalism, and leading strands of Post-War European and American art, and their home in Flanders became a carefully choreographed environment where sculpture played a central role, surrounded by paintings, works on paper and photography selected for the dialogues they created.

HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE COLLECTION

Max Ernst's Seestück (1921, estimate: £1,500,000-2,500,000), is a key highlight and early painting from the Collection. It is one of the most emblematic and important paintings from the artist's breakthrough moment, when he began translating the poetry of his Dada collages into oil paint - years before Surrealism formally emerged. Depicting a surreal desert landscape dominated by a giant samovar, this exceptional work transforms a mundane object into an evocative, dreamlike terrain, reflecting the post-war disorientation of Ernst's generation. This witty yet unsettling juxtaposition reveals the new “topography of the mind” Ernst pioneered, one that profoundly influenced the next generation of Surrealists, including Magritte.

The Collection's Surrealist core is also anchored by two exceptional works by René Magritte, tracing the evolution of his visual language over nearly twenty years. La plaine de l'air (1940; estimate: £3,500,000-5,500,000), presents one of Magritte's most distinctive motifs: a leaf-tree, in which a single oversized leaf is grafted onto a trunk and set against a stark mountain landscape. This solitary, watchful presence introduces a quiet yet unsettling ambiguity that resonated strongly with critics when the work was shown at Galerie Dietrich in 1941. Painted at a moment when Europe was being engulfed by conflict, the work subtly channels the suffocating tension of the early Second World War. Finally, Le lieu-dit (1955, estimate: £2,000,000-3,000,000) revisits the artist's eagle-shaped mountain motif, reimagining it within a mysterious, alchemically charged landscape. The fiery foreground and the monumental bird-form - originally sparked by a photograph in a travel brochure - imbue the scene with symbolic resonance, while the title, meaning “the spot on the map,” lends the rocky promontory the presence of a geographic marker or guide.

Nu debout et femmes assises (1939; estimate: £3,000,000-5,000,000) is a standout work from the series of grisaille double portraits Pablo Picasso painted in the coastal retreat of Royan immediately after the outbreak of the Second World War. Having fled Paris with Dora Maar as Germany invaded Poland, Picasso turned to a muted, Guernica-like palette to channel the sense of tension and uncertainty that defined those first weeks of conflict. In this painting, he presents Dora twice – both as a standing nude and seated - using these deliberate contrasts to evoke an atmosphere of psychological fracture.

Sculpture formed a central pillar of the Vanthournouts' collection, reflecting their enduring fascination with the interplay between form and space. This is expressed through many landmark works by iconic British artists. Henry Moore's Goslar Warrior (estimate: £3,500,000-5,500,000) represents the culmination of a rare theme in the artist's body of work: the male figure and, more specifically, the warrior. Executed in 1973–74, it completes a trio that began in the 1950s with Warrior with Shield and Falling Warrior, forming a powerful narrative of a fighter's final moments. In this most abstract and poignant iteration, the figure lies at his most vulnerable, with his shield at his feet, echoing the pathos of fallen heroes in Greek antiquity - a source of inspiration for Moore following his 1951 trip to Greece.

Lynn Chadwick is represented through Stranger III (1959; estimate: £500,000-800,000), initially commissioned by the Air League of the British Empire in 1957, intended as a memorial to commemorate the successful double crossing of the Atlantic by the airship R34 in July 1919. Here we see the welded skeletal structures and “Stolit” surfaces capture both movement and mass with remarkable clarity. Barry Flanagan's The Bowler (conceived in 1990; estimate: £500,000-800,000) captures the artist's most iconic motif of the anthropomorphic hare in a pose that references his own love of cricket, while Antony Gormley's Medium (1994; estimate: £400,000-600,000) is an example of the artist's early 'lead bodycase' works, which he made by moulding his own body in plaster.

Post-War art is powerfully represented through a series of important works, among which are Yayoi Kusama's Infinity Nets (1960; estimate: £2,000,000-3,000,000), a rare early canvas created shortly after her arrival in New York, uniting both white and crimson in this career-defining series, which she created between 1958 and 1962, remaining one of her most iconic to this day. Lucio Fontana's Concetto spaziale, Attese (1964; estimate: £2,000,000-3,000,000), is a striking example of the artist's iconic Tagli (“Cuts”). Made at the height of the Space Age, the work captures Fontana's radical vision of art that breaks through the canvas into new dimensions. Completing the trio is Agnes Martin's Untitled #17 (1996; estimate: £2,000,000-3,000,000): painted in Taos and later exhibited at the Whitney Museum of American Art, it reflects the serene palettes and meditative luminosity that accompanied the late-career recognition culminating in her Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the Venice Biennale. Other highlights from this group include Jean Dubuffet's J'opterai pour l'Erreur (1963; estimate: £1,500,000-2,000,000), an early work from his career-defining 'Hourloupe' cycle, and Tracey Emin's large-scale A certain degree of anger (2016; estimate: £600,000-800,000), a raw, expressive meditation on love, loss and memory.

Olivier Camu, Deputy Chairman, Impressionist and Modern Art, Christie's: “Spanning multiple decades and movements, the Collection reflects a bold and deeply personal vision of 20th- and 21st-century art—from Surrealism to Modern, American and European Post-War art. Begun in the mid-1950s, it is inseparable from the story of Roger and Josette themselves: a designer and a painter who collected together for more than half a century. Their post-modernist home in Belgium became a true Gesamtkunstwerk, conceived as a total work of art in which architecture, design and fine art existed in constant dialogue. Rooted in Belgium's long tradition as a cultural crossroads, their outward-looking approach - shaped by travel and enduring curiosity - resulted in a collection encompassing more than 100 artists. They delighted in creating unexpected conversations between works and eras, highlighting both affinities and contrasts. Featuring key pieces by René Magritte, Max Ernst, Pablo Picasso, Henry Moore, Lynn Chadwick, Agnes Martin and Yayoi Kusama, the Collection stands as a testament to their connoisseurship and instinctive eye. We are delighted to present this exceptional group during our upcoming 20/21 Marquee Week in London.”

Key highlights from Modern Visionaries - The Roger and Josette Vanthournout Collection will be presented in a dedicated exhibition at Christie's Brussels (Avenue Louise, 418), open to the public on 27 and 28 January 2026 (10am to 5pm). Select works from the Collection will subsequently be on view at Christie's Hong Kong (3-6 February 2026), New York (10-13 February) and Paris (18-20 February). On view at Christie's London from 25 February 2026.