NEW YORK.- This evening’s sale of Impressionist and Modern Art at Christie’s New York totaled $236,464,000, the third highest result for the category at Christie’s. Highlights of the sale were Signac’s Arrière du Tub, Juan Gris’s Le pot de géranium, Giacometti’s L’homme qui chavire and Miró’s Projet pour un monument. Five world auction records were set, 52 works sold above one million and 69% of the lots sold surpassed their pre-sale high estimates. Buyers were 29% American, 48% European, 2% Asian and 21% others.

“The overruling message of tonight’s sale was that great objects continue to bring great prices,” said Christopher Burge, Honorary Chairman and the evening’s auctioneer. “Bidding was truly global with considerable activity on the phones and many new collectors vying for works. The continued vibrancy of the market is apparent in the consistently strong results for works from different periods, different movements and in different media. It was an extraordinary evening.”

Juan Gris’s Le pot de géranium, 1915, a virtual guidebook to the artist’s compositional practices, preferred subject matter, formal interests and chromatic concerns became one of the evening’s highlights when it realized $18,520,000, doubling the artist’s previous world auction record which stood at $8.5 million. The painting showcases Gris in his most richly imagined and profoundly inventive synthetic Cubist manner, infused with the brilliance of a master colorist.

A painting of extraordinary luminosity and beauty, Paul Signac’s Arrière du Tub, 1888, was acquired for $11,688,000, almost doubling the previous record for the artist. This is the second highest price paid for a Pointillist work at auction. Maximilien Luce’s La Seine au Pont Saint-Michel sold for $2,840,000, again a new world auction record for the artist.

The sale offered a superb group of bronzes by Alberto Giacometti which roused fantastic interest in the saleroom. The highest selling work was his incredibly captivating L’homme qui chavire, a superb rendering of a capsizing figure, a drowning man, swallowed up in the abyss and sinking in ultra slow motion. The sculpture was acquired for $18,520,000, easily sailing by the previous world auction record for the artist. Giacometti’s quintessential Femme de Venise I, the first sculpture of the series bearing the name, achieved $3,736,000.

The huge appetite for sculpture was also evident in the strong result for Joan Miró’s Projet pour un monument, 1981. Against a pre-sale estimate of $3.5 – 5 million, the work sold to a European dealer for $9,896,000, eight times the previous world auction record for a sculpture by the artist.

Tête et main de femme, painted by Picasso while residing in Fontainbleau near Paris in the summer of 1921 with his wife Olga and their son Paulo, fetched $18,520,000. The painting depicts Olga, who inspired Picasso to make his first neoclassical oil painting in 1917 and whose image continued to permeate his classicism for the next six years.

Doris Grosse – affectionately called Dodo – was Ernst Ludwig Kirchner’s lover and favorite model during his Dresdner years and the model for the powerful and sensual Dodo mit grossem Fächer, a painting executed in 1910. It sold for $12,920,000.

The sale offered superb group of Van Gogh drawings from a Private American Collection. The collection, also comprising two Rodin sculptures and one bronzy by Maillol, achieved $14,486,640.

The Impressionist and Modern Art sales will continue tomorrow with the Day Sale and the Works on Paper Sale.