Christie's, Sotheby's Battle for Lust $60M Collection

What Happened

Herbert Lust, the investment banker and famously eccentric collector who died in May 2026 at 99 years old, left behind roughly 300 works of art collectively valued in the range of $60 million. His estate is currently shopping the holdings to auction houses, and Christie's and Sotheby's are competing to secure the consignment, sources familiar with the negotiations told ARTnews. The majority of the Lust works are modestly scaled with lower values, likely destined for day sales, but around 10 are considered major works. The top lot is almost certainly a large sculpture by Alberto Giacometti.

The collection includes works by Robert Indiana, Mary Bauermeister, Frank Stella, and Hans Bellmer. Lust was likely the largest private collector of Bellmer's work, once quipping that he could buy 50 great Bellmers for the price of one great Magritte. Both auction houses declined to comment on whether they were pursuing the sale. The November auctions in New York are the likely venue, assuming a deal is reached before then.

The Lust consignment arrives at a moment when the auction houses are competing fiercely for high-value estate collections. Sotheby's recently landed the Blaquier family's $450 million Impressionist collection, demonstrating that major consignments can shift market perception and market share between the two houses. For Christie's, securing the Lust estate would mean capturing a Giacometti trophy lot alongside a deep inventory of works by Indiana, Bellmer, and Calder. For Sotheby's, winning the Lust sale would validate years of relationship-building and potentially cement the house's dominance in the estate consignment market for 2026.

Lust's Collecting Philosophy and Giacometti Connection

Lust met Giacometti after arriving in Paris on a Fulbright scholarship in 1949. He initially found the artist's attenuated figures ugly. Then Lust read Jean-Paul Sartre. "If Sartre and people like that said he was the greatest living artist," Lust later recalled, "there was something wrong with me." He reconsidered, and began building what would become one of the most significant private holdings of Giacometti's work. The trophy lot in the upcoming sale will likely be an edition of Giacometti's Figure, demie grandeur, which appears in a Sotheby's documentary filmed at Lust's Greenwich, Connecticut home. These sculptures were made in an edition of six in 1964 and stand about 45 inches tall.

The Giacometti market remains among the strongest in modern sculpture. The closest comparable by size is Femme de Venise III (1958, edition 5 of 6), which sold for just over $25 million at Christie's New York in 2022. Standing just over five feet tall, Femme Leoni (conceived 1947, cast 1960) sold for $28.4 million at Sotheby's New York in 2023 against a $25 million to $35 million estimate. Giacometti still holds the record for the most expensive sculpture ever sold at auction: L'Homme au doigt, a 1947 bronze, fetched more than $141 million at Christie's in 2015.

Lust's relationship with Giacometti's work spanned more than seven decades, a duration almost unimaginable in today's collecting culture. He acquired his first Giacometti in the early 1950s, when the artist was still a relatively obscure figure known primarily to the Parisian intellectual circle around Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. By the time Giacometti died in 1966, Lust had already assembled a substantial group of works. He continued acquiring Giacomettis for the next six decades, through market booms and busts, through the artist's posthumous rise to the top tier of the modern art market, and through the transformation of Giacometti scholarship by the Fondation Giacometti in Paris.

Sotheby's Advantage and Museum Donations

Sotheby's may have a competitive edge in securing the Lust consignment. The auction house spent years cultivating the collector and his collection. In 2017, Sotheby's offered 27 works by Robert Indiana from Lust's holdings. Two years later, the house sent a camera crew to Lust's Greenwich home, where the 93-year-old held court amid an extraordinary quantity of art: Stellas and Bellmers on the walls, Calder mobiles suspended from the ceiling, Giacomettis seemingly everywhere. The Sotheby's film provides a glimpse into the depth of Lust's holdings, including the Figure, demie grandeur, which Lust described as "the only nude that has a real face."

By the time of those interviews, Lust had already thinned his holdings through several major museum donations. The Tel Aviv Museum of Art received over 200 Giacomettis, a 1961 Indiana, three Man Rays, and five Bellmers across multiple decades. The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C. received more than 70 photographs from Lust in 2020, including works by Berenice Abbott, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Eugene Atget, Aaron Siskind, and Eadweard Muybridge, as well as Herbert Matter's images of Giacometti and his studio. Joseph Hirshhorn, the museum's namesake, had been Lust's neighbor and friend, and asked Lust to donate before his death in 1981. Lust fulfilled that promise nearly four decades later, as ARTnews documented at the time.

The museum donations reveal as much about Lust's character as the remaining holdings. He gave to institutions that had personal meaning to him, not necessarily those that offered the greatest tax benefit or public visibility. The Tel Aviv Museum received the largest share of his Giacomettis, a gift that transformed the museum's standing in modern sculpture. The Hirshhorn received a photography collection that bridged modernist masters with documentary images of Giacometti at work. These donations also served a practical function: by distributing works to museums during his lifetime, Lust reduced the logistical and financial burden of estate disposal, leaving the auction houses to compete over what remained.

What This Means for the November Auctions

The Lust sale will test whether the market still values the kind of idiosyncratic, deeply personal collection that Lust spent a lifetime building. Unlike the curated estate collections that have dominated recent auction seasons, the Lust holdings reflect a single collector's obsessions rather than a diversified investment strategy. The Giacometti works will likely attract the most attention and the highest prices, but the Bellmers, Indianas, and Bauerschmidts represent a different kind of collecting logic, one based on personal relationships and intellectual curiosity rather than market signaling.

The competition between Christie's and Sotheby's also reflects a broader dynamic in the auction market. Both houses have been pursuing estate consignments aggressively in 2026, as single-owner collections tend to attract more attention and higher prices than mixed-owner sales. The Blaquier family's $450 million Impressionist collection, secured by Sotheby's, was a major coup. If Christie's can win the Lust estate, it would balance the narrative and provide a strong narrative for the November sales. The outcome will likely depend on factors beyond the financial terms, including the houses' ability to position the collection, produce compelling marketing materials, and leverage their respective client networks. For collectors watching from the sidelines, the Lust sale offers a case study in how the relationship between a collector and an auction house can endure across decades, as authentication and provenance research becomes increasingly central to the market for postwar art.

The Lust collection also raises questions about the future of the Giacometti market specifically. With the Fondation Giacometti in Paris actively managing the artist's estate, authenticating works, and organizing exhibitions, the supply of significant Giacometti sculptures at auction remains tightly controlled. A major Giacometti from a single-owner collection with long provenance and documented exhibition history is exactly the kind of trophy lot that both auction houses need to anchor a November evening sale. The Lust Figure, demie grandeur, with its documented appearance in the Sotheby's documentary and its connection to a collector who knew Giacometti personally, carries a narrative premium that is difficult to replicate.

Beyond the Giacometti, the depth of the Lust holdings in Bellmer, Indiana, and Calder represents a secondary market test. Bellmer's work, while historically significant, occupies a niche corner of the surrealist market and does not command the prices of his better-known contemporaries. Indiana's market has been volatile since the artist's death in 2018, with prices rising and falling based on exhibition activity and estate management. Calder's mobiles and stabiles remain consistently strong but are increasingly available at auction, which could limit the premium that a Lust-provenance Calder might command. How the auction houses package and position these secondary works alongside the Giacometti trophy will determine whether the Lust sale becomes a landmark event or a more modest transaction that fills out a day sale catalog.

The Lust sale also represents a generational shift in the auction market. The collector was born in 1926 and began acquiring art in the late 1940s, a period when the postwar art market was still small, personal, and driven by relationships rather than data. The collectors who built collections in that era are increasingly absent from the market, and their estates are being dispersed through a combination of museum donations, private sales, and auction consignments. The Lust estate's decision to work with a major auction house reflects the continuing dominance of Christie's and Sotheby's in the high-end estate disposal market, despite the emergence of private treaty platforms and online auction alternatives. For the auction houses, estate collections like Lust's represent not just revenue but marketing opportunities, the kind of single-owner narrative that drives catalog features, press coverage, and evening sale attendance.