Modern Masters II: 20th Century Art — Highlights of the November 2026 Auction

On Saturday 28 November 2026 at 17:00 CET Aurora & Athena holds its second live sale of the season in Barcelona, Modern Masters II: 20th Century Art. The catalogue has thirty-seven lots, with estimates from 200 € to 40,000 €, and it runs from the Seine of the 1890s to an Accra studio in 2017. Bidding is open now: you can leave a maximum bid on any lot page today and join the live room online on the day.

The weight of the sale is in post-war painting: a 1994 landscape by Wolf Kahn, a Venetian view of 1948 by Irma Stern, a gouache that Bob Thompson painted in Paris in 1962, a large abstraction signed in Greek letters by Theodoros Stamos, a yellow colour-field canvas by Helen Khal and a Nubian subject of 1978 by Tahia Halim. Around them are the painters of the École de Paris and the French provinces, most of them estimated under 1,000 €, and a group of drawings and prints from Léon Zack to Roger de La Fresnaye.

Wolf Kahn, Lilac Haze, 1994

A wall of thin trunks rises out of a band of green meadow and dissolves into violet haze, the crowns breaking into yellow, lime and mint under a pale pink sky. Wolf Kahn (1927–2020), a pupil and studio assistant of Hans Hofmann, spent half a century painting the woods and barns around his Vermont farm in colours no landscape painter had used before him, and stands of trees seen through atmosphere were his subject of the 1990s. The canvas, 56 × 74.5 cm, is signed lower right and carries on the stretcher the title and the number the artist gave it, ‘#21A. 1994 Lilac Haze’. Estimate 20,000–30,000 €. View lot 8 →

Irma Stern in Venice, 1948

Irma Stern could not travel to Europe during the war. In 1948 she went back for the first time, visited the Venice Biennale and wrote home that she had painted ‘quite a few pictures’ in the city. This is one of them: the façade of St Mark’s under a deep blue sky, the corner of the Doge’s Palace filling the right of the canvas with a single pointed arch, a few figures crossing the Piazza. The turquoise, rose and gold of her Zanzibar years are turned here on the architecture of Europe. Oil on canvas, 50 × 60 cm, signed and dated lower left. Estimate 20,000–40,000 €. View lot 14 →

Bob Thompson: a Paris gouache of 1962

A blue nude with a knot of yellow hair, a red figure clasping her from behind, a yellow child, two black animals and a great blue bird overhead: Bob Thompson (1937–1966) painted this gouache in Paris in 1962, the year after a fellowship took him from the Lower East Side to the museums of Europe. There he recast the bacchanals and allegories of Poussin and Goya with his own cast of flat, coloured figures. He painted it over a printed page whose ornamental border is still visible, and signed the board three times on the back. Gouache on paper laid down on Masonite, 39 × 30 cm. Estimate 15,000–20,000 €. View lot 22 →

Theodoros Stamos and Helen Khal: two ways of abstraction

Theodoros Stamos (1922–1997) was the youngest painter of the first Abstract Expressionist generation and one of the ‘Irascibles’ photographed for Life in 1950. This canvas of 146 × 109 cm sets a blaze of red and a smaller knot of black in a worked field of white above a single band of ultramarine, and it is signed in Greek letters lower right. The canvas has been re-stretched. Estimate 20,000–30,000 €. View lot 33 →

Helen Khal (1923–2009) arrived at her colour-field manner in Beirut in the late 1960s: soft-edged rectangles that carry no symbol but colour itself, and above all yellow, the colour of the Lebanese light. Our two earlier canvases by her, in December 2024 and July 2025, sold for 37,500 € and 30,000 €. Oil on canvas, 80 × 60 cm, signed front and back. Estimate 15,000–25,000 €. View lot 32 →

The abstract thread of the sale continues with Nejad Devrim’s Abstract Composition of 1952, from the Turkish painter’s first Paris years (lot 31, 6,000–8,000 €); a large panel from the Kairos series by Rahim El (lot 34, 4,000–5,000 €); and an ink and wash drawing by Vasudeo S. Gaitonde, the Indian master of non-objective painting, signed in Devanagari (lot 35, 15,000–20,000 €).

Tahia Halim, Nubian Girl with a Jar, 1978

A girl in a blue veil and an orange dress sits cross-legged with a clay jar in her lap; behind her rise the white domes of a Nubian village and three leaning palms. Tahia Halim (1919–2003) travelled to Nubia in 1962 with the artists sent to record the villages that the Aswan High Dam was about to flood, and she painted from that memory for the rest of her life, in earth colours and thick paint scraped to the texture of an old wall. This panel of 70 × 50 cm was acquired from the artist in Cairo in the late 1970s; it is signed on the front and signed and dated in Arabic on the reverse. Estimate 8,000–12,000 €. View lot 20 →

Two more figure paintings stand beside it: Awo, a stitched wax-print portrait of 2017 by the Ghanaian artist Raphael Adjetey Adjei Mayne (lot 21, 1,500–2,000 €), and Africa Dances, catalogued as attributed to Ben Enwonwu (lot 37, 3,000–5,000 €).

French painting under 1,000 €: harbours, rivers and the École de Paris

The sale opens with twenty paintings that most collectors can afford. Raoul Edmond Marie paints the towpath of the Seine near Bougival in 1892 (lot 1, 600–800 €); Jean-Charles Millet, grandson of the painter of The Angelus, the bridge and gate of Moret-sur-Loing (lot 3); the Goya scholar Xavier Desparmet Fitz-Gerald a river landscape at Cormont (lot 2). The harbours follow: Saint-Malo by Alfred Swieykowski (lot 4, 500–700 €), Saint-Tropez by Louis André Mourgues (lot 5), a sunset shore by Louis Iselin (lot 6), the boatyard at Saint-Valery by Guy Legendre (lot 9) and the boats of Balaklava by Olga Novokhatska (lot 13).

From the post-war École de Paris come Guy Bardone’s marigolds on a checked cloth of 1969 (lot 15, 600–800 €), Georges Simonka’s village near Tarragona (lot 12), two canvases by Marcel Cramoysan, a village with a church tower (lot 10) and tulips before the Westerkerk in Amsterdam (lot 16), Guy Benard’s Les Baux-de-Provence (lot 11) and a pointillist market scene by Paul Flaubert (lot 17). Claude Phanord of the Cap-Haïtien school paints a village well in Haiti (lot 19); Martha Leonor two market women (lot 18); Christian Theodor Schütz a winter sunset in the forest (lot 7); Robert Lépine a fantastic landscape of 1966 (lot 29); and Rosalie Ballester a collage built on a Russian newspaper (lot 30). Estimates in this part of the sale run from 200 € to 800 €.

Drawings and prints: La Fresnaye, Zack, Bérard, Poillerat

Works on paper make up the quiet centre of the catalogue. Six sheets by Roger de La Fresnaye from 1920–21, landscapes with cypresses and portrait heads, are offered in two frames (lot 27, 2,500–4,000 €). Léon Zack, the Russian-born painter of the École de Paris, is represented by two pen-and-wash figures of the 1940s (lot 25 and lot 26, 300–500 € each); Christian Bérard by two small caricature sketches (lot 24); and the master ironworker Gilbert Poillerat by eleven signed etchings and mezzotints of 1975–81, New Year cards and still lifes made for friends (lot 28, 950–1,620 €). Philip Boileau’s lithograph Peggy of 1905 (lot 23) and a costume design after Léon Bakst for Ida Rubinstein in La Légende de Joseph (lot 36, 1,200–1,800 €) complete the group.

How to bid in the November 2026 auction

The full catalogue, with estimates, condition summaries, provenance and high-resolution photographs, is online at Modern Masters II: 20th Century Art – Autumn 2026. Register once to bid: you can leave a maximum bid on any lot now, and it is executed only as far as needed to stay ahead of other bidders. On 28 November the live room opens from the catalogue and lot pages at 17:00 CET. Each lot page shows what the lot costs in total at its estimates, with the buyer’s premium of 25%, and gives a shipping estimate for your country.

Detailed condition reports are sent on request before the sale, and works can be seen in Barcelona by appointment. See our How to Bid page and the Terms and Conditions for payment terms. Follow an artist on the site and we will write to you when a work by them is offered.