As the art market in the Middle East heats up with the inaugural Frieze Abu Dhabi taking place next month, the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi opening in December, and Art Basel Qatar expected to return for its second edition in 2027, Sotheby’s is deepening its activity in the region with the launch of the house’s first fine art auction in Abu Dhabi on December 10, a day before the Guggenheim opening.
Part of Sotheby’s Collectors’ Week, which debuted last year, the upcoming second edition returns with categories including cars, jewelry, watches, high-performance bicycles and handbags to hit the hammer on December 9. The dedicated fine art sale has been titled “Breaking Ground,” a nod to how the city has been “forged from the ground up,” per a release, and will be hosted at the new Saadiyat Grove Experience Center on Saadiyat Island, the city’s cultural hub.
Sotheby’s is expected to add more lots to the sale before December, but released a suite of 21 that it has confirmed so far. As of now, the sale’s low estimate is $6.54 million and the high estimate is $9.08 million.
The top two lots are Andy Warhol’s Ads (1985) with an estimate of $2 million to $3 million and Claude Monet’s Prunes et Abricots (1882–85) with an estimate of $2 million to $2.6 million. The collection heavily features Emirati contemporary artists like Mohamed Ahmed Ibrahim and Hassan Sharif, as well as artworks made by women such as Huguette Caland, Jadé Fadojutimi, Inji Efflatoun, Fahrelnissa Zeid, Najat Makki, Mona Saudi, Gazbia Sirry, Zarina, and Etel Adnan.
Katia Nounou Boueiz, head of Sotheby’s UAE and chairman of the Middle East, told ARTnews that although the auction house has been active in the region for quite some time, clients from the region have increasingly been a strong force at the international auctions. “The past five years have seen a significant increase in bidding—nearly 70 percent—from the Middle East, while the total value spent by clients has grown by almost 100 percent,” she said. Sotheby’s had its first international cross-category art auction in Dubai, titled “Boundless,” back in 2017.
Abu Dhabi of late is becoming a hot spot, and December has a host of events that will likely attract collectors, celebrities, royal families, and politicians: the Formula 1 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix (December 3–6), the Abu Dhabi Finance Week conference (December 7–10), and the Culture Summit Abu Dhabi (December 8–10). Boueiz said Sotheby’s first international fine art auction in Abu Dhabi is an important milestone as it establishes the city as an “important destination on the international art market calendar.”
In 2024, Sotheby’s announced that it closed a deal worth $1 billion with Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth fund and investment company, ADQ, that saw them acquire a minority stake in the auction house. At the time, the auction house said that $800 million of the cash injection had been earmarked for paying down Sotheby’s $1.65 billion long-term debt, while the remainder of the money would support expansion plans, both in terms of real estate in the US and abroad, and the development of new markets and revenue streams. Now, Sotheby’s wants to show the fruits of its labor.
Mohammed Hafiz, cofounder of the Jeddah-based ATHR Gallery, told ARTnews that this is ultimately a cultural and a commercial decision. “The market has reached a scale where a local presence makes strategic and economic sense,” he said, noting that Art Dubai and Abu Dhabi Art (rebranded as Frieze Abu Dhabi) have been established for almost two decades now, and Christie’s is marking 20 years in the region with its first fine art auction on November 1. Hafiz said these developments in the Middle East are not new, but the result of decades-long investment and market building by patrons, galleries, collectors, artists and institutions, with the arrival of Art Basel and Frieze a natural evolution.
Philip Hoffman, chairman and founder of the Fine Art Group, told ARTnews that most of his big collectors will be going to Abu Dhabi in December for all the coinciding events. He noted that such a modest sale reflects buyers’ habits in the region, especially younger collectors in their 30s and 40s who are getting “super interested” but “want to take it easy and not rush. They don’t make quick decisions. I think auctions put a lot of pressure on them to make decisions and that’s not their natural habitat.”
At Sotheby’s, there has been a “real evolution in the collector landscape” in the Middle East, said Boueiz. She has noticed that clients have gone from appreciating art to engaging with it. In terms of the lots in “Breaking Ground,” Yasmeen Gailani, Sotheby’s specialist and head of sale for “Breaking Ground,” said the house wanted to anchor the sale with household names that resonate globally, alongside the household names in the Middle East.
“Many of these names will be new to our clients here, but that is part of what makes it all so exciting. We wanted to not only offer the works we know will immediately spark a conversation, but also provide the sort of setting where our clients here can discover artists that have never been offered in the Middle East before,” said Gailani.
Hafiz agreed that although collecting has always been deeply rooted in the culture of the region, it’s only in the last two decades that modern and contemporary art have had growing interest. As museums, foundations, and biennials have been established in the region, it has changed the relationship collectors have had with art, and it’s being passed down generations.
“We are also seeing collecting extend beyond a relatively small circle of established patrons to a younger and more diverse audience, with growing confidence in regional artists and an increasing interest in international practices,” said Hafiz.