Almost 200 works signed by Francis Bacon, Mondrian, Miró, Warhol, Picasso and many others will leave the private walls of Peter Simon to go under the hammer at Christie’s in London. The Peter Simon art auction during Frieze Week, scheduled for 14 and 15 October, brings the Monsoon founder’s collection to market with an overall estimate ranging between £87 million and £127 million, the equivalent of 118–172 million dollars. For Christie’s, this is the most valuable single-owner collection ever presented in London in a single key week of the art calendar.
Key points
- The sale “Monsoon: The Peter Simon Collection” includes almost 200 works divided into an Evening Sale, Day Sale and online sale on 14–15 October.
- The overall estimate ranges from £87 million to £127 million (118–172 million dollars).
- The top lot is Francis Bacon’s Figure in Movement (1978), estimated at £14–18 million.
- The collection brings together British modernism, 20th-century European masterpieces and global contemporary art, from Bridget Riley to Beatriz Milhazes.
- Peter Simon, founder of Monsoon, has appeared in ARTnews’s Top 200 Collectors list since 2005.
Peter Simon’s historic auction during Frieze Week
Christie’s has chosen the busiest moment in the London calendar to put up for sale the collection of Peter Simon, British entrepreneur and founder of the fashion brand Monsoon, created in 1973. The sale is structured into three separate events: an Evening Sale, a Day Sale and an online auction, for a total approaching 200 works. According to the auction house, it is the most valuable single-owner collection ever offered in London in a single key week such as Frieze.
Katharine Arnold, vice chairman of Christie’s for 20th and 21st century art in Europe, has described the collection as dynamic and “free from geographical and temporal boundaries”, a definition that aptly conveys the impression one gets when browsing the catalogue: works distant in era and language seem to respond to the same sensibility.
The collector’s intent and background
Before becoming one of the great British collectors, Simon spent his days with Monsoon’s designers examining portfolios of drawings and prints destined to become fabrics for fashion collections. “I developed an eye for a good print,” he said, explaining that this experience allowed him to recognise “the best combination of colour and composition in a painting.” Simon has appeared in ARTnews’s Top 200 Collectors list in every edition since 2005, and his initial interest in contemporary art arose from observing British painting, before gradually opening up to the rest of the world.
Highlight works: Bacon and the masters of the 20th century
The heart of the sale remains Francis Bacon, the artist who, according to Simon, impressed him most deeply among British painters. The catalogue presents two works that are almost at opposite ends of the artist’s career. Study for a Figure, dated around 1945, is estimated at £4–6 million and belongs to the dramatic phase that followed the creation of Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion, the painting that in 1944 had launched Bacon onto the international scene. Figure in Movement, from 1978, is instead the true headline work of the auction, with an estimate of £14–18 million: here the figure emerges from a dark background through a painting that is at once solid and dissolved, a body that twists and seems to free itself from its own matter.
Alongside Bacon appear other protagonists of European modernism that confirm the ambition of the collection: Piet Mondrian’s Composition A, with Double Line and Yellow (1935), estimated at £8–12 million, and Joan Miró’s Peinture (Les amants – Adam et Eve), from 1925, valued at £7–10 million.
British modernists and European masters
British modernism occupies a central place, with names such as Ben Nicholson, Barbara Hepworth, Frank Auerbach and Leon Kossoff. Nicholson’s relief 1934, hand-carved from a single block of wood, is estimated at £1–2 million and is a rare example of the series of white reliefs that established the artist’s international reputation. Hepworth is represented by The Hands and The Arm, a 1948 drawing belonging to the group known as the Hospital Drawings, born from the artist’s experience in London operating theatres. Auerbach appears with Study of Primrose Hill (1973–74), estimated at £2–3 million, while Kossoff’s Christ Church, Stormy Day, Summer, from 1994 and valued at £400–600,000, carries an important exhibition history, from the 1995 Venice Biennale to the major retrospective at Tate the following year.
On the European front, Fernand Léger’s Le Siphon (1924) is estimated at £3–5 million, the same price range as Picasso’s Crâne, lampe, poireaux, pichet, a 1945 still life painted a few months after the end of the Second World War in Europe.
A borderless collection: from modernism to global contemporary
Simon’s passion for colour and pattern finds a particularly successful synthesis in a Map by Alighiero Boetti, created in 1988 and estimated at £2–3 million, with the world’s borders embroidered on silk and filled with national flags. The same centrality of colour returns in Willem de Kooning’s 1984 Untitled, estimated at £4.5–6.5 million, and especially in Bridget Riley, represented by works spanning three decades. Among these, Streak 2 (1979), estimated at £3.5–5.5 million, comes from the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection and boasts a significant exhibition history, including retrospectives at Tate Britain in 2003 and the National Galleries of Scotland in 2019.
The pop world and contemporary American art also find space: Andy Warhol’s Diamond Dust Shoes (1980), estimated at £1.8–2.5 million, is over two metres high and recalls the years when the artist worked as a commercial illustrator, earning from the magazine Women’s Wear Daily the nickname “Leonardo da Vinci of the shoe trade.” Alongside it is Jeff Koons’s Baroque Egg with Bow (Blue/Turquoise), created between 1994 and 2008 and estimated at £1.5–2 million.
Textile roots and a global outlook
With the arrival of the new millennium, Simon’s outlook became increasingly international, in step with Monsoon’s global expansion. The collector began to look more closely at Latin American and African art, supporting artists who had not yet achieved the visibility they later gained in British museums. Hurvin Anderson appears with Last House (2013), estimated at £2–3 million, a work presented in the artist’s exhibition for the 2017 Turner Prize and now highly topical thanks to the retrospective organised by Tate in 2026: the painting evokes a Caribbean landscape but in fact depicts the Palm House at Kew Gardens in London.
Brazilian artist Beatriz Milhazes occupies an important space with five works, including O mar (1996), estimated at £700,000–1 million, which intertwines the visual language of the Rio coastline with Brazilian baroque and craft techniques such as embroidery and crochet. Completing the picture are works by Cecily Brown.
Peter Simon’s vision and the future of the collection
Looking at the collection as a whole, it is hard not to read it as a kind of indirect self-portrait: not through a single style, but through the way Simon has followed curiosity and instinct, starting from the concrete experience of colour and surface to arrive at deeper questions about how we perceive a place or an identity. The collector’s stated goal has always been “to build connections and foster dialogue between different worlds,” and he now says he wants to embark on “a new direction.”
Simon has explained that he wants to free his mind and his walls to begin a new chapter, which is why he has decided to bring this collection to market. In the art market, this choice restores to collecting its most dynamic nature: owning a work means, sooner or later, deciding that the time has come to let it go.
FAQ
When and where will Peter Simon’s art auction take place?
The auction will be held at Christie’s in London during Frieze Week in October, with events scheduled for 14 and 15 October.
How many works are included in Peter Simon’s auction?
Almost 200 works will be auctioned, spread across three events: an Evening Sale, a Day Sale and an online sale.
What are the main works and artists in the auction?
Francis Bacon’s Study for a Figure (circa 1945, £4–6 million) and Figure in Movement (1978, £14–18 million) are the top lots, alongside works by Ben Nicholson, Barbara Hepworth, Picasso, Mondrian, Miró, Boetti and others.
What themes characterise Peter Simon’s collection?
The collection reflects a dialogue between European modernism and international contemporary art, influenced by Simon’s background in the fashion world and his sensitivity to colour, pattern and a global perspective.
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