This May, Sotheby’s will present one of the most significant private collections to reach auction in recent years, as works from the estate of Adele Donati and Enrico Donati come to market. Pablo Picasso‘s extraordinary early Cubist portrait Arlequin (Buste), estimated around $40 million, leads the collection that offers an intimate glimpse into the creative world of one of Surrealism’s last surviving luminaries.
The Last Surrealist’s Legacy
Enrico Donati, often called “the last Surrealist,” occupied a unique position within New York’s artistic elite during the mid-20th century. As both artist and confidant, he moved among the movement’s most influential figures, counting Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, and André Breton among his closest friends. Alongside him stood his wife Adele, a designer and artist whose discerning eye, honed through work in advertising and fashion, helped shape their remarkable collection.
The upcoming auction, titled “A Night in May” (a poetic reference to Breton‘s 1943 observation about Donati‘s work), tells the story of artistic friendships, creative exchanges, and the vibrant cultural milieu that flourished in wartime New York when European émigré artists transformed the city’s artistic landscape.
“Our family is honored to share these works, which capture the creative passions that guided Enrico and Adele throughout their lives,” reflects the Donati Family. “The collection is a wonderful reflection of Enrico’s influences, shaped by the works of artists he admired and whose creativity he lived alongside. We are grateful for the opportunity to share his artistic world with others.”
A Pivotal Picasso Leads the Sale
The crown jewel of the collection, Picasso‘s Arlequin (Buste) from 1909, represents one of the artist’s most significant early Cubist portraits. Created merely two years after the revolutionary Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, this work captures Picasso at a pivotal moment when he was fundamentally reshaping the visual language of art.
The painting’s journey into Donati‘s collection reads like a chapter from art history itself. During a Cubist exhibition at the Musée National d’Art Moderne in Paris, Donati encountered the work and was immediately captivated. His subsequent visit to Galerie Louise Leiris led to a memorable meeting with the legendary dealer Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler.
“At the Musée of Modern Art they had the first Cubist exhibit… I only went into the first room, which had Picasso, Braque and Juan Gris. Under an Arlequin reclining figure by Picasso, a label read ‘Galerie Leiris’,” Donati recalled. “When I arrived at the Galerie Louise Leiris, an old man welcomed me. It was Mr Kahnweiler, the owner of the gallery and Picasso’s dealer. ‘Who are you?’ he asked. I gave him my name, and he said Marcel Duchamp wanted me to meet you. I asked him about the Cubist painting by Picasso. He said, ‘I will show you a black-and-white photo of the only Cubist Picasso I have.’ That was it.”
In the painting, Picasso transforms his beloved harlequin motif through a radical Cubist lens. The wandering circus performer, traditionally associated with 17th-century theatre, had become a recurring symbol in Picasso‘s work, often representing outsiders and society’s marginalised figures. Here, he distils the figure to its geometric essence, creating one of the most important works from this decisive period to appear at auction in recent decades. Like other significant auction houses, Sotheby’s continues to present exceptional works that capture pivotal moments in art history.
Kandinsky’s Bauhaus Brilliance
Complementing the Picasso is Wassily Kandinsky‘s vibrant Rote Tiefe (Red Depth) from 1925, carrying an estimate of $12-18 million. This dynamic composition exemplifies the artist at the height of his Bauhaus period, when he had become one of the influential school’s intellectual pillars.
Executed in June 1925, the very month the Bauhaus relocated from Weimar to Dessau, the work belongs to the final group of paintings Kandinsky produced that year as his focus increasingly shifted toward teaching and developing his mature artistic theory.
The painting’s scale and vibrancy likely appealed to Donati, who shared Kandinsky‘s deep connection to music, having studied musical composition at the Milan Conservatory before initially travelling to Paris to compose avant-garde music.
By the mid-1920s, Kandinsky had established himself as a central figure at the Bauhaus, the revolutionary school founded by Walter Gropius in 1919 to unite art, architecture, and design for the modern era. Having returned to Germany from revolutionary Moscow in 1921, Kandinsky joined the faculty in 1922 and quickly assumed a crucial role in shaping the institution’s theoretical and artistic direction.
Surrealist Friendships and Artistic Exchanges
The collection’s most poignant pieces reflect the deep friendships that sustained the émigré Surrealist community in New York. Yves Tanguy‘s Aux Aguets le jour from 1939, estimated at $800,000-1.2 million, was gifted directly from the artist to Donati. Painted the year Tanguy arrived in New York under the looming threat of European war, the work represents one of his most fully realised Surrealist expressions.
The painting’s biomorphic forms positioned within an expansive, otherworldly terrain evoke both Tanguy‘s childhood memories of the Brittany coast and the stark terrains he encountered during his 1930 North African journey.
Alexander Calder‘s Untitled mobile from 1950, estimated at $700,000-1 million, came to Donati through an equally personal exchange. The work was acquired not through traditional purchase but through the artists’ direct relationship. As Donati recalled: “[Calder’s] studio was a mess, but he knew exactly where everything was… He gave me one of his sculptures in exchange for a drawing.”
By the 1950s, Calder had fully developed his revolutionary mobile sculptures into a confident artistic language that brought together abstract forms, balance, and movement. This particular work demonstrates his ability to achieve poetic movement on an intimate scale, with red and yellow elements creating subtle tension between stability and fragility within the delicately balanced composition.
The Surrealist Circle in Wartime New York
The story of how Donati entered the Surrealist circle reads like artistic legend. In 1943, following a solo exhibition at the New School for Social Research, Donati was introduced to André Breton, who immediately proclaimed him a Surrealist and welcomed him into the movement.
“In 1943, I had a show at the NY School of Social Research. Venturi came and told me I should meet André Breton. He introduced us, and Breton decided I was a surrealist. He wrote a preface for a show at Passadoit where he wrote ‘I love the paintings of Enrico Donati as I love a night in May.’ All the surrealists came to the show: Tanguy, Max Ernst, Ozenfant, too. From then on, I was in the group,” Donati explained.
This acceptance transformed Donati‘s life, immersing him in the close circle of European émigré artists and writers who had gathered in New York during the war years. The group maintained daily lunch meetings at Larre’s restaurant on 56th Street and Sixth Avenue, gatherings that became vital spaces for exchanging ideas and were often followed by excursions to nearby antique shops in search of ‘found’ or ‘surreal’ objects.
“The Surrealist group had lunch together every day at Larre on 56th and 6th Avenue. We all sat at a large table near the window and we could see everyone coming in (Breton, Callis, Gorky, Seligman, Julio Diego who married Gypsy Rose Lee). One day, Breton gets up suddenly and starts to bow to someone walking in , Marcel Duchamp! He sat next to me and asked me my name. He said call me Marcel and we were best friends ever since,” Donati remembered.
A Partnership of Creative Vision
While Enrico Donati was already an established Surrealist artist when he met Adele Schmidt in the early 1950s, their eventual marriage in 1965 created a partnership that enriched both their creative lives. Adele brought her own artistic training and sharp visual sensibility to their shared world, building a successful career as a designer and later as Creative Director at the French perfume house Houbigant.
Beyond her professional achievements, Adele was a passionate philanthropist and animal rights advocate, serving on the boards of The Fund For Animals and The Humane Society Legislative Fund. Throughout their life together, she provided constant supportive presence for Enrico, and they formed a partnership of mutual inspiration led by their independent creative pursuits. After his death in 2008, she continued to oversee his legacy until her own passing in 2025.
Julian Dawes, Sotheby’s Vice Chairman and Head of Impressionist and Modern Art, notes: “Assembled by Enrico Donati, an artist in his own right, who moved among some of the most famed artists of the twentieth century, this collection tells in numerous ways the stories of the friendships and exchanges within this community. Each piece offers a window into the ideas that flowed throughout Surrealism, Cubism, and Modernism.”
Beyond European Modernism: Global Cultural Perspectives
Donati‘s collecting interests extended far beyond European modernism. Like many of his contemporaries, he was drawn to the art and cultures of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas, building a collection with the same passion he brought to modern European works.
On 18 June 2026, Sotheby’s will offer fourteen pieces from this aspect of the Donati collection during their Art of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas auction. Highlights include a large Yup’ik or Inupiaq Shaman’s Mask from Alaska, estimated at $300,000-500,000, and a fine Bete-Guro Mask from Côte d’Ivoire, estimated at $100,000-150,000.
The Alaskan mask represents the highly imaginative shamanic traditions of the Yup’ik and Inupiaq peoples, combining human and animal forms to depict refined spiritual concepts of the universe and provide gateways between the physical and spirit worlds. Donati acquired several Arctic masks from the legendary Madison Avenue dealer Julius Carlebach, who provided access to works deaccessioned from the Heye Foundation Museum of the American Indian, now part of the Smithsonian Institution.
The African mask carries particular historical significance, having previously belonged to Frank Crowninshield, the socialite, journalist, and defining editor of Vanity Fair who was among the first proponents of African art in the United States. Guided by painter John D. Graham, Crowninshield exhibited his collection, including this mask, at the Brooklyn Museum in 1937. Graham had acquired the piece from Charles Ratton, the Parisian dealer who helped shape the field of African art collecting.
A Career of Artistic Evolution
Throughout his six-decade career, Donati demonstrated insatiable curiosity, reinventing his style multiple times while oscillating between the influences of Surrealism, Constructivism, and Abstract Expressionism. Yet he always maintained a uniquely Surrealist sensibility that connected him to the movement’s core principles.
In 1947, he returned to Paris as one of the organisers of the Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme, where three of his works were included. His 1961 major retrospective at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels confirmed his international standing, and he frequently participated in group exhibitions throughout the United States and abroad.
Today, Donati‘s works are held in prestigious museum collections, including The Museum of Modern Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, testament to his lasting contribution to 20th-century art.
The May Auctions: A Cultural Moment
The works from the Donati collection will be distributed across Sotheby’s marquee May sales, including the Modern Evening and Modern and Contemporary Day auctions. This strategic placement ensures maximum exposure for pieces that represent not just individual artistic achievements but also document the rich cultural exchanges that defined mid-century artistic life.
The collection, which was rarely exhibited publicly during the couple’s lifetime, reflects the breadth of Enrico‘s close friendships and influences. Each work carries stories of acquisition that illuminate the personal relationships sustaining the artistic community, whether through direct gifts between friends, exchanges of artworks, or simple acts of mutual support during challenging times. The significance of such private collections entering the market parallels recent sales like Christie’s Bonnard Matisse collections featuring 120 rare works.
As Edmund Carpenter observed about the broader cultural context: “The story of the cubist’s discovery of West African art is familiar. The story of the surrealists’ discovery of American Indian art, and especially [Arctic] art, is equally important.” The Donati collection embodies this cross-cultural dialogue that enriched 20th-century modernism, reflecting the global nature of contemporary art markets.
The upcoming “A Night in May” sales represent more than a significant auction event. They offer insight into the personal relationships, cultural exchanges, and creative passions that shaped one of art history’s most dynamic periods. Through works acquired through friendship, exchange, and mutual admiration, the Donati collection tells the intimate story of artistic community in its most essential form: where creativity, friendship, and shared vision converge to create lasting cultural legacy.
When the hammer falls on these works, they will carry forward not just their artistic merit but also the stories of the friendships, exchanges, and creative partnerships that brought them together. A fitting tribute to Enrico Donati and Adele Donati‘s lifelong dedication to art and the artistic community that sustained them.
*Images:Sotheby’s
