Nicolas Party has established himself as one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary painting, known for his highly stylized compositions and his masterful use of pastel. His work, spanning portraits, landscapes, still lifes, and architectural motifs, revisits traditional genres through a contemporary lens, combining historical references with a strikingly synthetic visual language. Party’s paintings are immediately recognizable for their saturated colors, smooth gradients, and sculptural forms. At once seductive and unsettling, they operate in a space between figuration and abstraction, where familiar subjects are transformed into carefully constructed visual environments.

Introduction

Nicolas Party was born in 1980 in Lausanne, Switzerland. He studied at the Lausanne School of Art (ECAL) before moving to Glasgow, where he completed his studies at the Glasgow School of Art. His early career was marked by an engagement with street art and mural painting, a practice that continues to inform his approach to scale and surface. Over time, he transitioned toward studio-based work, developing a distinctive language rooted in traditional genres but reinterpreted through contemporary means.

Artistic Practice and Technique

Party’s practice is defined by his use of soft pastel, a medium historically associated with intimacy and fragility. He elevates it to a monumental and highly controlled form of expression. Pastel allows for an exceptional richness of color and subtlety of transition. Party exploits this quality to create smooth gradients and luminous surfaces, often blending tones seamlessly across the composition. The result is a velvety, almost immaterial surface that contrasts with the solidity of his forms.

“I’m trying to work with subjects that are not original. Subjects that have been, and still are, painted all the time. Like a portrait, or a cat. What fascinates me about these topics is their capacity to regenerate themselves at any period of history, and still be relevant to us. I also believe some subjects are always painted because they are an infinite source of meaning and inspiration.”

Despite this softness, his work is highly constructed. Forms are simplified, volumes are clearly defined, and compositions are carefully balanced. The apparent simplicity of his images conceals a rigorous control of color, tone, and spatial organization. His background in mural painting is also crucial. Party often conceives exhibitions as immersive environments, painting walls and integrating works into a unified spatial experience.

The qualities of pastel destines Party to work with great care, condensing his voyages through art history into crisp, immediate compositions. He takes haptic pleasure in his medium, often massaging the powdery pigment with his fingers to model forms into three-dimensional relief, arresting on canvas that which cannot be still. Wearing his learning lightly, Party distils a timeless, placeless picture from the metaphysical idea of the “still life”. Its forms are at once vividly defined and deeply mysterious; they feel recognizable and yet utterly unreal.

Major Series and Bodies of Work

Still Lifes

Party’s still lifes are among the most refined and conceptually layered aspects of his practice. Drawing from the long tradition of still life painting, he reinterprets arrangements of fruit, vessels, and objects through a highly stylized lens. The compositions are often symmetrical and carefully staged, with objects rendered in simplified, almost sculptural forms. Colors are heightened beyond naturalism—greens, pinks, oranges, and purples are intensified to create a sense of artificiality.

These works engage with art history while subtly destabilizing it. The familiarity of the subject is offset by the uncanny quality of the rendering, creating a tension between tradition and invention.

Landscapes

The landscape paintings form a central pillar of Party’s work. These compositions depict mountains, hills, skies, and natural elements, yet they are far removed from direct observation.

Rather than capturing specific locations, Party constructs landscapes as psychological or symbolic spaces. Colors are often exaggerated, and forms are simplified into layered bands and gradients. Trees, rocks, and skies are reduced to essential shapes, creating compositions that feel both serene and slightly artificial. These landscapes evoke memory and imagination rather than reality, positioning them within a broader exploration of perception.

Trees

Within his landscapes, the tree motif has developed into a distinct and recurring subject. Party’s trees are highly stylized, often rendered as rounded, almost cloud-like forms with smooth surfaces and strong color contrasts. They function as both individual subjects and compositional anchors within larger landscapes.

The repetition of this motif allows Party to explore variation within a constrained system. Subtle changes in color, scale, and arrangement produce a wide range of visual effects, reinforcing the structural nature of his work.

Houses and Architecture

Party’s house paintings introduce architectural elements into his practice, often depicted in isolation within simplified landscapes.

These structures are rendered with the same clarity and stylization as his other subjects, emphasizing geometry and color over detail. Houses become symbolic forms rather than functional buildings, suggesting themes of shelter, memory, and constructed space. Their presence within the landscape reinforces the interplay between natural and artificial elements that runs throughout his work.

Portraits

Party’s portraits represent another key dimension of his practice. These works depict faces with smooth, sculptural modeling and highly controlled color transitions.

The figures often appear mask-like, with simplified features and an absence of overt expression. Skin tones are frequently rendered in unexpected colors, greens, blues, or purples, enhancing the sense of artificiality. These portraits occupy a space between individuality and archetype. They are at once specific and anonymous, reinforcing Party’s broader interest in perception and representation.

Themes and Meaning

Party’s work engages with the history of painting while questioning its conventions. By revisiting traditional genres, portrait, landscape, still life, he situates his practice within a long lineage, yet his treatment of these subjects introduces a contemporary sensibility. Central themes include illusion, perception, and the construction of images. His paintings do not aim to replicate reality but to create alternative visual worlds, where color and form take precedence over naturalism.

There is also a subtle tension between beauty and artificiality. The seductive surfaces and harmonious compositions draw the viewer in, while the stylization and color distortions create a sense of distance and ambiguity.

“I do feel that it’s actually more logical to approach complexity through a simple subject. How many masterful pieces are made of the simplest of subjects?”

Institutional Recognition and Exhibitions

Nicolas Party has achieved significant institutional recognition, with exhibitions at major museums including the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the Hammer Museum, and the The FLAG Art Foundation. His exhibitions are often conceived as immersive environments, integrating wall paintings and architectural interventions to create a cohesive visual experience.

Party’s work is represented in over 30 public collections worldwide, including K11 Art Foundation, Hong Kong; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Long Museum, Shanghai; Fondazione Fiera Milano, Milan; M WOODS, Beijing; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris; and the Rubell Family Collection, Miami.

Gallery Representation

Party is represented by leading international galleries, including Hauser & Wirth, Xavier Hufkens, and Karma. These galleries have played a central role in expanding his international presence and institutional visibility.

Nicolas Party has redefined the possibilities of pastel within contemporary painting, transforming a traditionally intimate medium into a vehicle for large-scale, immersive works. By revisiting classical genres through a contemporary lens, he has created a practice that is both historically grounded and forward-looking. His work demonstrates that painting remains a vital and evolving medium, capable of engaging with perception, memory, and the construction of visual experience in new and unexpected ways.

PART I: SUMMARY

Auction Market Overview

2025 AUCTION STATISTICS
Turnover: USD 3,455,028
-58.6% vs. 2024
# Lots sold: 15
Sell-Through Rate: 75%

MARKET SEGMENTATION
COMING SOON

Highest Price Achieved at Auction:
Blue Sunset, 2018
Christie’s Hong-Kong: 30 November 2022
HKD 52,050,000 / USD 6,668,800

Nicolas Party’s market has developed rapidly, supported by strong gallery representation and institutional recognition. His paintings are highly sought after, with consistent demand across Europe, the United States, and Asia. His use of pastel, combined with the clarity of his visual language, has contributed to a strong and identifiable market position. Works from key series—particularly landscapes and still lifes—are especially desirable.

Auction Summary

2025 Auction Highlights

6 lots sold at auction in 2025 for a turnover of USD 2,800,004. With 1 lot failing to sell, the sell-through rate is 86%. However, 2 lots were withdrawn from auction: Still Life (2014) at Sotheby’s in London, on 24 June 2025, and Tree Trunks (2015) at Christie’s in London on 15 October 2025.

2025 Top 3 Lots

The highest price was achieved by Grotto, a painting dated 2019, that sold at Sotheby’s in Hong-Kong, on 29 March 2025, for HKD 15,015,000 (USD 1,929,950). Only one lot sold for more than USD 1 million, contributing 71.3% of the total turnover of 2025.

Furthermore, 9 Works on Paper sold at auction in 2025 for a turnover of USD 655,025. With 4 lots failing to sell, the sell-through rate is 69%. The highest price in 2025 was achieved by Trees, a work on paper dated 2020, that sold at Phillips, in New-York, on 21 November 2025 for USD 165,100.

2025 Top 3 Lots

3 lots sold for more than USD 100,000, generating a cumulative turnover of USD 400,505, representing 85.8% of the total turnover for 2025.

2024 Auction Highlights

7 lots sold at auction in 2024 for a total turnover of USD 7,862,283. With 3 lots failing to sell, the sell-through rate is 70%. The highest price has been achieved at Phillips in Hong-Kong on 25 November 2024 for Mountains, a painting dated 2023, that sold for HKD 13,760,000 (USD 1,767,843).

2024 Top 3 Lots

4 lots sold for more than USD 1 million, generating a total turnover of USD 5,975,033, representing 76% of the total turnover for 2024.

2023 Auction Highlights

9 lots sold at auction in 2023 for a total turnover of USD 24,184,510. With 2 paintings unsold, the sell-through rate is 82%. The top lot, Still Life, dated 2015, sold at Christie’s in Hong-Kong on 28 May 2023, for HKD 39,095,000 (USD 4,990,936).

2023 Top 3 Lots

8 lots sold for more than USD 1 million. 7 lots sold in Hong-Kong, one in New-Yok, and one in London.

2022 Auction Highlights

8 lots sold at auction in 2022 for a total turnover of USD 18,603,811. With only 1 lot failing to sell, the sell-through rate is 89%. The highest price was achieved at Christie’s in Hong-Kong, on 30 November 2022, when Blue Sunset, a painting dated 2018 sold for HKD 52,050,000 (USD 6,668,802).

2022 Top 3 Lots

This remains the world auction record for the artist. 6 lots sold for more than USD 1 million. Only 3 of those paintings sold in Hong-Kong, 3 in London, and 3 in New-York.

2021 Auction Highlights

9 lots sold at auction in 2021 for a total turnover of USD 17,525,787. With no lot failing to sell, the sell-through rare is 100%. 6 of those paintings sold in Hong-Kong, 2 in New-York, and 1 in London.

2021 Top 3 Lots

The highest price was achieved at Christie’s in New-York on 8 November 2021 when Landscape, a painting dated 2021 sold for USD 3,270,000. 8 paintings sold for more than USD 1 million.

Top Lots

#1. Blue Sunset, 2018

Christie’s Hong-Kong: 30 November 2022
Estimated: HKD 38,000,000 – 48,000,000
HKD 52,050,000 / USD 6,668,800

NICOLAS PARTY (B. 1980) (christies.com)

NICOLAS PARTY (B. 1980)
Blue Sunset, 2018
Soft pastel on linen
180 x 150.2 cm (70 7/8 x 59 1/8 inches)

#2. Still Life, 2015

Christie’s Hong-Kong: 28 May 2023
Estimated: HKD 26,000,000 – 36,000,000
HKD 39,095,000 / USD 4,990,936

NICOLAS PARTY (B. 1980), Still Life | Christie’s (christies.com)

NICOLAS PARTY (B. 1980)
Still Life, 2015
Soft pastel on linen
150×180 cm (59 x 70 7/8 inches)

#3. Still Life, 2015

Christie’s New-York: 7 November 2023
Estimated: USD 3,800,000 – 4,500,000
USD 4,406,000

NICOLAS PARTY (B. 1980) (christies.com)

NICOLAS PARTY (B. 1980)
Still Life, 2015
Soft pastel on linen
150×190 cm (59 x 74 3/4 inches)

#4. Still Life with an Olive, 2012-2013

Phillips Hong-Kong: 6 October 2023
Estimated: HKD 26,000,000 – 40,000,000
HKD 25,860,000 / USD 3,302,373

Nicolas Party – 20th Century & Contem… Lot 7 October 2023 | Phillips

#5. Landscape, 2021

Christie’s New-York: 8 November 2021
Estimated: USD 300,000 – 500,000
USD 3,270,000

NICOLAS PARTY (B. 1980) (christies.com)

NICOLAS PARTY (B. 1980)
Landscape, 2021
Pastel on linen
43×36 inches (109.2 x 91.4 cm)
Signed and dated ‘Nicolas Party 2021’ (on the reverse)

PART II: AUCTION RESULTS

2026 Auction Results

2025 Auction Results

FOR PAINTINGS & SCULPTURES ONLY

6 lots sold at auction in 2025 for a turnover of USD 2,800,004. With 1 lot failing to sell, the sell-through rate is 86%. However, 2 lots were withdrawn from auction: Still Life (2014) at Sotheby’s in London, on 24 June 2025, and Tree Trunks (2015) at Christie’s in London on 15 October 2025.

2025 Top 3 Lots

The highest price was achieved by Grotto, a painting dated 2019, that sold at Sotheby’s in Hong-Kong, on 29 March 2025, for HKD 15,015,000 (USD 1,929,950). Only one lot sold for more than USD 1 million, contributing 71.3% of the total turnover of 2025.

XXXXXXXXXX

#1. Grotto, 2019

Sotheby’s Hong-Kong: 29 March 2025
Estimated: HKD 10,000,000 – 15,000,000
HKD 15,015,000 / USD 1,929,950

Nicolas Party 尼古拉 · 帕爾蒂 | Grotto 洞穴 | Modern & Contemporary Evening Auction | 2025 | Sotheby’s

NICOLAS PARTY (b. 1980)
Grotto, 2019
Soft pastel on linen
190.8 x 165.1 cm (75 1/8 x 65 inches)
Signed and dated 2019 (on the reverse)

USD 1 million

#2. Portraits, 2015

Sotheby’s London: 4 March 2025
Estimated: GBP 400,000 – 600,000
GBP 266,700 / USD 341,375

Portraits | Modern & Contemporary Evening Auction | 2025 | Sotheby’s

NICOLAS PARTY (b. 1980)
Portraits, 2015
Soft pastel on linen
150×170 cm (59×67 inches)
Signed and dated 2015 (on the reverse)

#3. Speaker, 2017

Phillips New-York: 14 May 2025
Estimated: USD 150,000 – 200,000
USD 228,600

Nicolas Party Modern & Contemporary Art Day Sale, Afternoon Session

#4. Birds Fighting for Worms, 2017

#5. Untitled, 2015

#6. Double Portrait, 2019

Lots Withdrawn

Still Life, 2014

Sotheby’s London: 24 June 2025
Estimated: GBP 600,000 – 800,000
WITHDRAWN

Still Life | Modern & Contemporary Evening Auction | 2025 | Sotheby’s

NICOLAS PARTY (b. 1980)
Still Life, 2014
Soft pastel on linen
116×89 cm (45 5/8 x 35 inches)

2024 Auction Results

FOR PAINTINGS & SCULPTURES ONLY

7 lots sold at auction in 2024 for a total turnover of USD 7,862,283. With 3 lots failing to sell, the sell-through rate is 70%. The highest price has been achieved at Phillips in Hong-Kong on 25 November 2024 for Mountains, a painting dated 2023, that sold for HKD 13,760,000 (USD 1,767,843).

2024 Top 3 Lots

4 lots sold for more than USD 1 million, generating a total turnover of USD 5,975,033, representing 76% of the total turnover for 2024.

XXXXXXXXXX

#1. Mountains, 2023

Phillips Hong-Kong: 25 November 2024
Estimated: HKD 10,000,000 – 15,000,000
HKD 13,760,000 / USD 1,767,843

Nicolas Party – Modern & Contemporar… Lot 8 November 2024 | Phillips

#4. Still Life, 2014

Christie’s Shanghai: 7 November 2024
Estimated: CNY 7,000,000 – 10,000,000
CNY 8,165,000 / USD 1,146,945

NICOLAS PARTY (B. 1980), Still Life | Christie’s

NICOLAS PARTY (B. 1980)
Still Life, 2014
Chalk pastel on canvas
150×100 cm (59 x 39 3/8 inches)

USD 1 million

Christie’s New-York: 17 May 2024
Estimated: USD 500,000 – 700,000
USD 793,800

NICOLAS PARTY (B. 1980)
Portrait, 2015
Soft pastel on linen
67×59 inches (170.2 x 149.9 cm)
Signed and dated ‘Nicolas Party 2015’ (on the reverse)

#6. Back with a Red Hat, 2017

Christie’s London: 7 March 2024
Estimated: GBP 500,000 – 700,000
GBP 453,600 / USD 575,165

NICOLAS PARTY (B. 1980), Back with a Red Hat | Christie’s (christies.com)

NICOLAS PARTY (B. 1980)
Back with a Red Hat, 2017
Soft pastel on linen
228 x 81.3 cm (89 3/4 x 32 inches)
Signed and dated ‘Nicolas Party 2017’ (on the reverse)

#7. Still Life with a Candle, 2012

Christie’s Hong-Kong: 26 September 2024
Estimated: HKD 3,000,000 – 5,000,000
HKD 4,032,000 / USD 518,285

NICOLAS PARTY (B. 1980), Still Life with a Candle | Christie’s (christies.com)

NICOLAS PARTY (B. 1980)
Still Life with a Candle, 2012
Oil on canvas
130.2 x 90.4 cm (51 1/4 x 35 5/8 inches)
Signed and dated ‘Nicolas Party 2012’ (on the reverse)

Passed Lots

Still Life with a Ribbon, 2011-2012

Christie’s Hong-Kong: 28 May 2024
Estimated: HKD 22,000,0000 – 28,000,000
PASSED

Still Life with a Ribbon (christies.com)

NICOLAS PARTY (B. 1980)
Still Life with a Ribbon, 2011-2012
Oil on canvas
100.5 x 150.3 cm (39 5/8 x 59 1/8 inches)
Signed and dated ‘Nicolas Party 2012’ (on the reverse)

Still Life, 2017

Sotheby’s Hong-Kong: 5 April 2024
Estimated: HKD 20,000,000 – 30,000,000
PASSED

Nicolas Party 尼古拉 · 帕爾蒂 | Still Life 靜物 | The Now Evening Auction | Contemporary Art | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

NICOLAS PARTY (b. 1980)
Still Life, 2017
Soft pastel on linen
140×130 cm (55 1/8 x 51 1/8 inches)
Signed and dated 2017 on the reverse

2023 Auction Results

FOR PAINTINGS & SCULPTURES ONLY

9 lots sold at auction in 2023 for a total turnover of USD 24,184,510. With 2 paintings unsold, the sell-through rate is 82%. The top lot, Still Life, dated 2015, sold at Christie’s in Hong-Kong on 28 May 2023, for HKD 39,095,000 (USD 4,990,936).

2023 Top 3 Lots

8 lots sold for more than USD 1 million. 7 lots sold in Hong-Kong, one in New-Yok, and one in London.

XXXXXXXXXX

#1. Still Life, 2015

Christie’s Hong-Kong: 28 May 2023
Estimated: HKD 26,000,000 – 36,000,000
HKD 39,095,000 / USD 4,990,936

NICOLAS PARTY (B. 1980) (christies.com)

NICOLAS PARTY (B. 1980)
Still Life, 2015
Soft pastel on linen
150×180 cm (59 x 70 7/8 inches)

#2. Still Life, 2015

Christie’s New-York: 7 November 2023
Estimated: USD 3,800,000 – 4,500,000
USD 4,406,000

NICOLAS PARTY (B. 1980) (christies.com)

NICOLAS PARTY (B. 1980)
Still Life, 2015
Soft pastel on linen
150×190 cm (59 x 74 3/4 inches)

#3. Still Life with an Olive, 2012-2013

Phillips Hong-Kong: 6 October 2023
Estimated: HKD 26,000,000 – 40,000,000
HKD 25,860,000 / USD 3,302,373

Nicolas Party – 20th Century & Contem… Lot 7 October 2023 | Phillips

#4. Still Life, 2015

Sotheby’s Hong-Kong: 5 October 2023
Estimated: HKD 20,000,000 – 30,000,000
HKD 24,045,000 / USD 3,070,449

Nicolas Party 尼古拉 · 帕爾蒂 | Still Life 靜物 | A Long Journey: A Selection from the Liu Yiqian and Wang Wei Collection | 2023 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

NICOLAS PARTY (b. 1980)
Still Life, 2015
Soft pastel on linen
170×180 cm (67×71 inches)

#5. Winter Trees, 2017

Christie’s Hong-Kong: 29 November 2023
Estimated: HKD 11,000,000 – 18,000,000
HKD 18,525,000 / USD 2,378,311

21392-nicolas-party-winter-trees (christies.com)

NICOLAS PARTY (B. 1980)
Winter Trees, 2017
Soft pastel on linen
140×85 cm (55 x 33 3/8 inches)

#6. Rocks, 2014

Christie’s Hong-Kong: 29 May 2023
Estimated: HKD 11,000,000 – 18,000,000
HKD 16,710,000 / USD 2,133,228

NICOLAS PARTY (B. 1980) (christies.com)

NICOLAS PARTY (B. 1980)
Rocks, 2014
Soft pastel on linen
150×120 cm (59 x 47 1/4 inches)

#7. Trees, 2019

Sotheby’s London: 1 March 2023
Estimated: GBP 900,000 – 1,300,000
GBP 1,439,500 / USD 1,732,458

NICOLAS PARTY (b. 1980)
Trees, 2019
Soft pastel on canvas
85.9 x 155.7 cm (33 7/8 x 61 1/4 inches)
Signed Nicolas Party and dated 2019 (on the reverse)

#8. Trees, 2014

Phillips Hong-Kong: 25 May 2023
Estimated: HKD 10,000,000 – 15,000,000
HKD 12,550,000 / USD 1,601,848

Nicolas Party – Disruptors: Evening Sal… Lot 319 May 2023 | Phillips

NICOLAS PARTY (b. 1980)
Portrait, 2015
Pastel on canvas
150×140 cm (59 x 55 1/8 inches)
Signed and dated 2015 on the reverse

FOR PAINTINGS & SCULPTURES ONLY

8 lots sold at auction in 2022 for a total turnover of USD 18,603,811. With only 1 lot failing to sell, the sell-through rate is 89%. The highest price was achieved at Christie’s in Hong-Kong, on 30 November 2022, when Blue Sunset, a painting dated 2018 sold for HKD 52,050,000 (USD 6,668,802).

2022 Top 3 Lots

This remains the world auction record for the artist. 6 lots sold for more than USD 1 million. Only 3 of those paintings sold in Hong-Kong, 3 in London, and 3 in New-York.

XXXXXXXXXXX

#1. Blue Sunset, 2018

Christie’s Hong-Kong: 30 November 2022
Estimated: HKD 38,000,000 – 48,000,000
HKD 52,050,000 / USD 6,668,802

NICOLAS PARTY (B. 1980)
Blue Sunset, 2018
Soft pastel on linen
180 x 150.2 cm (70 7/8 x 59 1/8 inches)

#2. Landscape, 2016

Sotheby’s New-York: 16 November 2022
Estimated: USD 2,000,000 – 3,000,000
USD 2,349,000

Landscape | The Now Evening Auction | 2022 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

NICOLAS PARTY (B. 1980)
Landscape, 2016
Soft pastel on canvas
260 x 89.9 cm (102 ⅜ x 35 ⅜ inches)
Signed Nicolas Party and dated 2016 (on the reverse)

#3. Pink Tulips, 2017

Christie’s London: 28 February 2022
GBP 400,000 – 600,000
GBP 1,722,000 / USD 2,293,248

NICOLAS PARTY (B. 1980) (christies.com)

NICOLAS PARTY (B. 1980)
Pink Tulips, 2017
Soft pastel on linen
240×60 cm (94 1⁄2 x 23 5⁄8 inches)
Signed and dated ‘Nicolas Party 2017’ (on the reverse)

#4. Still life, 2014

Christie’s Hong-Kong: 27 May 2022
Estimated: HKD 9,000,000 – 15,000,000
HKD 16,650,000 / USD 2,121,154

NICOLAS PARTY (B. 1980) (christies.com)

NICOLAS PARTY (B. 1980)
Still life, 2014
Soft pastel on linen
116×89 cm (45 5⁄8 x 35 inches)

#5. Houses, 2015

Phillips London: 3 March 2022
Estimated: GBP 1,100,000 – 1,500,000
GBP 1,474,500 / USD 1,964,166

#6. Landscape, 2016

Christie’s London: 13 October 2022
Estimated: GBP 500,000 – 700,000
GBP 1,482,000 / USD 1,681,034

NICOLAS PARTY (B. 1980)
Landscape, 2016
Pastel on canvas
120 x 69.5 cm (47 1/4 x 27 3/8 inches)
Signed and dated ‘Nicolas Party 2016’ (on the reverse)

#7. Two Portraits, 2016

Phillips Hong-Kong: 22 June 2022
Estimated: HKD 6,000,000 – 8,000,000
HKD 6,542,000 / USD 833,407

Nicolas Party – 20th Century & Contempo… Lot 16 June 2022 | Phillips

#8. Portrait, 2014

Christie’s New-York: 12 May 2022
Estimated: USD 300,000 – 300,000
USD 693,000

NICOLAS PARTY (B. 1980) (christies.com)

NICOLAS PARTY (B. 1980)
Portrait, 2014
Soft pastel on canvas
100×90 cm (39 1⁄4 x 35 1/2 inches)

2021 Auction Results

FOR PAINTINGS & SCULPTURES ONLY

9 Paintings sold at auction in 2021 for a total turnover of USD 17,525,787. With no lot failing to sell, the sell-through rare is 100%. 6 of those paintings sold in Hong-Kong, 2 in New-York, and 1 in London. The highest price was achieved at Christie’s in New-York on 8 November 2021 when Landscape, a painting dated 2021 sold for USD 3,270,000. 8 paintings sold for more than USD 1 million.

2021 Top 3 Lots

XXXXXXXXXXX

#1. Landscape, 2021

Christie’s New-York: 8 November 2021
Estimated: USD 300,000 – 500,000
USD 3,270,000

NICOLAS PARTY (B. 1980) (christies.com)

NICOLAS PARTY (B. 1980)
Landscape, 2021
Pastel on linen
109.2 x 91.4 cm (43×36 inches)
Signed and dated ‘Nicolas Party 2021’ (on the reverse)

#2. Landscape, 2015

Christie’s Hong-Kong: 30 November 2021
Estimated: HKD 12,000,000 – 22,000,000
HKD 23,050,000 / USD 2,958,390

NICOLAS PARTY (B. 1980) (christies.com)

NICOLAS PARTY (B. 1980)
Landscape, 2015
Soft pastel on linen
200×120 cm (78 3⁄4 x 47 1⁄4 inches)
Signed and dated ‘Nicolas Party 2015’ (on the reverse)

#3. Still Life, 2015

Christie’s Hong-Kong: 1 December 2021
Estimated: HKD 7,000,000 – 12,000,000
HKD 22,450,000 / USD 2,880,640

NICOLAS PARTY (B. 1980) (christies.com)

NICOLAS PARTY (B. 1980)
Still Life, 2015
Soft pastel on linen
129.5 x 139.7 cm (51×55 inches)
Signed and dated ‘Nicolas Party 2015’ (on the reverse)

#4. Still Life, 2017

Phillips Hong-Kong: 30 November 2021
Estimated: HKD 6,200,000 – 9,400,000
HKD 17,190,000 / USD 2,204,722

Nicolas Party – 20th Century & Cont… Lot 20 November 2021 | Phillips

#5. Houses, 2015

Phillips New-York: 17 November 2021
Estimated: USD 400,000 – 600,000
USD 1,724,000

#6. Trees, 2014

Sotheby’s Hong-Kong: 9 October 2021
Estimated: HKD 7,000,000 – 10,000,000
HKD 11,912,000 / USD 1,530,181

NICOLAS PARTY (b. 1980)
Trees, 2014
Pastel on canvas
200 x 109.9 cm (78 3/4 x  43 1/4 inches)
Signed and dated 2014 on the reverse

#7. Still Life with an Empty Bottle, 2013

Christie’s Hong-Kong: 25 May 2021
Estimated: HKD 5,000,000 – 7,000,000
HKD 9,250,000 / USD 1,191,595

NICOLAS PARTY (B.1980)
Still Life with an Empty Bottle, 2013
Oil on canvas
90×130 cm (35 3/8 x 51 1/8 in)
Signed and dated ‘Nicolas Party 2013’ (on the reverse)

#8. Back with Gloves, 2017

Christie’s London: 15 October 2021
Estimated: GBP 300,000 – 500,000
GBP 814,500 / USD 1,120,511

NICOLAS PARTY (B. 1980)
Back with Gloves, 2017
Soft pastel on linen
228×80 cm (89 3/4 x 31 1/2 inches)
Signed and dated ‘Nicolas Party 2017’ (on the reverse)

#9. Portrait, 2015

Sotheby’s Hong-Kong: 19 April 2021
Estimated: HKD 2,900,000 – 3,900,000
HKD 5,015,000 / USD 645,746

NICOLAS PARTY (b. 1980)
Portrait, 2015
Pastel on canvas
150×140 cm (59 x 55 1/8 inches)
Signed and dated 2015 on the reverse

PART III: FOCUS

Still-Lifes

Still Life, 2020

Christie’s New-York: 21 November 2024
Estimated: USD 1,000,000 – 1,500,000
USD 1,502,000

NICOLAS PARTY (B. 1980), Still Life | Christie’s

NICOLAS PARTY (B. 1980)
Still Life, 2020
Soft pastel on linen
40×50 inches (101.6 x 127 cm)
Signed and dated ‘Nicolas Party 2020’ (on the reverse)

Nicolas Party has constructed a captivating oeuvre by investigating and reinventing the traditional tropes of painting in an effort to more fully understand and push the boundaries of the art form. A consummate example of his ability to coax gravity out of seemingly simple subjects in pastel, Still Life stands as a testament to the artist’s knowledge of art historical tradition and his need to break through its deep codification. Part of a running series throughout his career, they initially read as boisterous, colorful scenes of colorful fruit that touch upon human experience and visual culture with surprising subtlety.

“I want to grab the audience directly and “lock” them in the work as long as possible. When the viewer is inside the painting, my hope is that its complexity can be revealed. You stay inside it because you feel that there is still something there that you don’t see.”

The viewer enters into Party’s works because of their pleasing palette and leaves with a better understanding of the effect that composition and visual weight have on the experience of art.

Party’s Still Life possesses an almost visible sense of weight. Though he depicts richly colored fruit in a grouping that does not stray too far from traditional arrangements throughout art history, this collection of pears, apples, and other morsels has a surprising heft. Atop a dark cerulean background, a large white orb is draped with various pieces of fruit that lean and flop around the space. A stout red apple sits atop a drooping yellow pear while a trapezoidal object looms in the back. Purple, green, orange, pink, and fluorescent yellow objects complete the scene on a pale pink ground. Intense modeling of the forms is offset by the skinny black stems protruding from each item. The artist’s use of soft pastels instead of paint allows for a richness and velvety corporeality not afforded by other media. Instead, each element is bestowed with a visual weight that speaks more to the depiction of flesh than of fruit. Instead of pert pears and glistening, wax-coated apples, the fruit in Party’s compositions share a tired kinship with an audience exhausted by hectic existence. At the same time, they also offer a visual respite as their fleshy presence contrasts with the razor-edged gleam of our technological world.

Paul Cezanne, Still Life, 1892-1894. Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia. Photo: Bridgeman Images.

The still life genre has been a source of much inspiration for Party throughout his career. Through this innocuous genre, the Swiss-born artist touches upon deeper realities that resonate with a wide audience. Realized in 2020, the year of his first solo exhibition, Still Life was also created during the worldwide pandemic. It is an easy connection to see the slumped fruit and pillow-like forms of Party’s work in dialogue with the house-bound populations working from their couches as life became still. Thinking about the traditional arrangements of natural items made famous by seventeenth-century Netherlandish painters, as well as their gradual evolution into the Cubist pile-ups of Pablo Picasso and the coldly quiet compositions of Giorgio Morandi, one can sense a discrete lineage that leads to Party’s scenes.  The wilting flowers and memento mori that were cause for rumination in the paintings of yesteryear are replaced with drooping apples that allow for a surprisingly similar meditation on life and mortality.

Still Life with a Ribbon, 2011-2012

Christie’s Hong-Kong: 28 May 2024
Estimated: HKD 22,000,0000 – 28,000,000
PASSED

Still Life with a Ribbon (christies.com)

NICOLAS PARTY (B. 1980)
Still Life with a Ribbon, 2011-2012
Oil on canvas
100.5 x 150.3 cm (39 5/8 x 59 1/8 inches)
Signed and dated ‘Nicolas Party 2012’ (on the reverse)

Exhibited at the artist’s first major solo exhibition with The Modern Institute in 2013, Nicolas Party’s Still Life with Ribbon (2011–12) was among a group of still lifes in oil the artist painted during his formative period. Capturing the artist’s early interest in the anthropomorphised attributes of objects, the present work presages Party’s virtuoso investigation of color, material, and art history through the traditional still life genre with his contemporary neo-surrealist twist. Against the cobalt backdrop, three pears lined beside one another like performers atop a stage, calibrating a whimsical vivacity with their volumetric, curvaceous appeals. Setting behind tropes of unnatural, man-made objects in cylinder shapes, these three stylised organic forms—rendered in velvet red, green, and porcelain white—are magnified and have an enticing sculptural presence, akin to figures. Pear, as a humble fruit that serves as a motif in Flemish vanitas paintings and was pondered by numerous modern masters like Cézanne, Picasso, and O’Keeffe, was depicted purely based on Party’s memory instead of real objects. An atypical still life, Still Life with Ribbon encapsulates Party’s distinctive visual idiom that conflates art-historical tropes—from the centuries-old vanitas tradition to Morandi’s austere still life and Matisse’s sharp, luminous vision.

 In Still Life with Ribbon, Party turned one of the pears into a petrified entity, evoking an eerie feeling permeated in one of the ‘stone age pictures’ René Magritte created in the 1950s. Party’s still life carries a similar love of paradox as Magritte’s pictorial landscape, where the artist arrested the live form in the state of petrification.

Rene Magritte, Memory of a Voyage, 1951 © 2024 C. Herscovici / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

 

“I guess the word ‘still life’ (or ‘nature morte’) is a good example of what art tries to achieve: merging two opposite notions into one object,’ Party explains, ‘life is not still and nature is not dead, but maybe a painting can be.”

Wearing his learning lightly, Party adeptly bestows his contemporary tableaux to convey the sensation of suspense and paradox of this genre in Still Life with Ribbon, with its mysterious yet vividly defined forms.

Giorgio Morandi, Natura morta, 1938. Museum of Modern Art, New York ©2024 The Museum of Modern Art, New York / Scala, Florence 

With the medium oil lends the present work tactility and volume, Party mindfully fashions his pictorial plane in a perplexing milieu where the objects are placed against an entirely flat background devoid of any depth or perspective. Paring down superfluous details using elemental color and simplified form—a compositional tactic that is perhaps informed by his experience in 3D animation and mural art—Party forms an ambiguous space where viewers are forced to focus on the form, color, and composition. Such an approach also spared his still life from interpretation in the manner of memento mori. The pears, with their rich art historical connotations in both Eastern and Western cultures as a symbol of immortality, abundance, and Christ’s love, seem to halt in a perennial state in their disturbing dimensions. Party’s distilled and almost artificial forms conjure a suspension of time instead of an inevitable decline, the present work, standing as a contemporary still life outside of time and space, is at once recognizable yet utterly unreal.

Still Life, 2017

Sotheby’s Hong-Kong: 5 April 2024
Estimated: HKD 20,000,000 – 30,000,000
PASSED

Nicolas Party 尼古拉 · 帕爾蒂 | Still Life 靜物 | The Now Evening Auction | Contemporary Art | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

NICOLAS PARTY (b. 1980)
Still Life, 2017
Soft pastel on linen
140×130 cm (55 1/8 x 51 1/8 inches)
Signed and dated 2017 on the reverse

Fresh from a string of critically acclaimed exhibitions, including New York’s Frick Collection and the Museum Frieder Burda in Baden-Baden, Nicolas Party has cemented his place amongst the most exciting contemporary artists working today. A captivating example of Party’s masterful investigation of color, material and art history, Still Life invigorates the traditional still life genre with its neo-surrealist depiction of ten, stalked organic forms. Shaded into an enticing sculptural presence with the artist’s acclaimed use of pastel, these stylized forms and plump, curvaceous shapes radiate in shades of fiery red, purple, mauve, yellow and brown. Directing his idiosyncratic choice of medium towards these uncanny depictions, the rhythmic, conical and curvilinear shapes of Still Life are almost anthropomorphic in their staging atop a pale orange surface against an Yves Klein blue backdrop. Executed on an expansive scale, Still Life was exhibited at the artist’s first solo exhibition with Karma in 2017, its colorful, architectural forms at once playful, mysterious and instantly recognizable.

Weaving together art-historical references, from the allegorical intensity of 16th and 17th century vanitas painting to the austerity of Giorgio Morandi’s still lifes, the present work’s architectural shapes and textured use of color imbue a sense of dynamism that contrasts with the static conventions of the genre. In Still Life, Party situates the composition in a typically enigmatic milieu – the various shaped objects sit against an entirely flat background, completely devoid of any context, depth, or perspective. Drawing the viewer into this ambiguous space, Party’s choice of subject imbues the work with an enigmatic and symbolic resonance. The pumpkin, a symbol of abundance, prosperity and good fortune, is associated with the harvest season, and is a rare subject to appear in the artist’s compositions. Similarly, the pear, symbolizing immortality to the Chinese, abundance to the Greeks and Roman, and Christ’s love in Renaissance religious paintings, was a motif frequently used by Flemish vanitas painters of the Renaissance. Imbuing each object with an animated sense of individual character, an effect emphasized by the magnified scale of the present work, “his paintings of fruit and forests anthropomorphize their subjects, which are visibly susceptible to the abuses of time.” (Annie Godfrey Larmon, “Nicolas Party”, Artforum, December 2017). 

GIORGIO MORANDO, STILL LIFE, 1938 / DIGITAL IMAGE, THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART, NEW YORK/SCALA, FLORENCE
© 2024 ARTISTS RIGHTS SOCIETY (ARS), NEW YORK / SIAE, ROME

Setting a stage upon which his objects sit at the center, like performers atop a stage, Party’s attention to composition is indebted to Giorgio Morandi. Foregoing the austere renderings of his predecessor, Party’s saturated use of fantastical jewel tones and theatrical application produces an effect that feels vividly contemporary. Often associated with softness and femininity, pastel has traditionally been used to conjure evanescent, saturated effects of light and colour: take Degas’ ballet dancers or the floral displays of Odilon Redon. In Party’s hands, the medium becomes graphic, well-defined and sculptural. Deeply pigmented and possessing a seductive corporeality, the provocative postures of the ten stylized objects are exaggerated by the artist’s use of shade and volume, accentuating their sensuous lines. Nestled amongst the upright figures of the rotund and curvaceous gourds lie suggestively outstretched objects, a surrealist reimaging of the art-historic reclining nude. This visceral sensuality is in tacit communion with the artist’s chosen medium, the infamously volatile and challenging pigment imparting a physically to the present work. Favoring pastel for its immediacy and spontaneity, Party employs the medium as a painter as opposed to a draughtsman, massaging the pigment between his fingers to model forms into three-dimensional relief. As the artist describes, “I love pastels so much. I came to them because at one point I was doing oils, and my main problem was that I couldn’t stop editing the painting. Oils allow you to endlessly retouch.” (Nicolas Party, quoted in T. Loos, “Artist Nicolas Party Revives the Language of Pastel”, Cultured Magazine, 17 March 2019).

Exemplifying the unique qualities afforded by the softness of pastel and the precision with which the artist employs the medium, Still Life is an arresting and seductive work from Nicolas Party’s highly acclaimed oeuvre. In dialogue with the art-historical binaries of representation and abstraction, the present work exists in the tantalizing liminal space between the real and the imagined, the past and the present, encapsulating what the artist describes as art’s capacity to “allow humans to feel time very differently from how our body tells us to feel it. Nature always reminds us that our body will disappear soon; that life is a very brief moment. This is not the case in a still life” (Nicolas Party, quoted in R. Vitorelli, ibid.).

Still Life, 2015

Christie’s New-York: 7 November 2023
Estimated: USD 3,800,000 – 4,500,000
USD 4,406,000

NICOLAS PARTY (B. 1980) (christies.com)

NICOLAS PARTY (B. 1980)
Still Life, 2015
Soft pastel on linen
150×190 cm (59 x 74 3/4 inches)

Fresh from the critical acclaim of his current installation at New York’s Frick Collection, Nicolas Party has cemented his status as one of the most important contemporary artists working today. Executed on a large scale, at nearly five feet by six feet, Still Life is rare in the history of its titular genre, which often focuses on smaller scenes meant to evoke the domestic interior. The present work, with its alluring, textured pigments and sensual forms, exemplifies Party’s unparalleled sensitivity to color and his mastery of pastel.

Unlike the static still lifes with which we are most familiar, the present work is highly sculptural, embodied, monumental, and textured. Still Life is among Party’s most significant investigations of this genre. Its fruits nestle together, overlap each other, and yet seem also to merge together even as they retain their individuality. The tactile qualities of the pastel medium enlivens the scene, as if a still life has transformed into flesh. Reminiscent of the milky hues of Chinese porcelain, the blue and cream background lends a subtle, earthy beauty. Party’s revival of the still life for our moment has as much to do with the medium he chooses as what he depicts. His work is currently on view at the Frick Collection, New York, where he has created an installation responding to the eighteenth-century pastel masterpiece, Portrait of a Man in Pilgrim’s Costume (c. 1730) by Rosalba Carriera. Still Life connects to this long history of the use of pastel, which has been praised for its deep pigments and lustrous corporeality. The eighteenth-century saw an increased interest in pastels, driven by Carriera, Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun, and Jean Baptiste Greuze, which were often created as site-specific commissions for aristocratic interiors.

Still Life with an Olive, 2012-2013

Phillips Hong-Kong: 6 October 2023
Estimated: HKD 26,000,000 – 40,000,000
HKD 25,860,000 / USD 3,302,373

Nicolas Party – 20th Century & Contem… Lot 7 October 2023 | Phillips

Mesmerizing and visually evocative, Still Life with an Olive is an exquisite example of Nicolas Party’s captivating interpretation of everyday objects and scenes. Set against a background of blue and light grey, a floral vase and plump fruits inject the foreground with life despite the lack of movement, their geometric forms evoking both reality and the surreal. Showcasing Party’s dexterity in colour application and painterly precision whilst injecting a unique refreshing twist, his biomorphic shapes form a lusciously vibrant arrangement that alludes to traditional painting genres and influential figures within the canon of art history.

First unveiled at the artist’s 2013 solo show at The Modern Institute in Glasgow, Still Life with an Olive is one of a few oil works to ever be offered at auction, and one of Party’s few compositions to feature both fruits and flowers. Simultaneously embracing and moving away from the art historical canon, its harmonious balance between color, composition, abstraction, and figuration is akin to the artist’s long-standing exploration into the relationships between human perception, the familiar and the otherworldly. Establishing a dialogue between the timeless genre of the still life and his reimagination of the material world, it is a masterful amalgamation of nature and fantasy that seeks to challenge the conventions of representational painting.

Installation view of the current lot at Glasgow, The Modern Institute, Still Life oil paintings and Landscape watercolours, 6 April – 8 May 2013

Known to favor soft pastel as a medium for the majority of his output, oil makes up a small yet greatly important portion of Party’s extensive oeuvre. Although the artist began his career in soft pastels, the present lot originates from an exceptionally rare group of works – it was one of seven pieces created for Still life oil paintings and Landscape watercolours, Party’s only exhibition to feature oil on canvas works. In contrast to the immediacy and responsiveness of pastel, oil’s slow-drying nature allows for prolonged manipulation of paint after application, an attribute that demonstrates pronounced refinedness. Concerned with the relationship between the materiality of oil and canvas, Party grounds his practice in the possibility of the medium itself.

Party’s Still Life with an Olive is anything but still, with the vibrantly-coloured pears, the yellow tulip in the glass vase, and the olive imbued with playful energy on this expansive canvas. Here, we see Party’s unique take on the still life subject, which, by definition, includes all kinds of man-made or natural objects such as cut flowers, fruit, vegetables, fish, game, and wine. Throughout the discourse of art history, the still life first appeared in the Middle Ages and Greco-Roman art and was popularized in the 16^th century during the Dutch and Flemish Renaissance. One of his very few examples to include both flora and fruit, the present work adheres to the compositional conventions of the still life, forming a pictorial structure with meticulously arranged colors and a set path for the viewer’s eye. Party’s choice of objects seems deliberate – the pears intending to portray the transient nature of human life, representing fertility, youth, and abundance; the tulip, a flower that is often associated with the Netherlands, not only is a nod to Dutch paintings, but is also a symbol of new beginnings and hope; the olive, originating from an olive branch, represents reconciliation and healing. The combination of flora and fruits is particularly important as it is a subject that Party constantly returns to and revisits, as recent as in his works made in 2020, in which he investigates the sub-genre of still life painting, ‘sottobosco’, devoted to the botanical and zoological life in nature’s darker regions.

Whilst the traditional still-life painting is typically modest in size, Party enlarges his objects to imposing dimensions, breathing life into them as though they are figures. With little differentiation between inanimate and animate objects for him, the pieces of fruit, the tulip, and the olive here are filled with vivaciousness and are clearly alive, each imbued with individual personality. Rejecting the idea of inventing new subject matters, Party deliberately chooses to portray banal themes. As popular imagery depicted since the dawn of painting, fruits are especially present in his oeuvre due to their simplicity in form and meaning. Ready to be consumed with little effort, their appearance has remained constant throughout history. Recognizable by all audiences, his intuitive use of stable motifs allows for freedom to innovate whilst transcending time and space.

“If I paint an apple now, I know that the apple that Cézanne was painting was not the same one, but it didn’t change. It’s maybe a little bit more red now, but is more or less the same…But if you paint an iPhone and you’re the only one to do it, in 50 years, nobody will know what it is.”

Although Party’s work is unbeholden to time or place, stripped of background or additional detail, the titular objects in the present work exist purely in relation to their corporeal qualities and symbolism,. As a result, these pieces of fruit elicit a sense of timelessness – audiences in the past, present, and future can all understand their significance, albeit in accordance to differing contexts. By sacrificing originality, Party’s canvases pay homage to the enduring yet ever-changing appeal of what he represents; by painting with oil in lieu of ephemeral pastel, his subjects become immortalized for generations.

Still Life, 2015

Sotheby’s Hong-Kong: 5 October 2023
Estimated: HKD 20,000,000 – 30,000,000
HKD 24,045,000 / USD 3,070,449

Nicolas Party 尼古拉 · 帕爾蒂 | Still Life 靜物 | A Long Journey: A Selection from the Liu Yiqian and Wang Wei Collection | 2023 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

NICOLAS PARTY (b. 1980)
Still Life, 2015
Soft pastel on linen
170×180 cm (67×71 inches)

Among the largest compositions by the artist to come to auction, the expansive Still Life is a captivating example of Nicolas Party’s masterful investigation of color, material and art history. Spanning almost two-metres across, Still Life invigorates the traditional still life genre with its neo-surrealist depiction of six, stalked organic forms. Shaded into an enticing sculptural presence with the artist’s acclaimed use of pastel, these stylized forms and plump, curvaceous shapes radiate in shades of orange, purple, pink, green, yellow and red. Directing his idiosyncratic choice of medium towards these otherworldly depictions, the rhythmic, conical and curvilinear shapes of Still Life are almost anthropomorphic in their staging atop a pale grey surface and deep, chocolatey background. Weaving together art-historical references, from the allegorical intensity of 16th and 17th century vanitas painting to the austerity of Giorgio Morandi’s still lifes, with a playful use of color and subject matter to produce works that are at once deeply mysterious, yet instantly recognizable.

In Still Life, Party situates the composition in a typically enigmatic milieu – the various shaped objects sit against an entirely flat background, completely devoid of any context, depth, or perspective. Drawing the viewer into this ambiguous space, Party’s choice of subject imbues the work with an enigmatic and symbolic resonance. The pear, the orange and the candle, with their historic connotations, are the perfect subject for the artist. The pear, symbolising immortality to the Chinese, abundance to the Greeks and Roman, and Christ’s love in Renaissance religious paintings, was a motif frequently used by Flemish vanitas painters of the Renaissance. Similarly, the orange traditionally symbolises wealth and prosperity within the painterly tradition, with Mandarin oranges considered as a traditional symbol of good fortune to the Chinese. The orange hue of the fruit also bears connotations with gold, with Party’s rich application of pastel pigment exaggerating the sumptuous quality of this prestigious fruit. Finally, the candle, abstract versions of which appear throughout the artist’s compositions, represents the inevitability of the passing of time, a memento mori within the still life genre. While still-life paintings are typically modest in size, Party enlarges his painting to imposing dimensions. On this expansive scale, these objects are magnified and human-like in scale, with Party imbuing each with an animated sense of individual vitality.

GEORGIO MORANDI, STILL LIFE, 1941
COLLEZIONI COMUNALI D’ARTE, BOLOGNA © DEAGOSTINI PICTURE LIBRARY/SCALA, FLORENCE/ 2023 ARTISTS RIGHTS SOCIETY (ARS), NEW YORK / SIAE, ROME

Rendered in fantastical jewel tones, the provocative postures of the six stylized objects are exaggerated by the artist’s use of shade and volume, accentuating their sensuous lines. Favoring pastel for its immediacy and spontaneity, Party employs the medium as a painter as opposed to a draughtsman, massaging the notoriously volatile and challenging pigment between his fingers to model forms into three-dimensional relief.

“I love pastels so much. I came to them because at one point I was doing oils, and my main problem was that I couldn’t stop editing the painting. Oils allow you to endlessly retouch.”

The ambitious scale of the present work is a testament to Party’s virtuoso use of pastel, his saturated use of color and theatrical application producing an effect that feels vividly contemporary. Often associated with softness and femininity, pastel has traditionally been used to conjure evanescent, saturated effects of light and color: take Degas’ ballet dancers or the floral displays of Odilon Redon. In Party’s hands, the medium becomes graphic, well-defined and sculptural.  Capturing a sense of artificiality and captivating illusion distilled from the genre of still life, the theatrical stillness of the present work stands outside of time and space. Engaging in a riveting dialogue with art history, Still Life is at once vividly rendered and deeply mysterious, distilling the suspense and contradiction embedded in the genre in capturing on canvas that which cannot be still.

Still Life, 2015

Christie’s Hong-Kong: 28 May 2023
Estimated: HKD 26,000,000 – 36,000,000
HKD 39,095,000 / USD 4,990,936

NICOLAS PARTY (B. 1980) (christies.com)

NICOLAS PARTY (B. 1980)
Still Life, 2015
Soft pastel on linen
150×180 cm (59 x 70 7/8 inches)

Still life, 2014

Christie’s Hong-Kong: 27 May 2022
Estimated: HKD 9,000,000 – 15,000,000
HKD 16,650,000 / USD 2,121,154

NICOLAS PARTY (B. 1980) (christies.com)

NICOLAS PARTY (B. 1980)
Still life, 2014
Soft pastel on linen
116×89 cm (45 5⁄8 x 35 inches)

“I guess the word “still life” (or “nature morte”) is a good example of what art tries to achieve: merging two opposite notions into one object. Life is not still and nature is not dead, but maybe a painting can be.”

Pink Tulips, 2017

Christie’s London: 28 February 2022
GBP 400,000 – 600,000
GBP 1,722,000 / USD 2,293,248

NICOLAS PARTY (B. 1980) (christies.com)

NICOLAS PARTY (B. 1980)
Pink Tulips, 2017
Soft pastel on linen
240×60 cm (94 1⁄2 x 23 5⁄8 inches)
Signed and dated ‘Nicolas Party 2017’ (on the reverse)

Looming almost 2.5 meters in height, Pink Tulips (2017) is a superb large-scale work by Nicolas Party, who uses the medium of pastel on canvas to restage and re-energize traditional artistic subjects. The composition holds a tall grey vase of six pink tulips, whose petals and leaves stand out in crisp relief against a perfectly opaque black backdrop. One leaf bends playfully over the vase’s lip; the vase itself stands on a flat, off-white floor, recalling the stone ledges seen in the austere bodegón still lifes of the Spanish Baroque. Working without reference to real objects, photographs or specific images, Party’s witty, postmodern practice instead sees him cross-examine art-historical cues—from the centuries-old vanitas tradition to Giorgio Morandi’s monastic still lifes and the clear, bright visions of Matisse and Hockney. Rather than depicting the world, his works explore the elements of genre, and how any given artwork exists in relation to the continuum of art history. They also create conversations between themselves, with each canvas becoming a character in his stage-like exhibition settings. In Three Seasons, his debut show at Xavier Hufkens Gallery, Brussels, in 2017, Pink Tulips was shown alongside two others in the same vertical format: Nude depicted a standing nude seen from behind, and Long Pot a tall green vessel. While toying with formal affinities among these canonised subjects, the trio also seemed to propose Party’s tall canvas and dark, enigmatic backdrop as its own stage, window or interior, a space where any apparition might be possible.

Party takes great pleasure in ‘painting’ with pastel, massaging the pigment with his fingers to model forms into precise, three-dimensional relief. Unlike oil paint, pastel does not lend itself to retouching. This material fixity is particularly apt for the still life: a genre that Party understands as inherently paradoxical, arresting on canvas a world that cannot be still. The theatrical stillness of Pink Tulips captures this contradiction. Rather than acting as a vehicle for symbolism, trompe-l’oeil trickery or spatial proposition, Party’s still life seems to perform its own tense, suspended relationship with reality. If the metaphysical qualities of Pink Tulips align him with Morandi, or his subject matter with the Spanish and Flemish masters of old, Party’s deft use of pastel lends the work a stark iconicity that is distinctively his. Often associated with softness and femininity, pastel has traditionally been used to conjure evanescent, saturated effects of light and color: as with Degas’ dynamic ballet dancers, for example, or Odilon Redon’s floral fantasias. In Party’s hands, the medium becomes graphic, well-defined and sculptural.

Still Life, 2015

Christie’s Hong-Kong: 1 December 2021
Estimated: HKD 7,000,000 – 12,000,000
HKD 22,450,000 / USD 2,880,640

NICOLAS PARTY (B. 1980) (christies.com)

NICOLAS PARTY (B. 1980)
Still Life, 2015
Soft pastel on linen
129.5 x 139.7 cm (51×55 inches)
Signed and dated ‘Nicolas Party 2015’ (on the reverse)

Nicolas Party’s Still Life is anything but still — it is instead a traditional artistic subject enlivened by his use of vibrantly-colored pastel and a surrealist touch. Three stalked, organic forms look like slender, candle-shaped fruit, stylized apple, and a plump curving gourd. Shaded into appealing sculptural presence, they glow in candied shades of yellow, red, and green. Working without reference to real objects, photographs or specific images, Party instead begins his compositions with impulses from memory, weaving art-historical echoes into a playful idiom that is entirely his own.

Still Life, 2017

Phillips Hong-Kong: 30 November 2021
Estimated: HKD 6,200,000 – 9,400,000
HKD 17,190,000 / USD 2,204,722

Nicolas Party – 20th Century & Cont… Lot 20 November 2021 | Phillips

Nicolas Party’s Still Life is anything but still. Alive with rhythm and movement, vibrantly saturated fruit twist and sway under a brilliant pervading light that catches onto their contours, casting warm shadows over their rounded curves. Executed in 2017, the technicolored canvas is a particularly captivating piece from Party’s oeuvre, seducing viewers in with a magnetic quality that is so abundantly rich you can all but taste his fantastical take on reality.

Whilst the composition showcases distinct references to the history of painting, Party reinvigorates traditional artistic subjects with his signature aesthetic that slips between the nostalgic and futuristic and is immediately recognizable. Building on this are his motifs that too, are universal in their visual language, such as the pear that symbolizes immortality and prosperity in ancient Chinese culture, grace and nobility in Korea, abundance in Greek and Roman mythology, and Christ’s love in Renaissance religious paintings. Bathed in a warm, inviting luminosity that immerses the viewer, there is a timelessness to Still Life that encourages a closer look at the evolution of representation, perfectly exemplifying Party’s idiosyncratic vision.

Still Life with an Empty Bottle, 2013

Christie’s Hong-Kong: 25 May 2021
Estimated: HKD 5,000,000 – 7,000,000
HKD 9,250,000 / USD 1,191,595

NICOLAS PARTY (B.1980) (christies.com)

NICOLAS PARTY (B.1980)
Still Life with an Empty Bottle, 2013
Oil on canvas
90×130 cm (35 3/8 x 51 1/8 in)
Signed and dated ‘Nicolas Party 2013’ (on the reverse)

“I do feel that it’s actually more logical to approach complexity through a simple subject. How many masterful pieces are made of the simplest of subjects?”

Landscapes

Grotto, 2019

Sotheby’s Hong-Kong: 29 March 2025
Estimated: HKD 10,000,000 – 15,000,000
HKD 15,015,000 / USD 1,929,949

Nicolas Party 尼古拉 · 帕爾蒂 | Grotto 洞穴 | Modern & Contemporary Evening Auction | 2025 | Sotheby’s

NICOLAS PARTY (b. 1980)
Grotto, 2019
Soft pastel on linen
190.8 x 165.1 cm (75 1/8 x 65 inches)
Signed and dated 2019 (on the reverse)

Born in 1980 in Lausanne, Switzerland, Party studied at the Lausanne School of Art before undertaking an MA at The Glasgow School of Art. Classically trained, Party transforms the paradigm of portraiture of art history into a dialogue with both past and future. Speaking about his figurative paintings, Party remarks: “I’m trying to work with subjects that are not original. Subjects that have been, and still are, painted all the time. Like a portrait, or a cat. What fascinates me about these topics is their capacity to regenerate themselves at any period of history, and still be relevant to us. I also believe some subjects are always painted because they are an infinite source of meaning and inspiration” (the artist cited in Federica Tattoli, “Talking with the Swiss painter Nicolas Party”, Fruit of the Forest, December 2016). Rather than creating landscapes, still lives and portraits from real life, Party takes inspiration from other works in the history of these categories instead, and Grotto acts as an outstanding example.

Grotto is part of a new series of works by Nicolas Party which reinterprets art historical themes, created upon his return to Brussels following his exhibition at the Magritte Museum in 2018. This series of works was later featured in the artist’s solo show at Xavier Hufkens Gallery in 2019. The exhibition, also titled Grotto, featured three large soft pastel paintings, including the present work depicting the interior of grottos in monochromes of red, green and blue. They explored the long art-historical fascination with caves, with the present work paying specific homage to Caves of Manacor (c. 1901) by the Belgian painter William Degouve. Party recalls being “totally stunned” upon viewing Picasso’s Tête de Femme (1921) at the Foundation Beyeler in 2013, and was inspired in particular by Picasso’s use of pastel in Tête de Femme, and the challenging and idiosyncratic medium has dominated his work ever since.

“Oils allow you to endlessly retouch. With pastels it’s kind of the exact opposite. You can layer and layer, but you can’t start over. The nature of the medium is much more direct. Nothing dries or is wet – it stays exactly how it is.”

Applying the soft chalk material with his fingertips with painterly precision, pastel best allows Party to mould the essence of his subjects in new and revelatory ways, to amplify physical presence and heighten emotional resonance. Party’s resulting works are simple, seductive and highly accessible, yet still engage in dialogue with the art-historical binaries of representation and abstraction, observation and imagination. In addition to paintings, Party creates large-scale public murals, sculptures and installation works that employ color and intervention strategies to construct immersive experiences for viewers. The artist has been subject of numerous solo exhibitions at prestigious institutions worldwide, including the Magritte Museum, Brussels (2018); Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C. (2017); Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2016); and the Modern Institute, Glasgow (2016).

Mountains, 2023

Phillips Hong-Kong: 25 November 2024
Estimated: HKD 10,000,000 – 15,000,000
HKD 13,760,000 / USD 1,767,843

Nicolas Party – Modern & Contemporar… Lot 8 November 2024 | Phillips

Fresh to the market, Mountains stands as a superb example of Nicolas Party’s highly acclaimed pastel paintings. Both alluring and imposing, the nearly two meter long work commands attention, transporting viewers on a mesmerizing journey through a majestic mountain landscape. Party’s masterful manipulation of tones—from tranquil Arctic blues to rich cobalts and deep sapphires—imbues the work with movement and vibrancy, as the grandeur of the rocky tiered peaks pays tribute to the beauty and significance of the natural world.

Mountains was exhibited in 2023 as part of Party’s solo show at The Modern Institute in Glasgow, which featured a small selection of only twelve works, with the present painting being one of the largest. The exhibition title, Cretaceous, refers to the geological period that ended 66 million years ago due to a mass-extinction event. In this context, with all works in Cretaceous portraying scenes from the natural world, except for one of a sleeping infant representing the fragility of life, the exhibition can be understood as a response to humanity’s complex relationship with our environment, and the troubling impact we have on its future.

“I grew up in a little village in Switzerland called Villette. It is located in the vineyards between Lausanne and Montreux, with a view of Lake Geneva and the Alps. The landscape is quite spectacular: the light and the water change all the time.”

Sunset behind the Matterhorn / Image: blickwinkel / Alamy Stock Photo

While Party explains that works like Mountains do not depict any specific geographical location, but rather are imagined constructs born from a myriad of references within his mind, the silhouetted skyline of hilly peaks in the present painting evoke a number of iconic ranges. For example, the gently sloping summit of the tallest mountain in the background is shaped like the curved tip of a wizard’s hat, reminiscent of the iconic Matterhorn, celebrated globally as a symbol of the Alps’ grandeur. Situated on the border of Switzerland, it is also located in the country where Party was born in 1980.

Caspar David Friedrich, Giant Mountains Landscape with Rising Fog, c. 1819
Image: wikicommons

By selecting a panorama of mountains as the focal point of the present work, Party engages with one of art history’s most enduring and revered themes. Across both Western and Eastern traditions, mountainous landscapes have not only celebrated the beauty of the natural world but have also provided a medium for exploring humanity’s connection to the environment. In Western art, figures like Caspar David Frierich, John Constable, and Ferdinand Hodler, all showcase landscapes rich in emotion and atmosphere, capturing the immense power and grandeur of nature. In contrast, Eastern art—especially Chinese ink painting and Japanese ukiyo-e prints, such as Hokusai’s Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji (circa 1830-1832)—perceives mountains as profound symbols for philosophical reflection, embodying harmony and balance. These representations often depict mountains as sacred spaces, believed to be home to immortals and closely linked to the heavens.

Hokusai, South Wind, Clear Sky from the series Thirty-six views of Mount Fuji
Image: © The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Rogers Fund, 1914

In Mountains, Party distills the form and essence of the undulating peaks, intentionally omitting extraneous details. The colours are so vibrant that they seem almost artificial, while the undulating ridges, shaped by light and shadow, are defined solely by their variations in form, hue, and scale. This interplay flirts with abstraction, reminiscent of Georgia O’Keeffe’s expansive paintings of the sky and clouds from the mid-1960s (see for example, Sky above Clouds IV (1965) in the collection of The Art Institute of Chicago). But just as Party masterfully intertwines his interpretation of the landscape with its historical narrative, echoing the work of his predecessors, he seamlessly transitions it into a contemporary context. Indeed, as Galerie Magazine aptly notes, Party approaches his artmaking ‘like a spirited time traveler, gallivanting across eras, plucking inspiration from diverse styles and movements’. He ‘is a master of art historical sampling, producing eye-catching works in a language that is distinctly his own’. 

The brilliant colors in Mountains can be attributed to the Party’s choice of medium: pastel. This somewhat unconventional choice in the 21st century pays homage to the traditional medium’s long-standing history in art, cherished by artists in the Renaissance and notably favored by masters like Edgar Degas and Mary Cassatt, who appreciated the rich vibrancy and distinctive texture offered. With the softness of the medium standing in direct contrast to the ruggedness of the subject matter depicted, Party meticulously applies pigment directly to the canvas, skilfully blending colours with his fingertips, bringing the painting to life with a dance of rhythmic and dynamic movement. This is particularly evident in the small, blurred dots of detail that traverse across the surface of the mountains in the present painting, appearing like delicate balls of snow. His blending technique enhances the artwork’s intimacy, subtly revealing traces of the artist’s fingerprints upon closer examination.

“Oils allow you to endlessly retouch. With pastels it’s kind of the exact opposite. You can layer and layer, but you can’t start over. The nature of the medium is much more direct. Nothing dries or is wet – it stays exactly how it is.”

As the first mountain-themed painting by Party to be offered at auction, Mountains serves as a captivating testament to his remarkable ability to reimagine fundamental and traditional subjects, such as landscapes, through his unique artistic vision. Instead of striving for a faithful representation of nature, Party’s emphasis is more on the translation and transformation that occurs through the use of color, materials, and composition. By seamlessly blending elements of realism with fantasy, Party creates a bridge between the natural environment and the viewer’s imagination, offering a fresh perspective to appreciate the beauty around us.

Rocks, 2014

Christie’s Hong-Kong: 29 May 2023
Estimated: HKD 11,000,000 – 18,000,000
HKD 16,710,000 / USD 2,133,228

NICOLAS PARTY (B. 1980) (christies.com)

NICOLAS PARTY (B. 1980)
Rocks, 2014
Soft pastel on linen
150×120 cm (59 x 47 1/4 inches)

“I paint an environment that belongs either to a time before or long after humanity, a time when human culture doesn’t affect the landscape.”

Landscape, 2016

Sotheby’s New-York: 16 November 2022
Estimated: USD 2,000,000 – 3,000,000
USD 2,349,000

Landscape | The Now Evening Auction | 2022 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

NICOLAS PARTY (B. 1980)
Landscape, 2016
Soft pastel on canvas
260 x 89.9 cm (102 ⅜ x 35 ⅜ inches)
Signed Nicolas Party and dated 2016 (on the reverse)

A luminous forest of sloping, saturated forms, Nicolas Party’s Landscape reenergizes the landscape genre, constructing its own uncanny universe of bold hues and enveloping natural forms stripped of extraneous detail. Known for his immersive and color-saturated paintings and murals, Swiss-born artist Nicolas Party manipulates the universal and familiar language of traditional painting genres to produce complex and layered atmospheres, transforming the natural world into abstract biomorphic shapes. Beloved by both critics and the public, Party’s artwork has been displayed within esteemed institutions including the Musée Magritte, Brussels; the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C.; Dallas Museum of Art; Centre Culturel Suisse, Paris; Swiss Institute, New York and most recently in a major career retrospective at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.

Landscape’s hues pulsate with chromatic energy, dancing between candied shades of pink, green, and yellow and moody tones of indigo and emerald. The brilliant and vivified forest stands in striking contrast to the deep midnight of the sky, giving rise to a surreal, mythical mood. Landscape expands upwards with impressive verticality, its stature echoing the statuesque subjects it depicts. The perspective is skewed, flattened as overlapping shapes push towards the front of the canvas in vivid layers, and yet Landscape’s trees are rendered with uncanny volume and shading, an exaggerated smoothness in the curves of the trunks and leafless branches that suggests a three-dimensional presence. Oscillating between depth and artifice, Landscape luxuriates in saturated color and lustrous form.

Landscape, 2016

Christie’s London: 13 October 2022
Estimated: GBP 500,000 – 700,000
GBP 1,482,000 / USD 1,681,034

NICOLAS PARTY (B. 1980) (christies.com)

NICOLAS PARTY (B. 1980)
Landscape, 2016
Pastel on canvas
120 x 69.5 cm (47 1/4 x 27 3/8 inches)
Signed and dated ‘Nicolas Party 2016’ (on the reverse)

Spanning more than a metre in height, the present work is a sumptuous example of Nicolas Party’s celebrated pastel landscapes. Taking their place alongside his portraits and still lifes, these vivid, otherworldly visions represent a vital strand within his practice, drawing together the legacies of Surrealism, biomorphic abstraction and European landscape painting. Here, four sinuous trees shoot up from a pale, icy ground, each crowned by a deep green canopy. Mountainous forms loom large in the background, silhouetted against a deep purple sky. Party’s use of pastel is focused and precise, his colours and contours wrought with an almost painterly intensity. Executed in 2016, the work demonstrates his enduring interest in the natural world: a theme showcased in his 2017 exhibition sunrise, sunset at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C., and more recently explored in a series of works dedicated specifically to trees. ‘Throughout history, trees have been present in so many stories, legends, and religions’, he explains. ‘They are one of the most important elements in human culture’ (N. Party, quoted in statement for ‘Nicolas Party: Canopy’, online exhibition, Hauser & Wirth, 2020).

Landscape, 2015

Christie’s Hong-Kong: 30 November 2021
Estimated: HKD 12,000,000 – 22,000,000
HKD 23,050,000 / USD 2,958,390

NICOLAS PARTY (B. 1980) (christies.com)

NICOLAS PARTY (B. 1980)
Landscape, 2015
Soft pastel on linen
200×120 cm (78 3⁄4 x 47 1⁄4 inches)
Signed and dated ‘Nicolas Party 2015’ (on the reverse)

Landscape, 2021

Christie’s New-York: 8 November 2021
Estimated: USD 300,000 – 500,000
USD 3,270,000

NICOLAS PARTY (B. 1980) (christies.com)

NICOLAS PARTY (B. 1980)
Landscape, 2021
Pastel on linen
43×36 inches (109.2 x 91.4 cm)
Signed and dated ‘Nicolas Party 2021’ (on the reverse)

Realized in deep, rich tones, Landscape offers an otherworldly take on a more traditional scene. Much of the composition is taken up with crisply-rendered trees on impossibly straight trunks, bulbous green shrubbery, and an ombre sky that moves upward from pink to crimson. Instead of individual leaves or other details, Party creates a forest of smooth, shaded plants that resemble spoons, spatulas, and trowels more than deciduous foliage. A red-orange sun in the top center of the work is echoed by the circular trees and a shockingly green shrub positioned at the water’s edge. The scene treads the line between the cartoon and the surreal, with echoes of René Magritte or Giorgio de Chirico’s impeccable stylings. The foreground is filled by a reflective plane dotted with white rectangular strokes that recede into the distance and end at the far shore. As these orderly shapes travel further from the edge of the picture plane, they shrink in size until they resemble an extremely orderly grouping of whitecaps on an otherwise mirror-still pool. “I want to grab the audience directly and ‘lock’ them in the work as long as possible. When the viewer is inside the painting, my hope is that its complexity can be revealed. You stay inside it because you feel that there is still something there that you don’t see.” (N Party, quoted in J. Lee, “Nicolas Party”, BOMB, Issue 152, May 27, 2020). Using illusionistic tricks learned from a deep study of art history and his previous experience in 3-D rendering, Party creates an attractive force within his works that gives the feeling of space begging to be occupied. At once acidic and extraterrestrial while also warmly inviting, Landscape reads like a travel brochure for an undiscovered planet. Depicting and altering fantastic spaces is at the core of Party’s working methods.

Trees

Tree Trunks, 2015

Christie’s London: 15 October 2025
Estimated: GBP 800,000 – 1,200,000
WITHDRAWN

NICOLAS PARTY (B. 1980), Tree Trunks | Christie’s

NICOLAS PARTY (B. 1980)
Tree Trunks, 2015
Soft pastel on linen
150×80 cm (59 x 31 1/2 inches)
Signed and dated ‘Nicolas Party 2015’ (on the reverse)

A vivid hymn to nature, Tree Trunks is a spectacular example of Nicolas Party’s celebrated landscapes. Vibrant, sinuous bands of color shoot up the length of the canvas, casting their shadows on the floor below. Rendered in the artist’s signature pastel, rich hues of red, orange, pink and green gleam brightly against the darkness, near-painterly in their intensity.

Executed in 2015, Tree Trunks takes its place within one of Party’s most important bodies of work. Inspired by his childhood in Switzerland, he sees trees as fundamental to both art and life. In his hands they become vehicles for touring art history, evoking the legacies of Romanticism, European Modernism and twentieth-century abstraction. Radiant and alive, they inhabit surreal, timeless hinterlands, each glowing with hyperreal clarity. Held in the same private collection since its creation, the present work featured in Party’s exhibition at the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Montréal in 2022, where his pastel landscapes hung in concert with works by Alberto Giacometti and Ferdinand Hodler.

“I like the idea of walking through a forest made up of every single tree ever painted by humans … It’s in that forest I walk to find inspiration.”

Edvard Munch, Vampire in the Forest, 1916-1918. Munch Museet, Oslo. Digital image: Superstock / Bridgeman Images.

It was Hodler, along with Félix Vallotton and Hans Emmenegger, who first inspired Party’s interest in landscape painting. He deeply admired their depictions of the dramatic Swiss vistas in which he had spent his youth. While his practice would go on to encompass portraiture and still life, themes of nature would become central to his oeuvre. ‘Trees might be the object most frequently painted to represent the natural world, an essential symbol in cultures around the world’, he explains. ‘Today the tree is still the fundamental symbol of the anxiety that we have about the future of our planet’. Party purposefully depicts ‘an environment that belongs either to a time before or long after humanity’, envisioning ‘a time when human culture doesn’t affect the landscape’ (N. Party, quoted in S. Aquin et al., Nicolas Party, London 2021, p. 26). The subject has given rise to some of his most ambitious projects, including large-scale murals for the Dallas Museum of Art and the Marciano Art Foundation, both drawing upon his roots as a graffiti artist.

Georgia O’Keeffe, Bare Tree Trunks with Snow, 1946. Dallas Museum of Art.
Artwork: © Georgia O’Keeffe Museum / DACS 2025. Digital image: Dallas Art Association Purchase / Bridgeman Images.

For Party, trees are also intimately connected to the very act of image-making itself.

“One of the first things that you draw as a child are trees… Trees are nature’s alphabets.”

He has also spoken of the inspiration he derives from walking through the ‘forests’ of art history, finding comfort in depicting something with such a rich visual and cultural lineage. The present work sparks memories of Monet’s poplars, Munch’s foreboding forests and Klimt’s sinuous birches; there are echoes of O’Keeffe, Van Gogh and Magritte. The lessons of abstraction—Newman, Kelly, Stella and others—lurk in the shadows. So, too, do the pastels of Picasso, which inspired Party to commit himself to the medium in 2013. Though no humans are present in the work, the spirits of these artists lingers in their place. The trees quiver with an almost anthropomorphic charge, their branches bathed in the light of the past.

Winter Trees, 2017

Christie’s Hong-Kong: 29 November 2023
Estimated: HKD 11,000,000 – 18,000,000
HKD 18,525,000 / USD 2,378,311

21392-nicolas-party-winter-trees (christies.com)

NICOLAS PARTY (B. 1980)
Winter Trees, 2017
Soft pastel on linen
140×85 cm (55 x 33 3/8 inches)

Trees, 2014

Phillips Hong-Kong: 25 May 2023
Estimated: HKD 10,000,000 – 15,000,000
HKD 12,550,000 / USD 1,601,848

Nicolas Party – Disruptors: Evening Sal… Lot 319 May 2023 | Phillips

The present work eloquently showcases the distinctive attributes of pastel’s supple pigment and Party’s adept application, as he simultaneously celebrates classic conventions while also shakes up viewer expectations and pushes boundaries within the genre itself. In this composition, pastels serve as a conduit for the seamless geometric portrayal of trees, while concurrently facilitating the meticulous execution of details within the grassy backdrop. The matte texture gives rise to a vibrant, saturated surface that communicates three-dimensionality through gentle nuance, a hallmark of Party’s oeuvre. Employing his fingertips to apply the delicate chalk material, Party finds himself captivated by the immediate and lively qualities inherent in the powdery pastel pigment.

“You can layer and layer, but you can’t start over. The nature of the medium is much more direct. Nothing dries or is wet – it stays exactly how it is.”

Moreover, the immediacy and responsiveness of pastel as a medium align with Party’s artistic practice. The direct contact between the artist’s hand and the pigment creates an intimate and organic connection to the artwork, allowing Party to imbue his pieces with a distinct sense of dynamism. This energy engenders an inherent versatility that complements the detached fantasy in Trees, while facilitating the achievement a wide spectrum of vibrant colours and richly saturated tones, and ultimately, granting the work emotional depth.

The present work’s geometric abstractions are redolent of the vacant, eerily smooth renderings of 3D forms, a nod to Party’s decade spent working as a computer animator and lifelong interest in technology, which has held a conspicuous influence.

“We’re so used to seeing computer-generated images now that it has a big impact on how we see all images. I think this describes the look my figures have. I see them almost as like a thin layer of something and I don’t know what is behind them.”

Palette is paramount for Party, bestowing a conduit for his exploration of form, emotion, and the human experience. His chromatic choices contribute significantly to the evocative nature of his compositions as they intertwine with his artistic vision to create compelling visual experiences. As such, color serves as a critical component in his exploration of form, space, and emotion. By employing a harmonious balance between vibrant hues and subdued tones, Party adeptly establishes a dialogue between contrasting elements, enabling his work to captivate the viewer and elicit cerebral interactions between pigment and audience. Party’s dexterity in color application is further exemplified by his ability to manipulate tonal values, gradients, and color relationships, leading to the creation of strikingly atmospheric and immersive scenes.

Trees, 2019

Sotheby’s London: 1 March 2023
Estimated: GBP 900,000 – 1,300,000
GBP 1,439,500

Trees | The Now Evening Auction | | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

NICOLAS PARTY (b. 1980)
Trees, 2019
Soft pastel on canvas
85.9 x 155.7 cm (33 7/8 x 61 1/4 inches)
Signed Nicolas Party and dated 2019 (on the reverse)

Trees by Nicolas Party conjures a surreal dreamscape, executed in subtle modulations of soft pastel hues. Transporting the viewer into an unknown landscape of Party’s visual universe, the present work reimagines the natural world and the landscape genre. In the present work, a screen of trees occupies the foreground, their smooth elongated forms growing from a swaying field of grass and wildflowers. Behind the trees a pink river flows, beyond which a silhouette of a dense forest graces the skyline. Stripping the forms of their textural details, Party abstracts the natural world into geometric shapes; the trees become abstracted into elongated tendrils, whilst the river becomes a single solid mass of color. Engaging in a dialogue with the traditions of representation, abstraction and imagination, Party constructs a playful yet complex visual language.

Houses

Houses, 2015

Phillips London: 3 March 2022
Estimated: GBP 1,100,000 – 1,500,000
GBP 1,474,500

Nicolas Party – 20th Century & Contemp… Lot 10 March 2022 | Phillips

Executed in intensely saturated hues of reds, hot oranges, yellows and brilliant white, Houses is a rare example of Nicolas Party’s distinctive architectural landscape. One of only two such works executed in the artist’s signatory soft pastel, the present work was included in the 2015 exhibition Nicolas Party: Boys and Pastel, significant as the first major exhibition focused on the artist to be presented in the United Kingdom, and for the emphasis that it placed on Party’s installation practice. Reconfiguring the rooms of Inverleigh House into vibrant painted environments, Party encouraged viewers to read these works as sculptural environments that interact closely with the space around them. Rendered with exceptional fluidity, Houses clearly speaks to this, Party’s smoothly rendered volumetric forms here presenting a distillation of the dialogue between color and shape shaping our physical environment.

In its careful balance of symmetry, proportion, and the orderly arrangement of semi-circular arches, columns, and hemispherical domes, Houses draws on an instantly recognizable architectural vernacular established during the Florentine Renaissance. Themselves referring back to the ordered proportions of Classical architecture, these principles radically redefined the 15th century urban environment, and approaches to its artistic representation. Transforming pictorial space, Giotto di Bondone’s frescos most succinctly capture this in the sense of weight and volumetric form that they possess. It is certainly possible to trace the crisp line of Giotto’s stacked houses, and the subtle repetitions of curved arches and flat-fronted volumes here, Party using these architectural elements as a way of exploring ‘the moment where an element that is very recognizable [..] switches into becoming what we would call a shape.’

Houses, 2015

Phillips New-York: 17 November 2021
Estimated: USD 400,000 – 600,000
USD 1,724,000

Nicolas Party – 20th Century & Cont… Lot 42 November 2021 | Phillips

The present work installed at Nicolas Party, Boys and Pastel, Inverleith House, Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, May 2 – June 21, 2015. Image: Courtesy of Inverleith House, Edinburgh, Photo: Michael Wolchover, Artwork: © 2021 Nicolas Party

Notably foreshadowing Party’s preoccupation with arches, Houses eloquently captures the influence of classical architecture on his practice. Recently in 2020, the artist further elucidated in reference to the present work, “I did two pastels a while ago with arches, the only two pastels with houses. I still want to go back to that, but I haven’t yet. The Karma show [in 2017] was the first time that I used arches, and as soon as I did, I was like, ‘Oh my God, that’s very powerful and it works extremely well.’”

Portraits

Portraits, 2015

Sotheby’s London: 4 March 2025
Estimated: GBP 400,000 – 600,000
GBP 266,700 / USD 341,376

Portraits | Modern & Contemporary Evening Auction | 2025 | Sotheby’s

NICOLAS PARTY (b. 1980)
Portraits, 2015
Soft pastel on linen
150×170 cm (59×67 inches)
Signed and dated 2015 (on the reverse)

Portrait from 2015 stands as a paradigmatic example of Nicolas Party’s unparalleled interrogation of portraiture. Executed with a strikingly saturated, high-contrast palette of acid green and bold azure, the present work features a twinning duo whose dynamic arrangement and graphic clarity immediately command the viewer’s attention. In Portrait, Party’s deliberate economy of form, achieved through pared-down compositions and a meticulous application of pastel, establishes a tactile surface that oscillates between the immediacy of representation and the ambiguity of abstraction. Central to Party’s technique is a methodical reduction of extraneous detail, thereby foregrounding the inherent qualities of shape, color, and texture. His background as a 3-D animator is evident in the bold, flat forms that structure the composition, lending the work a distinctive, almost digital precision. This disciplined approach to mark-making creates a surface rich in nuance, where each stroke contributes to an overall sensory and emotional resonance.

Through its layered, expressive mark-making, Portrait embodies a visual palimpsest; one that invites a re-examination of traditional iconography through a lens informed by surrealist and modernist sensibilities. Educated in Lausanne and at The Glasgow School of Art, Party’s classical training is evident in his rigorous approach to composition and technique, as he subverts the notion of originality by re-engaging with familiar subjects.

“I’m trying to work with subjects that are not original. Subjects that have been, and still are, painted all the time. Like a portrait, or a cat. What fascinates me about these topics is their capacity to regenerate themselves at any period of history, and still be relevant to us. I also believe some subjects are always painted because they are an infinite source of meaning and inspiration.” 

In Portrait, Party’s synthesis of diverse artistic influences becomes apparent. His compositions draw upon the enigmatic constructs of René Magritte and Giorgio de Chirico, the transformative reworkings of Pablo Picasso, and the precise figuration exemplified by Hans Emmeneger and Alex Katz. Indeed, Party’s encounter with Pablo Picasso’s Tête de Femme (1921) at the Foundation Beyeler, which he describes as a revelatory moment, has since informed his subsequent reconfigurations of the genre. Moreover, subtle allusions to ancient Egyptian funerary portraiture further enrich the work’s complex visual vocabulary, drawing from a rich cultural history of representation. Party consolidates his varied influences into a singular, resonant visual statement. The deliberate interplay between vivid, saturated colors and the restrained, calculated composition invites a re-assessment of the portrait as both a historical tradition and a contemporary vehicle for self-expression.

Left: Pablo Picasso, Tête de Femme, 1921 © Successsion Picasso/DACS, London 2025
Right: Amedeo Modigliani, Self Portrait, 1919, Museu de Arte Contemporanea da Universidade de Sao Paulo, Sao Paulo, Brazil © Bridgeman Images 2025

The present work not only encapsulates the transformative potential of materiality and technique but also reaffirms Party’s stature as a leading exponent of modern figurative art, whose imaginative recontextualisations continue to challenge and expand the boundaries of established artistic practice. Beyond the painted canvas, Party’s oeuvre extends to large-scale public murals, sculptures, and installations, each work an immersive exploration of color and intervention. Party’s work has been widely exhibited in leading institutions worldwide over the last ten years, including solo presentations at the Museum Frieder Burda in Baden-Baden (2023-24), the Frick Collection in New York (2023-24), the Masi Museo d’arte (2021-22), the Magritte Museum in Brussels (2018), the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C. (2017), the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles (2016), and the Modern Institute in Glasgow (2016). Such critical and institutional recognition underscores his rapid ascent within the global art scene and his capacity to redefine contemporary figurative painting.

Back with a Red Hat, 2017

Christie’s London: 7 March 2024
Estimated: GBP 500,000 – 700,000
GBP 453,600 / USD 575,165

NICOLAS PARTY (B. 1980), Back with a Red Hat | Christie’s (christies.com)

NICOLAS PARTY (B. 1980)
Back with a Red Hat, 2017
Soft pastel on linen
228 x 81.3 cm (89 3/4 x 32 inches)
Signed and dated ‘Nicolas Party 2017’ (on the reverse)

Sparkling with surreal wit, Back with a Red Hat is a monumental work that formed part of Nicolas Party’s extraordinary debut exhibition in New York. Rendered in the artist’s signature pastel medium, it depicts a semi-nude figure seen from behind, clad in a blue cloak, a wide-brimmed red hat and socks adorned with pom poms. This enigmatic apparition belongs to a series that Party made for the Metropolitan Opera’s 2017 premiere of Thomas Adès’ The Exterminating Angel. The opera was based on the 1962 Luis Buñuel film of the same name, which tells of a nightmarish dinner party whose attendees find themselves mysteriously unable to leave. Prior to opening night, the Met hosted its own imitation banquet for a selection of distinguished guests, who were required to attend in fancy dress. The present work and its similarly faceless companions were present at the feast, forming a disarming entourage around the bemused diners. Executed on a vast, larger-than-life scale, it is a virtuosic example of Party’s distinctive visual language, alive with theatrical intrigue.

After the dinner, the works remained on view at the Met in an exhibition entitled Dinner for 24 Sheep. Referencing the real livestock used in the opera, it followed on from Party’s previous series of immersive dining performances, including Dinner for 24 Elephants at the Modern Institute, Glasgow in 2011, and Dinner for 24 Dogs in 2015. For the Met dinner, the artist designed a marble table top featuring ghoulish inlaid images, and was present for part of the evening, sharing the role of ‘butler’ with New Museum director Massimiliano Gioni. Most guests had not seen the original Buñuel film.

Punctuated by lengthy gaps between courses, the dining experience purposefully placed them in the same dilemma as the characters in the story, questioning whether they were supposed to stay or depart. Back with a Red Hat and its companions stood mute, their backs resolutely to the scene. Like René Magritte’s bowler-hatted men—deeply admired by Party—they remained locked in a parallel dreamlike world, yielding no answers.

René Magritte, La Décalcomanie, 1966. Private Collection. Artwork: © René Magritte, DACS 2024. Photo: Photothèque R. Magritte /Adagp Images, Paris, / SCALA, Florence.

As well as capturing Party’s interests in Surrealism, the work demonstrates his long-standing debt to the work of Pablo Picasso. It was the artist’s 1921 pastel work Tête de femme that first inspired his own engagement with the medium. ‘I bought the postcard’, he recalls, ‘and went to the art store the next day to buy a pastel kit’ (N. Party, quoted in R. Vitorelli, ‘Interview Nicolas Party’, Spike, no. 44, Summer 2015). Party was particularly fascinated by the androgynous nature of Picasso’s pastel subjects: an influence borne out in the Met works, many of whom are ambiguous in gender. He was also entranced by the artist’s near-painterly use of the medium, exploiting its rich modulations of texture and color, and its inherent sense of dynamism. Here, the folds of the subject’s cape are exquisitely rendered, infused with movement. So, too, is the skin, which seems to glow from within. Though static and sentinel, the figure bristles with an uncanny sense of life, poised perpetually on the brink of turning around.

Two Portraits, 2016

Phillips Hong-Kong: 22 June 2022
Estimated: HKD 6,000,000 – 8,000,000
HKD 6,542,000 / USD 833,407

Nicolas Party – 20th Century & Contempo… Lot 16 June 2022 | Phillips

Fantastical, magnetic and lusciously vibrant, Swiss artist Nicolas Party’s captivating paintings are bricolages of art history. Engaging in dialogues with disparate epochs of art history, Party adapts pictorial elements from artists such as Felix Vallotton, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Rosabla Carriera, Giorgio Morandi, Milton Avery, and Georgia O’keeffe, culminating into his own idiom and formal vocabulary.

In true celebration of pastel’s unique tactile visual quality, Party utilizes intensely saturated, scintillating bright shades of citrus hues in Two Portraits, amplifying the physical presence of the two figures. The intense opacity of the colors contrasts the impermanence and fragility of soft pastel – a material that is so delicate and ephemeral, it could be blown away like colored dust in the wind.

Devoid of extraneous details, Party’s protagonists are androgynous, anonymous and timeless, varying only slightly in physiognomy. Embodying a unique sense of duality and ambivalence, these characters evoke tension between familiarity and strangeness. In Two Portraits, both protagonists wear crimson lipstick and lilac eyeshadow in classic Party fashion; the left figure gazes directly at the viewer, clad in a shade of rich orange, in contrast to the right figure in pale yellow, who glances to the side. Everything from their almost penciled in, thinly lined eyebrows to their sharp cupid’s bow and luminously highlighted cheeks heightens the ambiguity of their gender.

Left: Pablo Picasso, Tête de femme, 1921. Collection of Fondation Beyeler, Riehen/Basel
© 2022 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

A clear homage to Picasso’s original piece, the right figure from the present work shares unmistakable characteristics with the former example –  from each character’s facial structure, to their almond shaped eyes, sharp contours, to even the faint highlight on the tip of their chins. Fascinated by Picasso’s enigmatic depiction of the human face, Party plays with the innate powder-like quality of the pastel medium. Working directly with his hands, the creative process is highly sensual and immediate. Party labours arduously over the painterly surface with his fingertips to reveal an immaculately rendered canvas that glows with a velveteen sheen that is unique to the material

Portrait, 2014

Christie’s New-York: 12 May 2022
Estimated: USD 300,000 – 300,000
USD 693,000

NICOLAS PARTY (B. 1980) (christies.com)

NICOLAS PARTY (B. 1980)
Portrait, 2014
Soft pastel on canvas
100×90 cm (39 1⁄4 x 35 1/2 inches)

Although Nicolas Party’s Portrait (2014) remains grounded in the visceral relatability of the human visage, the canvas emanates a fantastical, mysterious energy. An air of the delightfully bizarre permeates the work’s aura, perhaps originating in the shock of tangerine hair or in the white bulge of the figure’s searching gaze. A cursory glance yields an almost absurd visual inventory: an orange cloud of hair, a bulbous right ear, arching brown eyebrows, two swaths of cranberry eyeshadow, piercing cerulean eyes, an elongated nose, and pursed crimson lips. Individually, these elements may appear cartoonish, each one veering slightly into the optically hyperbolic. However, when Party’s unique eye for color is combined with his masterful pastel technique, the flame-haired subject’s striking features are elevated to the plane of sublime and unusual elegance.

Portrait exemplifies the way Party straddles the familiar and the otherworldly, a difficult balance that he realizes through creative uses of color. The artist’s embrace of warm, vivacious hues in the figure’s hair, eyelids, and mouth comes dangerously close to dominating the work, only to be expertly tempered by a solid backdrop of the lightest periwinkle and a simple baby-blue shirt. These cooler colored elements of the piece maintain the equilibrium of the work’s palette, while their porcelain-like flatness allows them to sink into the background and funnel the viewer’s attention to the figure. This daring blend of shades from opposite ends of the color spectrum imbues the work with a unique dynamism and intrigue. Party’s technical skill in pastels shines in the range of textures he is able to manifest in the figure’s face. He elicits a fleshy softness from the cheek’s gentle curve, then teases out a moist shine from the rounded swell of the eyes. The mounded chin presents a study in gentle shadow and light, while the carved lines of the nose bridge and cupid’s bow achieve a stark sculptural stiffness.

Back with Gloves, 2017

Christie’s London: 15 October 2021
Estimated: GBP 300,000 – 500,000
GBP 814,500

NICOLAS PARTY (B. 1980) (christies.com)

NICOLAS PARTY (B. 1980)
Back with Gloves, 2017
Soft pastel on linen
228×80 cm (89 3/4 x 31 1/2 inches)
Signed and dated ‘Nicolas Party 2017’ (on the reverse)

Towering over two metres in height, Back with Gloves is a monumental apparition that formed part of Nicolas Party’s eventful debut exhibition in New York. Featuring a naked figure viewed from behind—wearing only striped gloves, socks and a hat—it belongs a series made for the Metropolitan Opera’s 2017 premiere of Thomas Adès’ The Exterminating Angel. The opera was based on the 1962 Luis Buñuel film of the same name, which tells of a nightmarish dinner party whose attendees find themselves mysteriously unable to leave. Prior to opening night, the Met threw its own surreal banquet for a selection of distinguished guests, who sat in fancy dress among Party’s faceless portraits. The artist had also designed a marble table top featuring ghoulish inlaid images, and was present for part of the evening, sharing the role of ‘butler’ with New Museum director Massimiliano Gioni. Party had played with similar immersive dining performance formats in his early work Dinner for 24 Elephants at the Modern Institute, Glasgow, in 2011, and the subsequent event Dinner for 24 Dogs. At the Met, the works remained on view under the title Dinner for 24 Sheep, referencing the real livestock that featured in the opera.

Aside from its theatrical origins, Back with Gloves captures Party’s virtuosic engagement with pastel: his signature medium since 2013. His interest was sparked by seeing Pablo Picasso’s 1921 pastel Tête de femme in an exhibition: ‘I bought the postcard’, he recalls, ‘and went to the art store the next day to buy a pastel kit. I had never tried working with pastel before and started to copy Picasso’s portrait’ (N. Party, quoted in R. Vitorelli, ‘Interview Nicolas Party’, Spike, no. 44, Summer 2015). Party was particularly fascinated by the androgynous nature of Picasso’s pastel subjects: an influence borne out in the present work and its companions, many of whom are ambiguous in their gender. His attraction to the medium, by contrast, was fuelled by quite the opposite impulse: for him, pastel stood in antithesis to the fluid, mercurial qualities of oil, forcing a direct commitment to each and every mark. Back with Gloves also captures Party’s close dialogue with the language of Surrealism. In the nineteenth century, the device of Rückenfigur—painting the figure from behind—had been used to encourage the viewer to immerse themselves within the canvas: Caspar David Friedrich’s Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog (1818) remains a prime example. For the Surrealists, however, obscuring the subject’s face often served to widen its distance from reality, positioning it in an alternative, dreamlike universe. Such was the case with René Magritte: an artist whom Party deeply admires, and whose bowler-hatted avatars are eerily invoked in the present work. In the context of the Met dinner, the figures with their backs to the diners served to enhance the event’s strange sense of mystery: most guests had not seen the original Buñuel film, and throughout the evening—which was punctuated by lengthy gaps between courses—many were placed in the same quandary as the characters in the story, questioning whether they were supposed to stay or leave. The present work continues to exert the same effect upon the viewer: at once entrancing and disarming, it summons a world of theatrical intrigue, where nothing is quite as it seems.

Portrait, 2015

Sotheby’s Hong-Kong: 19 April 2021
Estimated: HKD 2,900,000 – 3,900,000
HKD 5,015,000 / USD 645,746

Nicolas Party 尼古拉斯・帕蒂 | Portrait 肖像 | Contemporary Art Evening Sale | 2021 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

NICOLAS PARTY (b. 1980)
Portrait, 2015
Pastel on canvas
150×140 cm (59 x 55 1/8 inches)
Signed and dated 2015 on the reverse

Portrait from 2015 exemplifies Nicolas Party’s whimsical, quasi-Surrealist paintings that are driving his meteorically rising profile in the global art scene. With its comic-book graphic strangeness and vivid saturated high contrast palette, Portrait is a fantastical fusion of diverse influences that range from René Magritte, Giorgio de Chirico, Pablo Picasso, Hans Emmeneger, and Alex Katz, to the late Egyptian sarcophaguses where portraits were depicted on coffin exteriors. Most uniquely, Party’s experience of working for a decade as a 3-D animator infuses his paintings with a flat and intensely graphic sharp-edged quality, translating the tradition of portraiture into a wholly contemporary vernacular. By paring down his compositions and stripping his subjects of extraneous details, Party focuses on the interrogation of medium, shape, color, and composition, building a singular visual lexicon grounded in the act of painting itself and the possibilities of material – that of pastel in particular.

Sculptures

Speaker, 2017

Phillips New-York: 14 May 2025
Estimated: USD 150,000 – 200,000
USD 228,600

Nicolas Party Modern & Contemporary Art Day Sale, Afternoon Session

Nicolas Party’s Speaker, 2017, comes from a notable commission for Modern Art Oxford in which the artist created a series of five monumental heads honoring the contributions of women to the British city. Upon visiting, Party was struck by the abundant male symbolism throughout Oxford, from the statues of influential men to the ancient, male-dominated academic culture of the city. The present example responds specifically to the Heads of the Emperors, carved stone busts on the railings of the Sheldonian Theatre. Painted in Party’s distinctive, reduced style, the head acknowledges women’s achievements without overtly referring to a specific individual.

Heads of the Emperors, Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford. Image: Gartland / Alamy Stock Photo

The title of the present work, Speaker, aptly conveys agency and visibility, but it also notes a literal function of the sculpture. Hollow inside, the sculpture originally contained a speaker that played a site-specific sound installation produced by EMPRES, an electronic music collective from Oxford University.

Collaborating with the artist, the group created music in response to the work that was then played through the sculptures at Modern Art. The immersive soundscape honored pioneering academics such as Mary Beard and Susan Wollenberg and local organizations such as the Hurst St Press, an independent printing press and publishing house, and Jackdaws FC, an East Oxford-based women’s football team. A unique experimental project for the artist, Speaker is an exceptional example of Party’s contribution to contemporary art.

“For a while I wanted to paint heads… Almost all of the sculptures from antiquity were painted, and there is something interesting about paint being applied to a sculptural surface. With this work I wanted to start with a simple head shape, something between a doll and an antique carved head, or a millinery dummy, which are really quite beautiful, and then paint one of my portraits into that three-dimensional surface.”

To create the present work, Party digitally modeled the figure’s head before having it rendered in metal and wood. The bust was then hand-plastered and painted by Party himself in-situ at the gallery. The performative act of working on-site and in collaboration with the electronic music collective led an exhibition critic to remark: “Speakers is suggestive of a novel phase in the artist’s production that draws inspiration from the performance and collaborative aspects of his earlier career as a graffiti artist.” 

Works on Paper

2026 Auction Results

Landscape, 2013

Christie’s London: 7 March 2026
Estimated: GBP 40,000 – 60,000
GBP 127,000 / USD 169,660

NICOLAS PARTY (B. 1980), Landscape | Christie’s

NICOLAS PARTY (B. 1980)
Landscape, 2013
Watercolor on paper
76 x 56.2 cm (29-7/8 x 22-1/8 inches)

2025 Auction Results

9 lots sold at auction in 2025 for a turnover of USD 655,025. With 4 lots failing to sell, the sell-through rate is 69%. The highest price in 2025 was achieved by Trees, a work on paper dated 2020, that sold at Phillips, in New-York, on 21 November 2025 for USD 165,100.

2025 Top 3 Lots

3 lots sold for more than USD 100,000, generating a cumulative turnover of USD 400,505, representing 85.8% of the total turnover for 2025.

#1. Trees, 2020

Phillips New-York: 21 November 2025
Estimated: USD 40,000 – 60,000
USD 154,800
WORK ON PAPER

Nicolas Party Modern & Contemporary Art Day Sale, Afternoon Session

#2. Trees, 2020

#3. Still Life, 2014

#4. Trees, 2024

Christie’s Hong-Kong: 26 September 2025
Estimated: HKD 500,000 – 800,000
HKD 635,000 / USD 81,620
WORK ON PAPER

NICOLAS PARTY (B. 1980), Trees | Christie’s

NICOLAS PARTY (B. 1980)
Trees, 2024
Soft pastel on pastel card
49.9 x 33 cm (19 5/8 x 13 inches)
Signed and dated ‘Nicolas Party 2024’ (on the reverse)

#5. Untitled (Christmas Card), 2018

K Auction Seoul: 22 January 2025
Estimated: KRW 68,000,000 – 90,000,000
KRW 78,200,000 / USD 54,660
WORK ON PAPER

REPEAT SALE

Christie’s Hong-Kong: 27 September 2024
Estimated: HKD 150,000 – 350,000
HKD 604,800 / USD 77,740
WORK ON PAPER

NICOLAS PARTY (B. 1980), Untitled (Christmas Card) | Christie’s

NICOLAS PARTY (B. 1980)
Untitled (Christmas Card), 2018
Acrylic on card
18.7 x 13.8 cm (7 3/8 x 5 3/8 inches)
Signed, dated and inscribed ‘Merry Christmas and Happy New Year 2019 Conor! Nicolas Party’ (on the reverse)

#6. Untitled, 2020

K Auction Seoul: 19 March 2025
Estimated: KRW 58,000,000 – 80,000,000
KRW 66,700,000 / USD 45,955
WORK ON PAPER

NICOLAS PARTY (B. 1980)
Untitled, 2020
Acrylic and watercolor on paper, acrylic frame
19 x 13.5 cm (7 1/2 x 5 3/8 inches)
Signed on the reverse

#7. Landscape, 2012

Christie’s New-York: 15 May 2025
Estimated: USD 30,000 – 50,000
USD 40,320
WORK ON PAPER

NICOLAS PARTY (B. 1980), Landscape | Christie’s

NICOLAS PARTY (B. 1980)
Landscape, 2012
Watercolor on paper
25.4 x 34.8 cm (10 x 13 7/8 inches)
Signed and dated ‘Nicolas Party 2012’ (on the reverse)

#8. Two works, 2012

Phillips London: 13 March 2025
Estimated: GBP 10,000 – 15,000
GBP 12,700 / USD 16,465
WORK ON PAPER

Nicolas Party Modern & Contemporary Art: Online Auction, London

#9. Portrait, 2015

Phillips Hong-Kong: 29 March 2025
Estimated: HKD 100,000 – 150,000
HKD 120,650 / USD 15,500
WORK ON PAPER

Nicolas Party New Now: Modern & Contemporary Art and Design

Lots Passed

Untitled, 2010

Sotheby’s London: 1 August 2025
Estimated: GBP 7,000 – 10,000
PASSED

Untitled | Contemporary Discoveries | 2025 | Sotheby’s

NICOLAS PARTY (b. 1980)
Untitled, 2010
Graphite on paper
21.3 x 16.8 cm (8 5/8 x 6 5/8 inches)
Signed and dated 2010 (on the verso)

Trees (Red), 2018

Phillips New-York: 28 February 2025
Estimated: USD 180,000 – 250,000
PASSED

Nicolas Party – New Now: Modern & Contemporary Art, New York Friday, February 28, 2025 at EST | Phillips

NICOLAS PARTY
Trees (Red), 2018
Soft pastel on card
64.8 x 49.8 cm (25 1/2 x 19 5/8 inches)
Signed and dated “Nicolas Party 2018” on the reverse

2024 Auction Results

8 lots sold at auction in 2024 for a total turnover of USD 478,460.

#1. Landscape, 2013

Christie’s New-York: 22 November 2024
Estimated: USD 50,000 – 70,000
USD 151,200

NICOLAS PARTY (B. 1980), Landscape | Christie’s

NICOLAS PARTY (B. 1980)
Landscape, 2013
Watercolor on paper
56.5 x 76.4 cm (22 1/4 x 30 1/8 inches)
Signed and dated ‘Nicolas Party 2013’ (on the reverse)

#2. Untitled (Christmas Card), 2018

Christie’s Hong-Kong: 27 September 2024
Estimated: HKD 150,000 – 350,000
HKD 604,800 / USD 77,740

NICOLAS PARTY (B. 1980), Untitled (Christmas Card) | Christie’s

NICOLAS PARTY (B. 1980)
Untitled (Christmas Card), 2018
Acrylic on card
18.7 x 13.8 cm (7 3/8 x 5 3/8 inches)
Signed, dated and inscribed ‘Merry Christmas and Happy New Year 2019 Conor! Nicolas Party’ (on the reverse)

#3. Landscape, 2012

Christie’s London: 27 June 2024
Estimated: GBP 50,000 – 70,000
GBP 50,400 / USD 63,610

NICOLAS PARTY (B. 1980), Landscape | Christie’s

NICOLAS PARTY (B. 1980)
Landscape, 2012
Watercolor on paper
56.8 x 65.8 cm (22 3/8 x 25 7/8 inches)

#4. Still Life, 2010

Phillips New-York: 15 May 2024
Estimated: USD 25,000 – 35,000
USD 44,450

Nicolas Party – Modern & Contemporary A… Lot 409 May 2024 | Phillips

NICOLAS PARTY
Untitled, 2009
Watercolor on paper
41.8 x 59.3 cm (16 1/2 x 23 3/8 inches)
Signed and dated on the reverse

#6. Still Life, 2010

Seoul Auction: 28 May 2024
Estimated: KRW 50,000,000 – 90,000,000
KRW 59,000,000 / USD 43,305

NICOLAS PARTY
Still Life, 2010
Charcoal on paper
42×59 cm (16 1/2 x 23 3/8 inches)
Signed on the lower right

2023 Auction Results

6 lots sold at auction in 2023 for a total turnover of USD 813,791.

#1. Cat, 2016

Christie’s Hong-Kong: 29 May 2023
Estimated: HKD 1,200,000 – 2,200,000
HKD 3,024,000 / USD 386,049

NICOLAS PARTY (B.1980) (christies.com)

NICOLAS PARTY (B.1980)
Cat, 2016
Soft pastel on pastel card
79.8 x 59.8 cm (31 3/8 x 23 1/2 inches)

Phillips London: 3 March 2023
Estimated: GBP 60,000 – 80,000
GBP 177,800 / USD 213,266

Nicolas Party – 20th Century & Contem… Lot 135 March 2023 | Phillips

#3. Still Life, 2008-2009

Christie’s London: 14 October 2023
Estimated: GBP 20,000 – 30,000
GBP 60,480 / USD 73,335

NICOLAS PARTY (B. 1980), Still Life | Christie’s (christies.com)

NICOLAS PARTY (B. 1980)
Still Life, 2008-2009
Watercolor on paper
24 x 17.8 cm (9 1/2 x 7 inches)
Signed ‘Nicolas Party’ (lower right)

#4. Untitled, 2009

Sotheby’s Zurich: 9 June 2023
Estimated: CHF 20,000 – 30,000
CHF 63,500 / USD 70,344

Untitled | Swiss Fine Art | 2023 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

NICOLAS PARTY (b. 1980)
Untitled, 2009
Gouache on paper
59.5 x 42 cm
Signed Nicolas Party and dated 2009 on the reverse

#6. Still Life, 2008-2009

Christie’s London: 14 October 2023
Estimated: GBP 20,000 – 30,000
GBP 25,200 / USD 30,556

NICOLAS PARTY (B. 1980), Still Life | Christie’s (christies.com)

NICOLAS PARTY (B. 1980)
Still Life, 2008-2009
Watercolor on paper
24 x 17.8 cm (9 1/2 x 7 inches)
Signed ‘Nicolas Party’ (lower right)