Origins in Diriyah: A New Beginning for Sotheby’s and Saudi Arabia

Sotheby’s held its inaugural Origins auction in Diriyah, Saudi Arabia on February 8, 2025. It marked a historic moment for both the auction house and the region’s rapidly developing cultural sector. As the first international auction held in Saudi Arabia, it brought Sotheby’s new exposure in the Middle Eastern market and established new benchmarks for Arab artists. The $17.3 million sale presented 117 lots, of which 77 sold, resulting in a 66% sell-through rate by lot and 74% by value. The auction drew collectors from 45 countries, with nearly one-third of lots purchased by Saudi buyers and over 30% of participants under the age of 40.

The auction was intended as a litmus test for the Saudi market and coincided with Sotheby’s opening a new office in Riyadh’s Al Faisaliah Tower to underscore its long-term commitment to the region amid internal restructuring and cost-cutting measures in its Western operations.

Impressive Results from Arab Artists

The auction saw strong results for Arab artists, with new records set for Syrian artist Louay Kayali and Saudi artist Abdulhalim Radwi, while other key figures, including Mohammed Al-Saleem, Samia Halaby, and Saloua Raouda Choucair, exceeded their estimates.

Louay Kayali, Then What??, 1965, oil on canvas. Photo: Sotheby’s.

Leading the Arab art segment was Then What??, 1965, by Kayali which achieved a record-breaking $900,000, far surpassing the artist’s previous high of $341,080. The modernist painting depicts a group of eleven displaced figures, their huddled forms and upward gazes conveying a haunting sense of desperation and uncertainty. Flanked by veiled women clutching their children, the central male figure’s bowed posture echoes classical depictions of grief. Painted two years before the Six-Day War, the work meditates on exile, political upheaval, and the shared suffering embedded in the region’s collective memory.

Saudi artists also had a strong showing, with all four works on offer surpassing expectations. The late Abdulhalim Radwi’s Untitled, 1984, featuring a vibrant composition of women carrying traditional clay pots, achieved $264,000, exceeding its high estimate of $200,000. Radwi, a pioneer of Saudi modernism, regularly merged folkloric themes with Cubist and Expressionist influences, making this record-setting sale a significant moment for the Kingdom’s art history.

Mohammed Al Saleem, O' God, Honor Them and Do Not Honor an Enemy Over Them, 1937, oil on canvas. Photo: Sotheby’s.

Meanwhile, Mohammed Al-Saleem’s O’ God, Honor Them and Do Not Honor an Enemy Over Them achieved $660,000, more than tripling its high estimate of $250,000. A defining example of Al-Saleem’s signature Horizonism style, the work fuses abstract Arabic calligraphy with sweeping desert landscapes. The central inscription – a phrase deeply rooted in Saudi oral tradition – conveys resilience and national pride, while the horizon lines evoke the Kingdom’s transformation from its desert origins to modernity.

Samia Halaby’s Blue Trap (In a Railroad Station), 1977, sold for $384,000, nearly doubling its high estimate. The work belongs to Halaby’s Diagonal Flight period (1974-1979), during which she explored movement and speed through geometric abstraction. Inspired by her frequent train journeys between New Haven and New York while teaching at Yale, the composition captures the sensation of acceleration, with diagonal lines creating a dynamic visual rhythm. The work also evokes Halaby’s early memories of the Mediterranean Sea, linking motion to personal and historical displacement.

Samia Halaby, Blue Trap (in a Railroad Station), 1977, oil on canvas. Photo: Sotheby’s.

Anadol Strengthens Market Trajectory

Among the standout lots was Refik Anadol’s Machine Hallucinations – Space | Chapter II: Mars, a generative AI work that fetched $900,000, making it the highest-selling digital artwork of the evening and the fifth-highest lot overall. The result placed the piece behind Banksy ($1.2M), René Magritte ($1.2M), Fernando Botero ($1.02M), and a Michael Jordan game-worn jersey ($960K). Estimated at $800,000-$1,200,000, the work hammered slightly below its high estimate.

Refik Anadol, Machine Hallucinations – Space | Chapter II: Mars, 2021, Generative AI Data Painting, 6:00 Loop, 3850 by 2160 PX. Photo: Sotheby’s.

Anadol, a Turkish-born artist based in Los Angeles, has emerged as a leading figure in tokenized digital art. His work is rooted in machine learning and data visualization, and transforms raw datasets into immersive, fluid compositions. Machine Hallucinations – Space, the broader series from which the present work derives, was developed using millions of images from NASA’s space telescopes, reinterpreted through neural networks trained to simulate the act of "dreaming" about the cosmos. The result is a hypnotic, ever-shifting visualization of Mars.

Originally sold for $195,000 in 2021, the piece has since increased nearly fivefold in value, reinforcing Ethereum’s status as the primary platform for high-value digital art transactions. It was consigned by the collector @showsupnaked and acquired by the newly launched Bity Foundation, a philanthropic initiative. The transaction was confirmed by the foundation’s founder Romain Sabah who formally announced the acquisition on X.  

Anadol’s work has gained institutional recognition in recent years, with pieces acquired by major collections including MoMA, where his Unsupervised – Machine Hallucinations became the museum’s first blockchain-based acquisition.

Turrell Makes Footprint in Gulf

James Turrell’s The Light Underneath emerged as one of the major successes of the night, surpassing its high estimate of $180,000 to achieve a final sale price of $660,000, including buyer’s premium. The LED light installation, executed in 2006, sparked intense interest, with seven bidders driving the hammer price to $550,000. The competitive bidding coincided with a growing institutional focus on his practice in Saudi Arabia.

James Turrell, The Light Underneath, 2006, LED panels, glass wall, Element Labs Versa Drive C1 and SanDisk Extreme I I I 1 GB Compact Flash Card. Photo: Sotheby’s.

Turrell, one of the most renowned artists working with light and space, gained increased visibility in the region after unveiling his ambitious AlUla project earlier this year. The large-scale installation, now under development as part of the Wadi AlFann cultural venue, consists of a sequence of interconnected chambers carved into the desert landscape. The Origins auction result suggest that Turrell’s AlUla installation project has heightened regional collector interest in his work.

Sotheby’s Expands into Riyadh on Heels of Layoffs

The enthusiasm for contemporary art in Saudi Arabia reflects a broader shift in the global art market which Sotheby’s has strategically embraced by aligning its expansion with the Kingdom’s major cultural investments. However, the auction house’s opening of its new Riyadh office comes at a moment of significant internal restructuring. Sotheby’s has been aggressively reducing costs, laying off over 100 employees in late 2024, with some estimates suggesting an even higher number. These cuts, concentrated in the U.S., London, and Asia, followed a year of declining global auction sales and an attempt to slash $100 million from operating expenses.

While Sotheby’s continues to scale back in developed art markets, the investment in Saudi Arabia suggests a long-term commitment to cultivating relationships with high-net-worth buyers in the Gulf and positioning itself as a key player in the Kingdom’s rapidly developing art infrastructure.

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