Hans Bellmer's Auction Record Jumps 125% With $942,000 Sale

Hans Bellmer, Les Bas rayés (1959) sold for $942,000, more than three times the low estimate at Sotheby's in New York on November 20. It had a gaurantee. The oil on panel work has been traded twice in the past.

Bellmer is best known for his surreal and erotic photographs and drawings, often of a doll with mixed up body parts and later a real female body bound. Les Bas rayés is rare because it is a painting and because of its large scale. It measures 100cm x 100cm.

The artist and his friend, the philosopher Georges Bataille, clashed with the "headmaster" of Surrealism, André Breton, because they were more interested in the darker link between beauty and cruelty, ecstasy and horror than art inspired by dreams and the subconscious.

"Eroticism," according to Breton, "relates to a knowledge of evil and the inevitability of death. It is not simply an expression of joyful passion.”

The sale beat the artist’s previous auction record by $527,300, a 125% rise. Bellmer's previous record was set by Mille filles (1939), which sold for $414,700 at Sotheby's on September 17, 2025. The work had been traded 4 times in the past.