The Tamesis
A 1960s canvas by Pop master Roy Lichtenstein, from the collection of a legendary New York collector and dealer known for his patronage of Pop artists, could become one of the artist’s top works sold at auction.
anxious girl (1964) is estimated at $40 million to $60 million. If it reaches its high estimate, it will be his second-highest price at any public auction. The painting, from the collection of Holly Solomon and her husband Horace, will headline the auction house’s 20th Century Art Evening Sale on May 18.
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The news comes as Christie’s and Sotheby’s also announce other high-value lots (including a $53 million Wingate Collection at Sotheby’s and a $35 million Renoir Collection at Christie’s) as they aim to build excitement for May’s big sale. In December, both auction houses reported improved results for 2025, suggesting stabilization in the unstable auction market. Christie’s had global sales of $6.2 billion in 2025, up nearly 7% from $5.8 billion the previous year, while Sotheby’s boasted $7 billion, up 17% from 2024 and the strongest performance in the company’s history.
Lichtenstein’s auction record is $95.4 million Nurse (1964), 2015 at Christie’s, New York. The work was sold by a bidder who some speculate is the auction house’s head François Pinault; it has passed through the hands of esteemed collectors such as Peter Brant, Barbara Lee and Karl Strohe. His current second-highest auction price is $56.1 million, paid woman wearing floral hat (1963), repeats the Cubist style of Pablo Picasso. Seven of the artist’s top ten works at auction date from the first half of the 1960s.
According to the gallery, the work is one of only 10 works made between 1963 and 1965 that feature the female head. It shows female skin painted with Ben-Day dots, a printing method invented in the late 19th century and adapted by the New York artist, reproduced by hand on canvas. The woman’s face is modeled after that of a woman on the cover of DC Comics’ 1963 publication Girls’ Romance Issue 97, “Too Many!”
“anxious girl Sara Friedlander, chair of postwar and contemporary art, said in press materials: “This painting is a prime example of Roy Lichtenstein, painted in 1964 at the pinnacle of his career. Compositionally, the painting demonstrates the artist’s unique ability to distill complex visual cues into three core elements—line, color, and form—and to use them formally to convey profound human emotions through timeless love stories and comic book-inspired imagery.”
The Solomons were renowned art collectors including Claes Oldenburg, James Rosenquist and Andy Warhol. In 1966 she commissioned Warhol’s now famous nine portraits of her; she was also painted by artists such as Richard Artschwager, Robert Mapplethorpe and Robert Rauschenberg. one year later anxious girlLichtenstein depicts Solomon in the painting I’m… sorryonce owned by a collector and now in the collection of the Broad Museum in Los Angeles.
Lichtenstein and Pop Art will be in the spotlight at New York institutions in the coming months, with the Guggenheim Museum hosting “Pop: 1960 to the Present” and the Whitney Museum hosting a Lichtenstein retrospective opening this fall.
