A mirror-work piece by the late Iranian artist Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian sold for $844,800, approximately AED 3.1 million, at Christie’s inaugural art auction in Abu Dhabi on Sunday evening, November 1, 2026. Following nearly seven minutes of intense bidding, it became the auction’s most expensive lot.

Before the auction, Christie’s specialists had estimated the 2006 work, titled “Variations on the Hexagon,” at between $150,000 and $250,000. However, competitive bidding pushed the final price to more than three times the high estimate. According to the specialist website Artnet, the Abu Dhabi sale also set a new auction record for Farmanfarmaian, surpassing the previous record of $520,000 achieved in 2022 when “Shiraz (Design on Glass)” was sold at Tehran Auction.

Iranian artists among auction’s top-selling works

The event, titled “Mawasim,” meaning “Seasons,” and subtitled “20 Years of Modern and Contemporary Middle Eastern Art,” was held at The Abu Dhabi EDITION hotel. Marking the 20th anniversary of Christie’s entry into the UAE market with its first Dubai auction in 2006, it was the auction house’s first dedicated sale in the UAE capital. The evening featured 70 works by 58 artists from 13 countries and generated total sales of $8,940,800, approximately AED 32.8 million. This was Christie’s highest total for an evening sale of modern and contemporary Middle Eastern art in more than a decade.

Farmanfarmaian’s work was followed by “Composition” by Turkish painter Fahrelnissa Zeid, which sold for $524,800. Works by two other Iranian artists also ranked among the auction’s 10 most expensive lots. Ali Banisadr’s 2018 painting “Homo Deus” sold for $512,000, tying for third place with “Baghdad Café” by Iraqi painter Faisal Laibi Sahi, whose sale also set a world auction record for the artist. An untitled 2003 work by Iranian artist Farhad Moshiri sold for $230,400.

Ridha Moumni, chairman of Christie’s Middle East and Africa, and Marie-Claire Thijsen, head of the sale, said in a joint statement that more than 30 per cent of registrants were millennials or members of Generation Z, while 37 per cent had registered as new Christie’s clients. They said the breadth of bidding throughout the auction reflected growing international interest in Middle Eastern art and the strong potential of the region’s art market.

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The Story Behind the Sold Work and Monir Farmanfarmaian’s Legacy

The Farmanfarmaian work measures 183 by 130 centimetres and was created using mirrorwork, blue glass, reverse glass painting and plaster on wood. It is one of six large panels the Iranian artist produced at her Tehran studio after being commissioned by London’s Victoria and Albert Museum for the 2006 opening of the Jameel Gallery of Islamic Art. Another panel from the series is held in the museum’s permanent collection in London. The work sold in Abu Dhabi was previously exhibited at the Victoria and Albert Museum in 2006 and at Switzerland’s Zentrum Paul Klee in 2008.

Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian, born in Qazvin in 1922, developed a modern, abstract visual language by combining traditional Iranian mirrorwork, Islamic geometry and reverse glass painting. She described seeing the mirrored interiors of the Shah Cheragh shrine in Shiraz as a turning point in the development of her artistic style. As a young woman, she studied at Parsons School of Design and Cornell University in the United States. After the 1979 revolution, she lived in New York for many years before re-establishing her Tehran studio in the early 2000s. Her work has been exhibited at leading institutions including the Guggenheim Museum and New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). Since 2017, a permanent gallery bearing her name has operated at Tehran’s Negarestan Garden Museum. Farmanfarmaian died in Tehran in April 2019. Coinciding with the Abu Dhabi auction, a retrospective of her work is currently being held at Moderna Museet in Stockholm, Sweden.

A Packed Autumn and Winter for Abu Dhabi’s Art Scene

The “Mawsim” auction was held ahead of one of the most significant cultural and artistic seasons in the UAE capital. The inaugural Frieze Abu Dhabi international art fair will take place from November 19 to 22 at Manarat Al Saadiyat on Saadiyat Island. The opening day will be reserved for invited guests, with public access beginning on November 20. The Abu Dhabi Department of Culture and Tourism has also officially announced that Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, one of the emirate’s most important cultural projects currently nearing completion, is scheduled to officially open on December 11, 2026.