Sotheby’s June 25th session will reveal if bidders are just as famished for contemporary works. "We’ve got a lot of good things with great provenance in the sale," says the house’s deputy director, Alex Branczik. "We’re returning to classic postwar art, things that have not necessarily seen the spikes in value that we’ve seen in the contemporary market."

One such postwar prize is Yves Klein’s ANT 59, 1960, from his "Anthropométrie" series. Famously formed by the imprint of a female body in the artist’s patented YKB shade of blue, the canvas is estimated to go for between £300,000 and £400,000 ($445-593,000). Another work from the series, ANT 131, 1961, more than quadrupled its high estimate to fetch some £4,185,200 ($8.4 million) at Sotheby’s London last July, just months before the market went south.

London crowds have also been hot for work by Lucio Fontana, whose Concetto Spaziale, 1961, was one of the only works to earn a multimillion-dollar price in the February sessions, when it brought £4.4 million ($6.4 million) at Sotheby’s. Now Christie’s is getting in on the Fontana fun: The highlight of its postwar and contemporary evening sale on June 30 will be a sliced abstraction in a blazing shade of fire-engine red, Concetto spaziale, Attese, 1966 (est. £600-900,000; $890,000-1.3 million). The house also offers a compact but beautiful 1961 work scrawled in oil, lead pencil and wax crayon by Cy Twombly (est. £500-700,000; $741,000-1 million). Rich in the artist’s distinctive graffito, the 15¾-by-19¾-inch untitled piece comes from a collector who acquired it from Cologne’s premier gallerist and Twombly specialist, Karsten Greve, around 1990. "It’s small," concedes Christie’s Outred, "but it’s the best I’ve ever seen in that size and scale."

As for Phillips de Pury & Company’s July 2 evening sale, Michael McGinnis, the worldwide head of contemporary art at the firm, assured Art+Auction that "there are some exciting things in the pipeline;" but as the issue went to print the only major lot he could reveal was Kehinde Wiley’s faux-Renaissance figure painting, Passing/Posing (St. Helena), 2004 , which carries an estimate of £25,000 to £35,000 ($37-52,000).

A few days later, Christie’s rolls back the centuries, offering its Old Masters and 19th-century European art sale. The July 7 session features a connoisseur’s mix of periods and mediums; highlights range from a jumbo-sized 40-by-65-inch Pieter Brueghel, The Preaching of Saint John the Baptist in the Wilderness (est. £1-1.5 million; $1.5-2.2 million), to an Anthony Van Dyck portrait of the full-figured and sumptuously attired Mrs. Olivier St. John, later Lady Poulett (est. £800,000-1.2 million; $1.2-1.8 million). Christie’s is going out on a limb with its appraisal of the work, describing it as the finest Van Dyck to appear at auction in a generation. There’s also a striking 1874 page-sized drawing by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, which depicts Joseph Marcotte, the son of the artist’s friend and patron, Charles (est. £250-350,000; $371-519,000). Christie’s is no doubt hoping for a performance akin to the one another Ingres drawing pulled off at the Yves Saint Laurent-Pierre Berge mega-sale when it made €913,000 ($1.2 million).

Sotheby’s completes the London summer season with its Old Masters sale on July 8 that features work from the trove of Barbara Piasecka Johnson, of pharmaceutical company fame. Offerings include the exceptional 17th-century painting depicting the mythic struggles of Prometheus by Jusepe de Ribera (est. £800,000-1.2 million; $1.2-1.8 million). In this age of turbo-charged markets turned to dust, a terrifying portrait of the first man to play with fire and get burned seems an appropriate finale.

"London Sales Preview" originally appeared in the June 2009 issue of Art+Auction. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Art+Auction's June 2009 Table of Contents.