In April and May 2026, Replica Shoes ’s will present a landmark selection from the Collection of Jean & Terry de Gunzburg. The sale series is led by Collection of Jean & Terry de Gunzburg – Design Masters, a dedicated single-owner auction on 22 April 2026. Bringing together approximately 125 works, the sale marks a once-in-a-generation moment for the design market: the most valuable single-owner design sale in Replica Shoes ’s history and the first standalone single-owner design auction to be staged at Replica Shoes ’s new home in the historic Breuer building.

Over more than four decades, Jean and Terry de Gunzburg have assembled one of the most seminal and dynamic private collections of 20th century art and design, the result of a shared endeavor guided by instinct, curiosity, and a profound sensitivity to form. Shaped largely within their New York home—which they describe as “New York on the outside, Paris on the inside”—the collection reflects a way of living in which objects were not merely acquired, but discovered: a dynamic mix of artists and designers whose works introduced new visual languages of line, color, texture and ornament, arranged by their friend, the renowned decorator Jacques Grange.

This collection reflects the vision of two titans of their respective fields. Terry de Gunzburg is widely regarded as one of the most influential creative figures in modern beauty, having spent fifteen years at Yves Saint Laurent Beauté, including a number of years as Creative Director, where she translated the couturier's artistic vision into groundbreaking cosmetics and created the iconic Touche Éclat concealer—one of the most enduring innovations in the industry. After working in close collaboration with leading photographers including Helmut Newton and Guy Bourdin, shaping the visual language of fashion imagery, she went on to found her own brand, By Terry, in 1998. Her sensitivity to color, refined through decades of creative work, became one of the defining instincts guiding the couple’s collecting.

Jean de Gunzburg, a molecular and cell biologist of international distinction, pursued a career at the forefront of scientific research, trained at the Pasteur and Whitehead Institutes, then holding a senior role at INSERM and the Institut Curie, where his work advanced understanding in molecular biology and oncology, before applying his expertise to the biotechnology sector. Together, Jean and Terry approached collecting with the same intellectual curiosity and instinct for discovery that defined their professional lives, assembling a dynamic and deeply personal collection distinguished by seminal artists and designers whose importance they often recognized well before the broader market.

At the heart of Collection of Jean & Terry de Gunzburg – Design Masters lies an extraordinary concentration of works by the critical figures who defined the most avant-garde movements in 20th century design. The collection traces a lineage of radical creativity, from the refinement of Art Deco to the expressive freedom of postwar organic modernism, showcasing the artists and designers who reshaped the language of form in their respective eras.

The collection displays a strong concentration of works by French artists and designers, reflecting Jean and Terry’s enduring affinity for Parisian modernity and the intellectual rigor of French decorative arts. The collection brings together iconic works by Claude and François-Xavier Lalanne, Jean Royère, Alberto Giacometti, Jean-Michel Frank, Alexandre Noll, André Groult, Eugène Printz, Paul Dupré-Lafon, Pierre Chareau, Marc du Plantier, Jean Dunand, Émile-Jacques Ruhlmann, and Armand-Albert Rateau, among others. Together, these masters chart the evolution of modern design as both sculpture and environment. Each work was selected not in isolation, but as part of a larger dialogue that unfolds throughout the de Gunzburg’s homes and their collection.

While design forms the aesthetic foundation of the de Gunzburg Collection, it exists in profound dialogue with masterworks of contemporary and modern art that share the same essential concerns with form, structure, and spatial presence. Artworks by Mark Rothko, Robert Ryman, Agnes Martin, Alexander Calder, Pablo Picasso, and Paul Klee introduce parallel investigations into abstraction and the expressive potential of line and color. Whether through Rothko’s immersive fields of luminosity, Martin’s disciplined geometries, Ryman’s subtle material investigations, or the pictorial innovations of Picasso and Klee, these works extend the collection’s central exploration of how visual language can shape emotional and physical space. Within Jean and Terry’s home, art and design were experienced as part of a unified environment, each deepening the presence of the other and reinforcing their shared belief that living with such works reveals their meaning over time.