The works, a selection of paintings, prints and works on paper by the likes of Bridget Riley, Patrick Heron, Terry Frost and Marc Quinn are expected to raise around £1.5m in total.
British Airways’ director of brand and customer experience Carolina Martinoli said: “We are fortunate to have been able to showcase a wealth of artists and creativity through our artwork collection, many of which have been a special part of the design of our lounges worldwide.
“During this unprecedented time we have made the decision to work with Sotheby’s to sell a number of pieces by artists including Bridget Riley and Damien Hirst. We look forward to them finding new homes with this sale.”
The chief lot in the consignment is Bridget Riley’s Cool Edge, a trademark stripe painting from 1982 which had previously hung in a members’ lounge at Heathrow Terminal 5.
The relatively large 4ft 8in x 4ft (1.42 x 1.21m) oil on linen was part of the artist’s ‘Egyptian Series’ for which adopted a palette derived from those used in ancient Egyptian tomb paintings – in this case violet, aquamarine, coral and yellow. Other examples from the series can be found in the Tate collection in London and the The Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Cool Edge will be offered with an £800,000-1.2m estimate at Sotheby’s ‘Rembrandt to Richter’ evening auction on July 28.
Other works which had previously hung in BA lounges or offices will appear at Sotheby’s online auction of Modern & Post War British Art which runs from July 20-30.
‘Sunglow’ by Terry Frost – estimated at £10,000-15,000 at Sotheby’s online auction of Modern & Post War British Art.
They include five screenprints from Bridget Riley’s 1971 Elongated Triangles series, each estimated at £4000-6000, and also a painting titled Sunglow from 1991 by Terry Frost that is pitched at £10,000-15,000.
Another lot is a Peter Doig’s Grasshopper Portfolio, a series of ten etchings drawn from the ground-level perspective of a grasshopper.
