Paul Allen Art Collection Auctionco-founder microsoftset a record $1,506 million at Christie’s in New York, where buyers briskly bargained and multiplied the estimated value of almost all works.
The Allen collection, spanning some 500 years of art history, was split over two days, with sixty high-value pieces on offer on the first evening, a total far in excess of the $922 million raised in the Macklow sale in May. The collection is by far the most expensive in history.
The most coveted works were those of the great Impressionist masters, and the best example was Les poseuses, ensemble Georges Seuretthe intimate image, rendered in his signature pointillism technique, sold for $149.24 million, five times the artist’s highest price.
Passed the $100 million mark Cezanne (Montaigne Saint Victoire137 million), and van Gogh (Verger with cypress117 million), and Gauguin (motherhood 2105 million) and Klimt (birch forest104 million), and they all set new milestones for their signatories.
Despite the lower price, they also emphasized the family portrait. Lucian Freud (86 million), one of the famous bridge scenes Claude Monet (64 million), abstract and colorful painting by Jasper Johns (55 million) and Venice canal scene, author Edward Manet (almost 52 million).
charitable purposes
From the start of the sale, interested parties were seen to bid systematically until nearly all of the artists’ entries were smashed, raising the question of whether the quality of the treasure Allen left or the will to impose mattered more. your desire for the proceeds to go to charity.
The concentration of those present – there were the main New York businessmen and even the tycoon François-Henri Pinault, according to The newspaper “New York Times– interrupted only at the end, when after the last blow of the hammer, more than 1,500 million were announced and an explosion of applause was heard.
The wait for the auction was also left to the public, who have been queuing in recent days to enter Christie’s headquarters at Rockefeller Center and see nearly 150 works from Botticelli to Hockney, who died in 2018, a businessman and considered a “visionary”, also in Art.
The Allen collection was the most expensive before the sale ended and will continue to rise in value tomorrow when the remaining 95 pieces are auctioned off, starting at estimated prices well below today’s $3,000 to $3,000 at the most three million.
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