The painting "The Conversation" by David Hockney, Paul Allen also owned paintings by Claude Monet, Paul Gauguin, Georgia O'Keeffe and Louise Bourgeois.
Less famous than Bill Gates, Paul Allen was a billionaire passionate about art and pop culture. This auction could bring in more than a billion dollars, a record.
All funds will be donated to charity.
Will an art collection cross the symbolic bar of one billion dollars? By auctioning in New York the works that belonged to the late co-founder of Microsoft , Paul Allen, the Christie's auction house is aiming for a historic record, symbol of a market that is panicking the counters despite a world shaken by crises.
Less known to the general public than Bill Gates, with whom he gave birth to Microsoft in 1975, Paul Allen was a jack-of-all-trades billionaire with a passion for pop culture, from Jimi Hendrix to Nirvana or Star Trek, whose objects he exhibited. in his museum in Seattle (northwest), his hometown.
Owner of several sports franchises, such as the Seattle Seahawks, he had also amassed a considerable art collection, which he used to loan to museums before his death in 2018.
500 years of art history
In 150 works, put up for sale Wednesday and Thursday at Christie's headquarters, at Rockefeller Center in Manhattan, the set retraces more than 500 years of art history, from Botticelli and Canaletto to Georgia O'Keeffe and Louise Bourgeois, via Claude Monet, Francis Bacon and Edward Hopper.
Unique, the assemblage is also unique for its value: several masterpieces are estimated at at least 100 million dollars, such as Les Poseuses, Ensemble (small version) (1888) by Georges Seurat, a pinnacle of pointillism, or a Montagne Sainte-Victoire (1888-1890) by Paul Cézanne, herald of Cubism.
A woman in front of one of the “False Starts” by painter Jasper Johns.
There is also Vincent Van Gogh's "Orchard with Cypresses," or a painting from the Tahitian period by Paul Gauguin, Maternity II (1899), which depicts his 17-year-old mistress, Pahura. This Tahitian period of Gauguin, one of the most sought after, has also become controversial because of the painter's relationships with teenage girls when he was staying on the island.
Expected sales record
Although he had fallen out with Bill Gates, Paul Allen had signed his Giving Pledge in 2009 and all sales will be donated to charities. His sister Jody Allen, who heads the Paul Allen Foundation, did not give details of the works that will benefit.
Christie's, controlled by the Artémis holding company of François Pinault, hopes in any case to mark the history of the art market by totaling more than a billion dollars. In the wake of the Macklowe collection, it would be a new record, named after a wealthy New York couple, which reached $922 million at competitor Sotheby's in the spring.
With these sales, and that of the portrait of Marilyn Monroe Shot Sage Blue Marilyn by Andy Warhol, which left in May for 195 million dollars, a record for a work of the 20th century, the current year could remain as one of the most expensive in history.
Another emblematic Warhol, White Disaster [White Car Crash 19 Times] (1963), representing a car accident and of which only three exist in this monumental format, will be sold on November 16 by Sotheby's, with an estimate of more than 80 million dollars.
Art, a new safe haven
The company, which belongs to Franco-Israeli billionaire Patrick Drahi, will auction for four days and says it expects the “biggest season ever” .
According to auction house experts, art is more than ever a safe investment in the eyes of the very wealthy, in a difficult economic context, weighed down by the war in Ukraine and the risk of recession. “Clients want to diversify their assets, to take advantage of the art and because they know that most works continue to increase in value over time,” Adrien Meyer, co-president of the Impressionists and Art department, told AFP. modern at Christie's.
'No sign of slowing down'
“There are more billionaires than masterpieces” available on the market, summarizes Adrien Meyer, and “the demand is very diversified” .
The vice-president of the Phillips auction house, Jeremiah Evarts confirms this trend: “We do not see any sign of slowing down”. However, he specifies that "a large number of collectors look towards the 20th century and perhaps feel more confident buying a Picasso, a Chagall or a Magritte, safe bets."
Phillips will notably put on sale on November 15 a painting by Marc Chagall from 1911, The Father , a work stolen by the Nazis and recently returned by France to the legitimate heirs, who have decided to part with it.
Seen in Le Figaro - Culture
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