The auction of the painting and sculpture collection of Paul G. Allen, co-founder of Microsoft, has pulverized all the records of the art market this Wednesday, exceeding one billion dollars. The sale of the most important private collection belonging to a single owner is being held in two consecutive sessions at Christie’s in New York, but there is no need to wait for the auction, on Thursday morning, to unleash the hyperboles: the first sitting alone has far surpassed the previous record of $922 million, set six months ago at Sotheby’s by the collection of Harry and Linda Macklowe, whose divorce settlement included liquidating it. Made up of 150 pieces spanning 500 years of art history, from Botticelli to Hockney, the proceeds from the Allen collection will go entirely to charity, as the businessman and philanthropist wrote at his death in 2018. Allen founded with his friend Bill Gates the Microsoft company in 1975.
Together, the initial valuation of the 10 most important paintings in the group amounted to 765 million dollars, so it was no surprise that the blow of the mace awarded five paintings for more than that figure, including The Mountain Sainte-Victoire by Paul Cézanne, auctioned at 138 million, taxes included; a landscape of Arlès by Van Gogh for 117 million and the birch forest by Gustav Klimt for 105. More than double what the Austrian painting cost Allen in 2006, 40 million at the time. Klimt’s stock price has soared as well, from his previous record of $88 million for the second Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer.
All in all, the most valued piece in the bidding was a delicate painting by the Frenchman Georges Seurat, an 1888 version of The models (group portrait)considered a masterpiece of pointillism, which has reached 149.24 million dollars.
The auction of the Allen collection was destined to be, in Christie’s definition, “the largest and most exceptional in history”. If the definition is considered exaggerated, it can be affirmed, without a doubt, that it is the most expensive in history belonging to a single owner. An avid collector who personally chose the works, without resorting to advisers, and who established an intimate, daily relationship with them.
Oblivious to the ups and downs of the stock markets, even the pothole of the pandemic, the art market has once again revalidated itself this Wednesday as a safe haven, in addition to a rising value, which in 2021 alone moved 65,000 million. Several observers pointed out that the Christie’s auction could also be read as a market stress test: the prices, the Bloomberg agency pointed out on the eve of the auction, were high enough to make even billionaires think so, including Asian investors, the most emerging market niche that is growing more and more steadily. But judging by the results, if the financial simile of the strength test is accepted, the market, or business, of art is insultingly healthy.
This Wednesday’s auction consisted of 60 pieces, including an 1888 version of The models (group portrait), by the pointillist Seurat, with a starting price of 100 million and which finally reached 149; It is also one of the few paintings by the French painter in private hands. The offer was dizzying: sculptures by Giacometti, paintings by Magritte or Gauguin, by Jasper Johns or Georgia O’Keeffe, not to mention the regular of all auctions -for his enormous production- Picasso, or a Monet seascape that captures, deliquescent , the grand canal of Venice, with an estimated price between 45 and 65 million dollars. The Picasso portraying four round Rubensian bathers even seemed like a bargain, starting at between $600,000 and $800,000, compared to the rest of the works. Photography also hit the records: 12 million (four times the starting price) someone paid for Flatironthe iconic New York building captured in 1904 by Edward Steichen.
The businessman and philanthropist’s collection abounds with views of Venice, landscapes (they especially attracted him because he considered them “a way of looking abroad”); casual portraits like that of two conversationalists by Hockney, a group of young people by Lucian Freud or the forceful color of a painting by muralist Diego Rivera; not to mention the three studies for a self-portrait of the disturbing Francis Bacon. Bacon, Freud and Hockney as a trinity of psychological and aesthetic insight. Also women artists, very well represented in the Allen collection: Louise Bourgeois, O’Keeffe, among others. Through the five centuries that the great allen treasure art advances, it transforms itself by subsuming references and models. Today he makes history again.
All the culture that goes with you awaits you here.
subscribe
Babelia
The literary news analyzed by our best critics in our weekly newsletter
RECEIVE IT
#auction #collection #Paul #Allen #cofounder #Microsoft #smashes #records #art #market