More than 150 works will be offered for auction, including the painting “La montagne Sainte-Victoire” by French painter Paul Cézanne, estimated at more than 100 million dollars. The art collection of Paul Allen, co-founder of US giant Microsoft, will be the subject of a public sale in New York in November. All proceeds from the sale will be donated to charity, according to Christie’s auction house, which is organizing the event.
Died of cancer in 2018 at the age of 65, Paul Allen imagined, together with Bill Gates, the operating system for personal computers that would make the success of Microsoft, founded in 1975. He left the group in 1983, due to health problems but also due to a deteriorated relationship with Bill Gates, who would remain in office until 2000.
The current record for private collections was set last spring by the American couple Harry and Linda Macklowe, with $922 million at multiple auctions at Sotheby’s.
Paintings by Monet, Manet, Klimt or Richter
In addition to the Cézanne, it is listed among the Paul Allen trophies “Small False Start” by the American painter Jasper Johns, estimated at more than 50 million dollars, according to the New York Times. Christie’s has not communicated about other pieces, but a traveling exhibition mounted in 2016 based on the Paul Allen collection gives an idea of its wealth. We would find there paintings by Monet, Manet, Brueghel the Younger, Klimt, Hockney or Richter.
With this sale, which follows that of the Macklowe Collection and Andy Warhol’s “Shot Sage Blue Marilyn” portrait of Marilyn Monroe, which sold in early May for $195 million (a record for a 20th-century work), The current year could go down as one of the most significant in the history of the art market.
“The character of Paul Allen, source of inspiration, the extraordinary quality and diversity of the works and the destination of the proceeds from the sale to works create a unique combination that will make the Paul Allen Collection Sale an event of unprecedented magnitude. precedents. Christie CEO Guillaume Cerutti was quoted as saying in the statement.
Source: BFM TV
