An auction at Christie’s in New York of the art collection of Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, who died in 2018, raked in a record $1.62 billion on Wednesday and Thursday, with five works fetching more than $100 million each. a.
A sign that the art market continues to grow unabashed despite geopolitical and economic uncertainties, these five paintings sold out Wednesday night during a memorable evening at Manhattan’s Rockefeller Center.
This is Georges Seurat The Poseuses Together – Small Version sold for $149.2 million, Paul Cézanne The Sainte-Victoire mountain 137.7 million, Vincent Van Gogh orchard with cypresses 117.1 million, Paul Gauguin Maternity II 105.7 million and Gustav Klimt birch forest sold for $104.5 million.
“Going down in history”
The absolute record figure for an art auction was set Wednesday night at more than $1.5 billion. On Thursday night, the second part of the sale reached “only” 116 million dollars. In total over the two days, Christie’s announced an astronomical amount of more than 1,620 million dollars.
“The Paul G. Allen collection has attracted tens of thousands of visitors to Christie’s art galleries around the world and has gone down in history by setting a record for being the most expensive auction in history,” he rejoiced in a press release from the CEO of the New York house. Guillaume Ceruti.
The company controlled by French billionaire François Pinault’s holding company Artémis had announced that the entire amount of sales would be donated to charity. Despite his falling out with Bill Gates, his partner at the birth of Microsoft in 1975, the American billionaire Paul Allen, had signed his “Donation Pledge” in 2009, pledging to donate most of the fortune of the.
The value of this collection surpassed the previous record for the Macklowe collection, named after a wealthy New York couple, which fetched $922 million at Sotheby’s competition in the spring.
Source: BFM TV
