Fall art auctions begin with works from Sotheby’s late owner

The fall art auction season gets underway with Sotheby’s offering blue-chip works of art from the renowned collection of its late former owner, A. Alfred Taubman.

The two and a half hour auction saw strong bidding from America and Europe as well, but Asia’s acquisition of the Modigliani portrait underscores increasing purchasing power in the region. It also carried $15 million estimate.

But auction houses typically salivate over estates because bidders, ever seeking that tucked-away treasure, tend to pay premiums for masterpieces they haven’t seen in decades.

Taubman, who insisted on his innocence, died in April aged ninety one.

The portray, considered one of Modigliani’s final and dated 1919, went for $forty two.eighty one million far above pre-sale estimates in extra of $25 million.

Georgia O’Keeffe’s floral “Pink and Green (Pink Pastelle) fetched $2.5 million, well above a high estimate of $1.8 million”.

“Paulette Jourdain” depicts the maid and later lover of his art dealer, Leopold Zborowski.

Dealer Richard Feigen told reporter Kelly Crow of the Wall Street Journal after the auction that too numerous works were bought in recent years by Taubman – who was the primary owner of Sotheby’s before going to jail for price-fixing in 2002 – and thus were not particularly fresh to collectors.

Another highlight was Willem de Kooning’s 1976 landscape “Untitled XXI” sold for $24.89 million, scraping its lowest pre-sale estimate of $25 million. It was one of the Italian artist’s last paintings. It was one of Modigliani’s last portraits before his death in 1920 and Taubman acquired the work from the Acquavella Galleries in 1983, the same year he acquired Sotheby’s with the help of several private investors, including Henry Ford II. The pieces went for a combined $377 million, which was barely over the low end of the auction house’s estimates. Sotheby’s opens the fall art auction season on Wednesday with outstanding works from the renowned collection of its late former owner, A. Alfred Taubman. Another was his appetite for fine art, spanning all time periods and styles, that created a collection that Sotheby’s guaranteed for a historic $500 million.

Taubman was convicted in a New York federal court of colluding with a counterpart at Christie’s in a conspiracy that United States prosecutors said cheated customers out of $100 million.

After Wednesday’s event, the sale will continue with another auction on Thursday, where modern and contemporary art will be sold, a sale of American art of November 18 and finally an auction of Taubman’s Old Masters collection on January 27. Another bright spot was Frank Stella’s red-and-white striped geometric abstract painting from 1961 that brought a record for the artist of $13.7 million with fees ($12 million hammer) on a high estimate of $12 million.