Record $500m Auction of Billionaire’s Private Art Collection Kicks Off

Pablo Picasso’s “Femme assise sur une chaise” a portrait of his lover, Dora Maar, once owned by Gianni Versace, the murdered Italian fashion designer, sold under budget at $20 million.

The fall art auction season got underway Wednesday evening with Sotheby’s selling 77 works from the A. Alfred Taubman collection.

There were plenty of big-ticket lots peppered throughout the evening, highlighted in large part by Amedeo Modigliani’s handsome and nearly prim seated portrait “Paulette Jourdain”, from circa 1919, which sold to an anonymous telephone bidder for the top lot price of $42,810,000 (est. upon request in excess of $25 million).

Taubman’s collection stretches from antiquity to contemporary art, and is estimated to sell for $500 million in total-the highest estimate ever for a private art collection sold at auction.

De Kooning’s richly coloured Untitled XXI sold for almost $24.9 million, under its estimate of $25 million to $35 million.

Sotheby’s had valued the Taubman collection at US$375 million to US$527 million, before the sale. He spent 10 months in prison.

Other high performers were classic American paintings including a signature Winslow Homer, “In Charge of Baby”, painted during the important period when the artist resided in seaside Gloucester.

“Landscape Under a Stormy Sky”, by Vincent van Gogh.

In his lifetime, Taubman donated more money to the University of MI than anyone other than Stephen Ross, with gifts totaling roughly $160 million, and he was a mainstay for two decades on the Forbes 400 list.

Sotheby’s now has to sell at least $123 million of art to break even on the guarantee, not counting the expenses associated with the lavish auction. In September, Judy called the paparazzi to document a blockade that kept her from entering the London apartment she shared with her husband until his death earlier in the year, as Sotheby’s representatives collected two paintings for the auction.

Malevich’s Mystic Suprematism (Black Cross on Red Oval) is poised to fetch up to $45 million. The work has the added allure of having a second picture on the reverse side, a discovery made during a 2000 conservation. The seller is billionaire William Koch (kohk).

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

Notable: The current van Gogh auction record is $82.5 million.

Sotheby’s held an auction on Wednesday, Nov.4, to sell off the collection of A. Alfred Taubman, the auction house’s former chief.