The auction of the extensive collection of Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, who passed away in 2018, was an all-time record, reaching more than $1 billion at auction for the first time.
Record revenues were not only achieved for Klimt’s “Buchenwald” (1903) – which Allen had auctioned for $40,336 million in 2006. Georges Seurat’s “Les Poseuses, Ensemble (Petite version)” also set a new record for the artist at $149 million. Paul Gauguin’s oil painting Maternité II (1899) sold for $106 million. Paul Cézanne’s “La Montagne Sainte-Victoire” (1888-90, $138 million including fees) and Vincent Van Gogh’s “Verger avec cyprès” ($117 million) also topped the $100 million mark.
Klimt’s fall “Birch Forest” was valued at over $90 million by Christie’s — more than double what Allen had paid in 2006. It is one of five paintings for which the Republic of Austria conducted a lengthy restitution dispute against the heirs of the Bloch-Bauer family.
The now new owner had already been informed in advance that he was asked to relinquish his new possession between February and May 2024 in favor of the Neue Galerie in New York: the painting was requested on loan for the exhibition “Gustav Klimt: Landscapes” .
The Klimt records to date are held by “Adele Bloch-Bauer I”, the “Golden Adele”, which at the time went to Ronald Lauder for $135 million as the world’s most expensive painting outside of auction, and the portrait “Adele Bloch-Bauer II”, which American media star Oprah Winfrey bought at Christie’s in New York for $87.9 million and resold it more than a decade later to a Chinese collector for $150 million.
The spectacular auction of the collection of co-founder Microsoft – a total of more than 150 works from 500 years of art history – will continue on Thursday. It was Allen’s wish that the proceeds go to charity. The previous record auction proceeds of a private art collection are $922 million and were achieved in May for the collection of American couple Harry and Linda Macklowe.
(SDA)