Billionaire Divorce Delivers Sotheby’s Record Sales…

The first part of the art collection that real estate tycoons Harry Macklowe and Linda Burg auctioned after a bitter divorce has brought in $676 million, or EUR 595 million. Four works each brought in more than fifty million dollars.

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Because the ex-couple couldn’t agree on the value of their extensive art collection, the judge decided to let the market decide. The first 35 works that were auctioned in New York on Monday evening by Sotheby’s brought in more than expected with a total amount of $ 676 million. Estimates ranged from 439 million to 619 million.

However, it remains less than the value that Macklowe himself had attached to the collection. According to him, the works of Willem de Kooning, Gerhard Richter, Andy Warhol and Picasso, among others, were all worth 788 million dollars. He said afterwards that he was satisfied with the outcome. “We have broken some records,” said the 84-year-old real estate tycoon.

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A canvas by Mark Rothko (1903-1970), No.7 from 1951, sold for $82.5 million, Rothko’s second most expensive work at auction. The record is in the name of the work Orange, red, yellow which was auctioned at Christie’s in 2012 for $86.9 million.

Jackson Pollock (1912-1956) set a record on Monday: for his Number 17 from 1951, no less than 61.2 million dollars was paid. Another masterpiece, the sculpture The nose by Alberto Giacometti (1901-1966), was auctioned for 78.4 million. The fourth work, which grossed more than $50 million, was an enormous canvas by Cy Twombly (1928-2011) with red flowers: the new owner paid $58.9 million for it.

“It’s our biggest single-owner sale ever, and we’ve only sold half of the collection,” Sotheby’s CEO Charles Stewart said. Reuters. The second part of the art collection, another 30 pieces, will be auctioned in the spring. Burg did not think it appropriate to auction everything at once, so as not to saturate the market.

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