When Paul Allen, the co-founder of Microsoft, sells his collection of artworks at Christie’s this week, it is anticipated that the collection will cross the $1 billion mark at auction for the first time.
According to analysts, the super-rich are viewing art as a secure investment this year amid a turbulent global economy, which is why the two-day sale in New York is taking place. Together with his more well-known Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, Allen built his fortune by creating the PC operating system in 1975.
Prior to his passing in 2018 at the age of 65, he used to lend pieces from his enormous art collection to institutions.
The 150 pieces span more than 500 years of art history, from Botticelli and Canaletto to Georgia O’Keeffe and Louise Bourgeois, via Claude Monet, Francis Bacon, and Edward Hopper, and will be sold at Christie’s Manhattan offices on Wednesday and Thursday.
The collection is also exceptional in terms of its price, with some masterpieces expected to sell for more than $100 million. They include Georges Seurat’s 1888 painting Les Poseuses, Ensemble (small version), a well-known example of pointillism, and French painter Paul Cezanne’s Montagne Sainte-Victoire (1888–1890), which introduced cubism.
Orchard with Cypresses by Vincent Van Gogh and Maternity II, a work from Paul Gauguin’s Tahitian period, are also up for auction (1899). Due to health issues and a deteriorating working relationship with Gates, who ran Microsoft until 2000, Allen departed the business in 1983.
The US couple Harry and Linda Macklowe broke the previous auction record for a private collection this spring by selling $922 million worth of items at Sotheby’s auctions. The art industry is expected to have one of its strongest years ever this year.
In addition to the Macklowe auction, a Marilyn Monroe portrait by Andy Warhol that sold in May for a record-breaking $195 million broke the price barrier for 20th-century art.
The vice president of a competing auction house, Phillips, Jeremiah Evarts, concurred that despite numerous global problems, the art market is “showing no symptoms” of slowing down. Many collectors are looking at works from the 20th century and may feel more confident purchasing works like Picasso, Chagall, or Magritte, the author claims.
