Displaying items by tag: Sotheby's

Billionaire collector Steven Cohen, who recently added Giacometti's "Chariot" (1950) to his vast art collection for a cool $101 million, donated a tour of his Greenwich, Connecticut collection to the Foundation for Prader-Willi Research charity auction last week, as per "Page Six." Cohen, who was also actively involved with the Robin Hood Foundation for many years, was revealed as the buyer of the Giacometti sculpture, which sold on a single $90 million bid at Sotheby's on November 4 (see "$101 Million Giacometti Leads Sotheby's $400 Million Imp Mod Evening Sale") to David Norman, Sotheby's co-chairman of Impressionist and modern art worldwide, who was bidding for his client.

No word yet on whether the tour was successfully sold at the charity auction, or for how much—the Foundation for Prader-Willi Research did not respond for comment.

An 8.62-carat ruby set a record auction price as Sotheby’s (BID) concluded a $95 million sale of jewelry last night in Geneva, including a pearl necklace probably once owned by Napoleon Bonaparte’s first wife.

British billionaire jeweler Laurence Graff bid $8.6 million for the Graff Ruby, which he had previously owned, and he also spent $3.2 million on a 3.16-carat intense-blue diamond ring, the auction house said. The necklace, made of 111 pearls, sold for $3.4 million, more than double the high estimate.

Jasper Johns’ seminal “Flag” painting sold for $36 million on Tuesday, November 11, at Sotheby’s Contemporary and Postwar Art sale in New York. The work, which carried a presale estimate of $15 million to $20 million, eclipsed the artist’s $28.6 million auction record, which was set by a different “Flag” painting at Christie’s in May 2010. The iconic encaustic was offered by Johns’ former studio assistant Mark Lancaster, who acquired the work directly from the artist in 1983, the year it was made.  

The Sotheby’s sale was anchored by the collection of Pierre Schlumberger, an aristocratic French oil-industry tycoon, and his beautiful Portuguese wife, São. Two of the most visionary collectors of the twentieth century, the Schlumbergers’ collection comprised over ninety modern and contemporary masterworks.

Leighton House, once the London home of Lord Leighton, is mounting its most ambitious exhibition since it opened as a museum in 1900. The permanent collection will go into storage to provide space to display 50 Victorian paintings belonging to the Mexican businessman Juan Antonio Pérez Simón.

Pérez Simón, who has long been in business partnership with the telecommunications tycoon and fellow art collector Carlos Slim, has been buying Victorian art since the 1980s, almost entirely at Christie’s and Sotheby’s.

The Henry Graves Jr. Supercomplication, has sold at Sotheby’s, Geneva, for a record-breaking $24 million (which includes the buyer’s premium).

With 24 complications, it has previously been styled as the most famous watch in the world, but it comes with a very human story attached and illustrates how the Swiss watch industry worked in the early 20th century.

The watch is the result of a competition between two phenomenally wealthy men: Henry Graves, a New York banker, and James Ward Packard, a car manufacturer from Warren, Ohio.

On Monday, November 10, Sotheby’s offered works from the collection of Rachel “Bunny” Mellon -- a gardening and design icon, an ardent philanthropist, and the wife of Paul Mellon, the heir to the Mellon banking fortune. The auction, which took place in New York, fetched a total of $158.7 million, far exceeding the sale’s presale estimate of $82.9 million to $120.1 million. All of the forty-three lots offered sold -- a testament to Mellon’s keen eye and impeccable taste. 

“Property from the Collection of Mrs. Paul Mellon: Masterworks” presented a curated selection of fine art, ranging from seventeenth-century still lifes to masterpieces of the twentieth century.

The lone bidder who spent $101 million at Sotheby’s last Tuesday night for Giacometti’s “Chariot,’’ a 1950 sculpture of a spindly woman riding atop a chariot, was the hedge fund billionaire Steven A. Cohen, experts with knowledge of the sale said Monday. The sculpture, which came from the collection of Alexander Goulandris, a member of the Greek shipping family, is considered among the artist’s finest.

“It’s one of the great 20th-century sculptures,’’ said William Acquavella, the Manhattan art dealer.

A Chinese movie tycoon dished out $61.8 million for a Vincent van Gogh painting at a Sotheby's New York auction this week, the highest auction price for a painting by the artist in over 15 years.

The 1890 "Still Life, Vase with Daisies, and Poppies," sold to Wang Zhongjun, one of China's richest men, fetched far more than the $30 million to $50 million estimate, and is said to be the highest price paid for Western art by a Chinese collector.

Sotheby’s got New York’s fall auctions off to a rollicking start with a sale of Impressionist and modern art on Tuesday that totaled $422.1 million, the highest in the 270-year-old company’s history.

Leading the charge was Swiss sculptor Alberto Giacometti’s 1951-52 bronze “Chariot”—depicting a finger-thin woman riding atop a chariot—that sold to a telephone bidder for $101 million.

The gavel will not come down on the first lot of New York's major fall auctions until Tuesday, but records have already fallen and more are virtually certain once the bidding actually begins.

With a global pool of collectors competing for more than $1.5 billion worth of fine art, the city's top auction houses are expecting record values for trophy works at sales over the next two weeks.