Displaying items by tag: steven a. cohen

Billionaire money manager Steven A. Cohen is selling a dense, vibrant 1961 Jean Dubuffet painting valued at $25 million, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Christie’s said it will offer Dubuffet’s “Paris Polka” at a special evening auction, “Looking Forward to the Past,” on May 11. The estimate exceeds the late French artist’s auction record of $7.4 million set in November. Cohen, 58, is the seller, said the person, who asked not to be named because the information is private.

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.

Auction houses expect to sell as much as $2.3 billion of art in New York this month as billionaires from China to Brazil compete for trophy works by Claude Monet, Pablo Picasso and Jeff Koons in a surging market.

Two weeks of semiannual sales of Impressionist, modern, postwar and contemporary art at Christie’s, Sotheby’s (BID) and Phillips begin May 6, with online bidding as early as today. Their combined sales target represents a 77 percent increase from estimates for a similar round of auctions a year ago.

Steven A. Cohen, a hedge-fund manager and founder of SAC Capital Advisors, will sell works from him impressive art collection in New York later this month. The majority of the sales will be part of Sotheby’s contemporary art evening sale on November 13, but Christie’s will also sell a small portion, estimated to be worth less than $5 million.

The trove headed to Sotheby’s includes works by Andy Warhol, Gerhard Richter and Cy Twombly and is estimated to be worth around $85 million. Highlights include Andy Warhol’s portrait of Elizabeth Taylor titled Liz #1 (Early Colored Liz); a 10-by-8-foot canvas by German artist Gerhardt Richter, which was shown by the Pace Gallery at Art Basel in 2012; and a bronze sculpture by Cy Twombly.

Cohen, an avid collector who is active in the market, is bringing this collection to auction after SAC was accused in a grand-jury indictment of encouraging insider trading. The company was told it would have to pay $1.8 billion and admit wrongdoing to resolve securities-fraud charges, including a previous penalty of approximately $600 million.

Jeff Koons’ coveted sculpture Balloon Dog (Orange) will be part of Christie’s Post-War and Contemporary Evening Sale on November 12, 2013 in New York. The avid art collector and paper magnate, Peter Brant, is selling the 10-foot-high sculpture, which is one of the most recognizable pieces of 20th century art. The funds from the sale will be used to create an endowment for the Brant Foundation Art Study Center, which is located in Greenwich, CT and presents two annual exhibitions drawn from Brant’s illustrious collection of contemporary art.

Balloon Dog carries a pre-sale estimate of $35 million to $55 million and is one in a series of five sculptures created in the early 1990s. The other sculptures reside in the collections of renowned collectors Steven A. Cohen, Eli Broad, Francois Pinault and Dakis Joannou.

Brant will hang on to his other works by Koons including a 43-foot-tall terrier made from over 70,000 flowering plants titled Puppy.

While hedge-fund owner, Steven A. Cohen, is embroiled in a financial fiasco, the art world is anxiously waiting to see what will become of his impressive art collection. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has informed Cohen that his $14 billion company, SAC Capital Advisors LP, could be at the center of an insider-trading lawsuit. The SEC is currently suing SAC Capital’s former portfolio manager, Mathew Martoma.

Cohen, who is worth $9.5 billion, started building his collection around 2001 and is now regarded as one of the biggest and most influential art collectors. Once a major buyer of Impressionist works, Cohen began collecting more contemporary pieces and helped raise prices of big-name artists like Damien Hirst, whose shark in formaldehyde, titled The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, he bought for $8 million.  

Cohen’s collection also includes works by Vincent van Gogh, Edouard Manet, Willem de Kooning, Pablo Picasso, Paul Cezanne, Andy Warhol, Francis Bacon, and Jasper Johns. If Cohen’s troubles worsen, he may be forced to dismantle his carefully assembled collection and begin selling his artworks.