Divorce Auction Including Warhol, Pollock Art Rakes In $676 Million
Video screenshot via Sotheby’s
The art collection of a separated couple amassed over US$676.1 million at auction house Sotheby’s on Monday, surpassing its predicted value of US$400 million.
The pieces belonged to real estate mogul Harry Macklowe and his ex-wife Linda, who got a divorce after spending 59 years together.
During their divorce trial in 2018, the two were told to sell their art and split the proceeds. They could not agree on how to place a price on the work, so a judge assigned someone else to take charge of the sale, the BBC reports.
35 paintings and sculptures by reputed artists were put up at The Macklowe Collection auction on Monday, with another 35 scheduled for sale in 2022. Art dealer Andrew Fabricant told the New York Times that most of the pieces were owned by Linda Macklowe, an honorary trustee of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Among the artworks at the Monday auction was Mark Rothko’s No 7. It sold for US$82.5 million, making it the artist’s second-most expensive work yet.
There was also Jackson Pollock’s Number 17, 1951, which raked in US$61.2 million from an unnamed buyer; Alberto Giacometti’s Le Nez (The Nose), which went under the block for US$78.4 million; and Andy Warhol’s Marilyn Monroe posthumous silkscreen art, Nine Marilyn’s, which sold for US$48.5 million.
The artworks were showcased in Taipei, Hong Kong, Paris, and London, before coming back to New York for the auction.
[via BBC, video and images via Sotheby’s]
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