Dozens of works by artists including Paul Cézanne and Vincent van Gogh were sold for a total of $1.5 billion at an auction of the late Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen’s vast collection of paintings and sculpture, the Guardian reported.
With this, the auction garnered the highest amount ever collected at a single art auction, according to the auction house, Christie’s. Proceeds from the auction will be donated to philanthropic causes in accordance with the wishes of Paul Allen, who died in 2018.
Paul Allen personally selected all the works, which span more than 500 years, saying in 2016, “When you look at a painting you’re looking into a different country, into someone else’s imagination, how they saw it.”
The winning bids also smashed previous records for individual artists and many exceeded the expected sales prices estimated by the auction house which had said ahead of the sale that the auction was “poised to be the largest and most exceptional art auction in history”, eclipsing the $922 million achieved by the sale of the Macklowe collection in May.
Among the priciest works sold was Georges Seurat’s Les Poseuses, Ensemble (Petite version), an 1888 oil on canvas depicting three nude women that fetched $149.2 million.
