Microsoft co-founder's art collection creates history, sold for record $1.5 billion at auction
Paul Allen began building his collection in the 1980s.
The art collection of Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen was sold for more than $1 billion at a Christie's New York auction on Wednesday. It broke the record for the most expensive auction sale ever. The collection broke the record previously set by the Macklowe collection, owned by a divorced couple, which was sold for $922 million at Sotheby’s just six months ago. The proceeds from the sale will be donated to charity as per Allen's will. The collection consists of 150 masterpieces from artists such as Van Gogh, Alberto Giacometti, Claude Monet, Paul Gauguin, and Jasper Johns. As per Forbes, the collection fetched $1.5 billion.
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The auction hit the $1 billion mark when Alberto Giacometti's 'Femme de Venise III' was sold for $25 million. However, there was no announcement in the room regarding the record, reported the New York Times, and those in the room did not realise that history had just been made.
Allen began building his collection in the 1980s. The art pieces span an incredible 500 years of history.
Johanna Flaum, who is the vice-chairman of 20th and 21st Century Art at Christie's, had said last month, "I think this is a sale that sort of exhausts superlatives. This is... the most valuable collection ever sold at auction. It's really a once-in-a-generation type of event. The collection is quite wide-ranging, it really makes Paul Allen a unique collector in that sense."
Born in 1953, Allen died at the age of 65 in 2018 of septic shock due to complications arising out of Non-Hodgkin lymphoma. He founded Microsoft with Bill Gates in 1975. They were responsible for kickstarting the computing revolution in the 1970s and the 1980s, and for turning Microsoft into the largest software company in the world.
He was also a noted philanthropist, donating to causes like education, environment conservation, healthcare, and more. Allen left active work at Microsoft in 1983 due to health reasons and disagreements with Gates.
The auction was held at Christie's headquarters in Manhattan.