Gustav Klimt’s painting “Buchenwald” (Birch Forest) fetched 105 million dollars (104.6 million euros) in New York on Wednesday, the “New York Times” reported online. The auction of the extensive collection of Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, who died in 2018, was a record overall: for the first time, more than one billion dollars was achieved at an auction.
Five dozen works by Klimt, Paul Cezanne, Vincent van Gogh and other artists grossed $1.5 billion on Wednesday. According to Christie’s auction house in New York, this was the highest amount ever raised at a single art auction. The proceeds will be donated to charity as per everyone’s wish. The spectacular auction of the Microsoft co-founder’s collection – a total of over 150 works from 500 years of art history – will be continued on Thursday. The previous record proceeds from the auction of a private art collection is 922 million dollars and was achieved this May for the collection of the US couple Harry and Linda Macklowe.
A record price was achieved not only for Klimt’s “Buchenwald/Birkenwald” (1903) – which Allen bought for 40.336 million dollars in 2006 (at the time the equivalent of 31.6 million euros). Georges Seurat’s “Les Poseuses, Ensemble (Petite version)” also set a new high for the artist at $149 million. Paul Gauguin’s oil painting Maternité II (1899) sold for $106 million. Paul Cézanne’s “La Montagne Sainte-Victoire” (1888-90, $138 million including fees) and Vincent Van Gogh’s “Verger avec cyprès” ($117 million) also exceeded the $100 million mark.
Klimt’s “Buchenwald/Birkenwald” was valued by Christie’s at more than $90 million – more than double what Allen had paid in 2006. It is one of five paintings for which the Republic of Austria had a long restitution dispute against the heirs of the Bloch-Bauer family. The now new owner had been informed in advance that he was asked to relinquish his new property between February and May 2024 in favor of the Neue Galerie in New York: the painting was requested on loan for the “Gustav Klimt: Landscapes” exhibition .
The Klimt records have so far been held by “Adele Bloch-Bauer I”, the “Golden Adele”, which went to Ronald Lauder at a price of 135 million dollars as the world’s most expensive painting outside of an auction at the time, and the portrait “Adele Bloch-Bauer II”, which US media star Oprah Winfrey bought at Christie’s in New York for $87.9 million and sold on to a Chinese collector for $150 million more than ten years later.
Source: Nachrichten
