It has been defined the sale of the century: last night, in about two hours, some masterpieces by the most important artists in the history of modern and contemporary art passed through the headquarters of Christie's New York at Rockefeller Center. Thanks to the Foundation named after the co-founder of Microsoft, Paul G. Allen, who at the beginning of the Nineties had chosen to leave the corporate in the hands of the partner Bill Gates to retire. Paul Allen’s life was characterized by a truly passion for art, the respect for the environment and the preservation of the oceans, as well as a passion for Italy and in particular for Venice, where he had bought a beautiful house.







With his death in 2018 following a long illness, it was decided to sell all the 150 artistic masterpieces, choosing to donate the profits to environmentalist associations.
Christie's therefore opted to divide the big sale into two tranches: 61 lots in the evening and the rest in today's morning.
The first 32 artworks on the evening of November 9 were enough to make bystanders understand the record trend: already from the first lot, some results that have rewritten art history were achieved. Like that of "Les Poseuses, Ensemble (Petite version)" by Georges Seurat, which was transacted thanks to a telephone offer for $ 149.2 million: the massive figure reached in the past by the artist was 35 million $. Paul Cézanne's oil on canvas "La Montagne Saint Victoire" was sold for 137.7 million $; "Maternité II" by Paul Gauguin reached 105.7 million $; «Birch Forest», one of the artworks that was part of Gustav Klimt's first solo show, changed hands for 104.5 million $; "Verger avec cyprès" by Vincent Van Gogh for 117 million $.







Faced with these figures, Sandro Botticelli's "Madonna del Magnificat", transacted for 48.4 million $, did not achieve very high results despite being a new record for the artist.
Moreover, there were twenty records of the evening, including: Signac, Seurat, Gauguin, Cézanne, Klimt, Rivera, Sam Francis, Van Gogh, Jasper Johns, Andrew Wyeth, Jan Brueghel the Younger, Max Ernst and Lucian Freud. Freud’s "Large Interior, W11 (after Watteau) was sold for 86.2 million $.
Therefore the first part of the sale concluded with a total amount of $ 1.5 billion in a single evening confirming itself as the biggest sale in auction history. Surpassed by a great deal long the Macklowe Collection (922 million from Sotheby's in 2021) and Rockefeller (835 million from Christie's in 2018). The artworks in the Paul Allen’s sale sold 100 per cent by lot with 65 per cent of the lots selling above their high estimates. The sales continued on the 10th of November with a second auction of 95 works, selling at 100 per cent for a total of $ 115,863,500.







In conclusion the entire sale ended with a result of $ 1,622,249.50. Whereas, as described above, all profits will be donated to charity associations “Visionary. The Paul G. Allen Collection” will surely be remembered for many years to come