Sotheby’s sells $400 million Emily Fisher Landau collection for November sale

The following reports While Sotheby’s and Christie’s were vying to handle the collection of the late art collector and Whitney Museum of American Art curator Emily Fisher Landau at auction this fall, Sotheby’s announced Wednesday that it would sell the works, which are expected to fetch more than $400 million.

Sotheby’s made the announcement at the Breuer Building in Manhattan, formerly home to the Whitney Band, which named the fourth floor after the Landau in 1994 after creating an exhibition endowment for the institution. In 2010, it pledged nearly 400 objects worth approximately $75 million to the museum. (Sotheby’s announced in June that it would buy the Brewer Building for its new headquarters in a deal said to be worth $100 million.)

Landau, who died last March, began collecting art with money from insurance payouts after 1969, when thieves broke into her Upper East Side home and took her jewelry collection, made up of pieces her husband had given her over the years. , Martin Fisher, real estate developer. I decided to switch gears and started collecting art. Through her connections to figures such as Pace Gallery founder Arne Glimcher and interior designer Bill Katz, Landau has built a world-class collection and forged close relationships with contemporary artists. About 120 works from her collection are expected to sell for more than $400 million at Sotheby’s in New York during two dedicated auctions on November 8 and 9.

The collection will be led at Sotheby’s by Woman with watch (1932), Pablo Picasso’s portrait of his muse Marie-Thérèse Walter, which he painted after his affair with the young woman became public. Landau bought the painting in 1968, and it remained hanging above the fireplace in her New York home for years, according to specialists at Sotheby’s. Woman with watch It is estimated to sell for more than $120 million.

Also part of the sale will be Lock last character (head) (1964) by Ed Ruscha, who visited his Landau studio in Los Angeles several times. Based on a previous work now hanging at The Broad in Los Angeles, Lock last character (head) He was part of major Ruscha exhibitions at both the Whitney and Hayward Gallery in London.

“She is the artist’s friend to the utmost degree,” Rocha said of Landau, according to Sotheby’s. “Some collectors prefer not to meet the artist, and I can understand that they don’t want to break the illusion of someone whose work they collect… She’s different. She’s not afraid to know the artist personally.

The auction will also mark the first auction of Mark Rothko’s untitled 1968 work related to history. Seagram murals A series of his most famous works. The painting offered for sale is stylistically similar to Seagram’s paintings and was completed in the same year, according to specialists at Sotheby’s. the darkness Seagram murals The paintings were originally commissioned for the restaurant inside the Four Seasons Hotel in New York’s Seagram Building, but Rothko backed out before telling a reporter that he took the job with “malicious intent.”“He hoped it would disgust diners at the upscale restaurant. The majority of the works from the series are part of museum collections such as those at the Kawamura Memorial Museum of Art in DIC in Japan, the Tate Modern in London, and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.

1986 edition of Jasper Johns Flags The paintings are expected to be sold for between $35 million and $45 million, and the value of a camouflage self-portrait painted by Andy Warhol in 1986 is estimated at between $15 million and $20 million. Willem de Kooning Untitled xv (1983) is estimated to sell for between $6 million and $8 million, while Pink tulip (1925) by Georgia O’Keeffe could fetch between $3 million and $5 million. Mark Tansey Triumph over Mastery II (1987) has an estimate of $8 million to $12 million.

Landau also established the Fisher Landau Center for the Arts in Long Island City, Queens, and purchased a former parachute harness factory in the late 1980s to display the collection to the public. It closed in 2017.

A nine-figure sale would help Sotheby’s offset a difficult first half of the year for auction houses (Sotheby’s declined to publish its half-year figures in July).