4.03.08
In what experts described as the largest private sale of art ever, the heirs of the legendary dealer Ileana Sonnabend have parted with some $600 million worth of paintings and sculptures in two transactions to cover their estate taxes, reports Carol Vogel in the New York Times. Ever since Ms. Sonnabend died last October at ninety-two, the auction giants Sotheby’s and Christie’s have been vying with some of the world’s most powerful art dealers—Larry Gagosian, William Acquavella, Robert Mnuchin, the team of Giraud Pissarro Ségalot—to get at least a piece of the collection to sell. Sonnabend’s art trove, which includes seminal works by artists like Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, and Cy Twombly, is valued at more than $1 billion. Taxes on the estate amount to more than half the value of the assets, experts said. After months of deliberations Sonnabend’s son and daughter settled this week on the two private sales. “We did sell two blocks of works,” said Antonio Homem, Sonnabend’s son, who along with her daughter, Nina Sundell, inherited the collection. Citing confidentiality agreements, Homem declined to identify the buyers. But experts close to the transactions who insisted on anonymity, also because of those agreements, said that the dealers Franck Giraud, Lionel Pissarro and Philippe Ségalot, who have offices in New York and Paris, bought $400 million worth of art on behalf of several clients, including some of the collection’s finest works. A second group of artworks, all Andy Warhols, was sold to the Gagosian Gallery for $200 million, the experts said.
