Steven “Steve” Cohen, chairman and chief executive officer of SAC Captial Advisors LP
Billionaire money manager Steven A. Cohen is selling a dense, vibrant 1961 Jean Dubuffet painting valued at USD25 million, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Christie’s said it will offer Dubuffet’s “Paris Polka” at a special evening auction, “Looking Forward to the Past,” on May 11. The estimate exceeds the late French artist’s auction record of $7.4 million set in November. Cohen, 58, is the seller, said the person, who asked not to be named because the information is private.
The postwar and contemporary art auctions in New York in May are shaping up to produce record prices. Christie’s is also offering Pablo Picasso’s “Les Femmes d’Alger (Version ‘‘O’’)” for $140 million. A Francis Bacon triptych is the most expensive artwork sold at auction, fetching $142.4 million at Christie’s in 2013.
Global sales of art and antiques hit a record 51.2 billion euros ($56 billion) in 2014, up 7 percent from the previous year, as collectors drove up prices for trophy works by modern, postwar and contemporary artists, according to an annual report published in March by the European Fine Art Foundation.
“There’s a premium for the best of the best,” said Loic Gouzer, a Christie’s specialist for postwar and contemporary art who came up with the idea of masterpiece-studded auction that spans the entire 20th century instead of focusing on individual categories.
Gouzer declined to comment on the identity of the seller. Jonathan Gasthalter, a spokesman for Cohen at Sard Verbinnen & Co., declined to comment.
The auction house said it has guaranteed the seller an undisclosed minimum price regardless of whether or not the work sells.
Cohen converted his hedge-fund firm SAC Capital Advisors into a family office called Point72 Asset Management after settling insider-trading charges against the firm in 2013. Cohen, whose net worth of $11 billion ranks him 112th on Bloomberg Billionaires Index, is based in Stamford, Connecticut.
He’s also known as an active art trader, frequently buying and selling at auctions, dealers said.
In November, he sold a 1958 Franz Kline painting, “King Oliver” for $26.4 million at Christie’s. That same month he was the buyer at Sotheby’s of Alberto Giacometti’s $101 million painted sculpture of an elongated goddess standing on a chariot.
In 2013, he sold a group of paintings for at least $77 million at Sotheby’s. The priciest was Gerhard Richter’s 1986 abstract painting “A.B. Courbet,” which fetched $26.5 million.
In 2012, Cohen bought Picasso’s “Le Reve” for $150 million in a private transaction from casino owner Steve Wynn. In 2011, Cohen consigned Andy Warhol’s 40-inch-square 1963 canvas “Liz #5” to Phillips. It sold for $26.9 million.
Not all of Cohen’s sales have been successful. In 2012, his 1983 painting by Richter, estimated at $9 million to $12 million, failed to reach its undisclosed reserve price at Christie’s.
“Paris Polka” is an unusually cheerful example by Dubuffet (1901-1985), who is better known for his raw, expressionistic canvases, earthy palette and haunting stick figures.
The work is part of the “Paris Circus” paintings and drawings he created when he returned to the city after several years in the countryside.
“He is a man in love with Paris, modernity, youth,” said Brett Gorvy, Christie’s chairman and international head of postwar and contemporary art. Gorvey declined to comment on the seller.
The pink, red, blue and green composition — at more than 6-feet-tall and 7-feet-wide — is densely filled with buildings, cars and human figures.
The seller bought it from literary agent Morton Janklow, Christie’s said.
“I owned the painting for a very long time,” Janklow said, declining to be more specific. “It contains all the imagery for which he was famous. There are lots of colors. It’s very joyous.”
Dubuffet’s auction record was set in November at Sotheby’s for the 1963 “Cite Fantoche,” according to auction price database Artnet. A small Dubuffet painting sold privately for $15 million in the past six months, but not at Christie’s, the auction house said.
Christie’s considers Dubuffet one of the most undervalued postwar artists, Gorvy said. “Paris Polka” is among the four largest works in the series, and the other three are in museums, the auction house said.
At recent auctions, Dubuffet’s works have attracted bidders from Asia and the Middle East as well as more traditional markets in Europe and the U.S., Gorvy said.
Dubuffet’s elation over Paris was short-lived.
“It lasts for about a year and a half,” Gorvy said. “Then he goes back to darker colors.” Katya Kazakina, Bloomberg
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