A Rothko and a Warhol in the Macklowe Divorce Auction

NEW YORK - A Mark Rothko who had never before been seen in public and a self-portrait of Andy Warhol with a camouflage mask created nine months before his death: Sotheby's has begun to unveil new masterpieces from the collection whose second tranche will be put on sale. auction in New York next May.

    A legendary collection, dismembered to conclude a legendary divorce: after having traveled the world from London to Palm Beach, Taipei, Hong Kong, and Shanghai, in May 30 paintings and sculptures collected by the builder Harry Macklowe and his wife Linda in six decades of a wedding famous in New York for having passed the diamond wedding in spite of the quarrels often under everyone's eyes.

When he then left the marital roof having fallen in love with a French woman of 18 years younger, the judge intervened with a Solomonic decision: since the former spouses were unable to agree on the value of the works of art, the only the solution would have been to sell and divide the proceeds.

With an initial estimate of $ 600 million,

the fabulous collection had ended at Sotheby's: the first tranche, sold in November, had brought in 676 million dollars for 35 paintings and sculptures.

All lots had been sold for an average price of $ 19.3 million, putting the Macklowe collection on track to break the previous record set by Christie's four years ago when the Peggy and David Rockefeller legacy was sold in May. 832 million dollars in a series of evenings.

This time, five of the 30 new masterpieces on the market were presented in a video by the director of the Barbican Will Gompertz and Eleanor Narne, a curator of the museum.

The Rothko, with its dark burgundy tones, dates back to 1960, a critical moment in the artist's career, and starts with an estimate of 35-50 million, while the Warhol,

    (HANDLE).