The late Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen’s paintings and sculptures were sold for a record $1.5 billion (£1.3 billion).
The sale was the largest in the history of art, according to Christie’s.
The auction house reported that pieces by Vincent van Gogh, Georges Seurat, Paul Gauguin, Paul Cezanne, and Gustav Klimt each sold for more than $100 million (£88 million), shattering records for each artist.
The sale revenues will be donated to causes Allen supported before his death in 2018.
Christie’s stated that Seurat’s Les Poseuses, Ensemble (small version), a renowned pointillism painting from 1888, sold for a record-breaking $149.2 million (£131 million) including fees.
Experts claim that the ultra-wealthy perceive art as a secure investment amid a turbulent global economy and Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Other record-breaking paintings included Van Gogh’s Orchard with Cypresses, which sold for $117.2 million (£103 million), Gauguin’s Maternity II, which sold for $105.7 million (£93 million), and Klimt’s Birch Forest, which was sold for $104.6 million (£92 million).
Sculptures by Alexander Calder and Max Ernst and Georgia O’Keefe, Claude Monet, David Hockney, Andrew Wyeth, and Pablo Picasso were also sold.
The collection has already surpassed the mark set earlier this year by the sale of the Macklowe collection, owned by a rich New York couple, for $922 million (£810 million).
Together with his childhood buddy Bill Gates, Mr. Allen co-founded Microsoft in 1975.
In 2009, he was treated for non-Hodgkin lymphoma, but in 2018 he succumbed to the disease’s effects.
In 2010, he promised to leave the majority of his fortune to charity. According to Forbes magazine, he was the 37th richest man in the world at the time, with an estimated $13.5bn (then £8.8bn).
On Thursday, ninety further items from his collection will be sold.
