Steven A. Cohen built a reputation as a fast trader with an uncanny ability to predict where stock prices are headed. He’s applying his investing style to an art collection that now accounts for about $1 billion of his $11 billion fortune.
Cohen is selling two paintings estimated at more than $65 million at New York auctions this month, according to people familiar with the matter, as the billionaire money manager is taking advantage of surging prices. The works are part of the bellwether semiannual auctions at Sotheby’s, Christie’s and Phillips that will target more than $2.1 billion in sales over 10 days starting Wednesday.
The 59-year-old Cohen regularly sells pieces from his collection, both privately and at auction, and buys new ones, according to dealers and advisers. One of the works he’s consigned, according to one of the people, is a punctured, egg- shaped Lucio Fontana canvas estimated at more than $25 million at Christie’s. The piece may smash an auction record for the Italian artist that was set just last month in London.
Warhol’s Mao
Cohen also is selling a Mao portrait by Andy Warhol at more than $40 million at Sotheby’s, or 40 times its last auction price 19 years ago, said two people who asked not to be named because the information is private. Both of Cohen’s works are marked as guaranteed in the auction catalogs, meaning he will get an undisclosed price regardless of what happens in the salesrooms.
“He is a trader by mentality,” said John Good, a private art dealer in New York who knows Cohen and his collection, having spent 13 years as director at Gagosian Gallery and three years at Christie’s private sales division.
The stakes are high for the auction houses: the sales are the art trade’s biggest test since the global stock market rout in August and September unnerved investors. To win consignments, the companies guaranteed about $1 billion of art to sellers, backing most of the works with their own money, a risky proposition should there be no takers.
Natural Evolution
Fontana’s 1964 “Concetto spaziale, La fine di Dio,” is offered at Christie’s postwar and contemporary evening sale on Nov. 10. Christie’s is financing the guarantee, according to the catalog. Warhol’s 1972 portrait of former Chinese leader Mao Zedong is for sale at Sotheby’s contemporary art evening auction on Nov. 11. An outside backer agreed to place an irrevocable bid for the work, according to Sotheby’s.
Jonathan Gasthalter, a spokesman for Cohen at Sard Verbinnen & Co., declined to comment on the sales. Sotheby’s and Christie’s declined to comment on the auction sellers.