Millionaire Emily Fisher Landau collection to be auctioned at Sotheby's

The Emily Fisher Landau collection will go up for auction at Sotheby’s: in fact, a million-dollarauction will be held in New York on Nov. 8 and 9, 2023, which is estimated to total more than $400 million. The result of decades of collecting and research, which began in the late 1960s, Emily Fisher Landau’s collection includes works by major artists such as Piet Mondrian, Fernand Léger, Pablo Picasso, Ed Ruscha, Jasper Johns, Andy Warhol, Henri Matisse, Jean Arp, Mark Rothko, Paul Klee, Louise Nevelson, and many more. Not only did he collect, but Fisher Landau also directly patronized many artists he knew personally.

Beginning in the mid-1980s and over the course of the next four decades, she was also involved in various ways with the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York: she was a member of the acquisition committees, funded the museum’s famous Whitney Biennial exhibitions, and in 2010 donated nearly four hundred works, which were subsequently displayed in an exhibition entitled Legacy: The Emily Fisher Landau Collection. The fourth floor of the Breuer building, recently purchased by Sotheby’s, was named in her honor.

Emily Fisher Landau, who passed away last March at the age of 102, was one of the greatest collectors and patrons of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s: credit for her collector’s instincts, her deep commitment to the art and artists of her time, and her involvement in major institutions, particularly the Whitney Museum.

The evening auction will be held on Nov. 8, and the daily auction on Nov. 9. All eyes will be on Pablo Picasso’s Femme à la montre, a 1932 painting depicting Marie-Thérèse Walter, Picasso’s muse with whom the artist had a secret affair, and which is estimated at least $120 million. A painting that Fisher Landau purchased in 1968, which he loved dearly and kept hanging above the fireplace in his New York home for decades.

Image: Pablo Picasso, Femme à la montre, detail (1932; oil on canvas) © 2018 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York | © The Fisher Landau Family Collection

Millionaire Emily Fisher Landau collection to be auctioned at Sotheby's

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