Dozens of pieces of art from the collection of Barnes & Noble founder Leonard Riggio and his wife, Louise, are estimated to fetch more than $250 million at Christie’s.
Riggio, who died last year, was long considered, along with Louise, among the most important art collectors of the modern era, landing on ARTnews’ Top 200 Collectors list every year since 1999. The couple began collecting in earnest in 1994, soon devoting their fortune to acquiring works from some of history’s greatest and most expensive artists, including Pablo Picasso and Piet Mondrian.
“I like to buy art by feel more than by sight, and these artists feel a certain way to me,” Riggio told ARTnews in 2016. “They relate a lot to other artists only because we’re the same collectors. If it turns out that they knew each other, it happens by accident. We don’t try to make a story, the story is the art itself.”
Louise, having decided it was time to downsize the collection, will bring more than 30 works to Christie’s single-owner auction in May. Among the highlights are works from Picasso, Mondrian, René Magritte, Alberto Giacometti and Andy Warhol.
“Composition with Large Red Plane, Bluish Gray, Yellow, Black and Blue” by Mondrian is the top lot in the auction. Produced in 1922 and credited as a pioneering work of the new abstract movement, it is expected to surpass the $51 million record for the artist’s work set in 2022.
Christie’s and Sotheby’s had been engaged in a bidding war over the rights to sell the collection, according to the New York Times, which Christie’s ultimately won due to “financial aspects of the deal.”
Though the auction house did not disclose the terms, it is likely Christie’s outbid Sotheby’s by offering perks such as guarantees, low consignment fees or other methods used by auction houses to court consignors.
“We bought quietly,” Louise told the Times. “It was instinct. Art tells a story, and we liked being part of that story.”
Single-lot auctions of this magnitude are quite rare, and often occur only after the death of a world-class collector. This was the case with Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen’s collection, which set a record for a single-owner sale, when Christie’s generated $1.6 billion for his vast collection in 2022.
Will Stern is a reporter and editor for cllct.