Auction house Sotheby's evening of March 8 held in Amsterdam auctions modern and contemporary art from the collection of the company British American Tobacco. The auction brought a 13.59 million euro (18.6 million dollars).
There were 163 sold the lot. The most expensive of these was the picture of the German artist Martin Kippenberger "Dinosaur Egg" (Dinosaurierei), sold for 1.45 million dollars. Also sold for amounts in excess of half a million dollars, left several works Dutches Karel Appel, dearest of all was sold to "The tragic head" (Tete tragique), which went for 670 thousand dollars.
In addition, the auction was sold to the picture
of Moscow's famous avant-garde artist Erik Bulatov "Leap" (1994): she went for 424 thousand dollars at the upper bound estimate of 244 thousand.
Traded in Amsterdam collection began collecting in 1960 born in Berlin, a native of Russia, Alexander Orlov. He ordered various European artists paintings to decorate their house belonged to him tobacco company Turmac, which later became part of a united British American Tobacco.
As noted by Reuters, the auction is not only a record for the Netherlands branch Sotheby's, but set an absolute record for the amount of proceeds among all the art auction in the Netherlands.
http://lenta.ru/news/2010/03/09/auction1/
http://lenta.ru/news/2010/03/09/auction1/