More than 400 works drawn from the collection of the late French collector and film director Claude Berri—ranging from tribal art items to major Modern pieces—are scheduled to go under the hammer later this year at Christie’s Paris in a series of sales.
The main sale, which includes 80 post-war and contemporary lots, is due to take place on 22 October during the 43rd edition of the Fiac fair at the Grand Palais (20-23 October). Works consigned include Wim Delvoye’s tattooed pig skin Mickey et Minnie, (2005, est €20,000-€30,000); Jannis Kounellis’s paper collage Untitled (1960, est €1m-€1.5m); Jean Dubuffet’s ink piece Paysage (1960, est €40,000-€60,000); and Tatiana Trouvé’s charcoal on paper work Untitled (2005, est €10,000-€15,000).
A sale of photographs from Berri’s holdings is scheduled to take place on 12 November during the Paris Photo fair (10-13 November), while tribal art objects will be offered in a dedicated sale on 13 December. An online auction with more than 200 works will run during October. A Christie’s statement says that “Claude Berri gave his passion to his son Thomas Langmann who now wishes to pursue his own collection”.
Berri, whose successes included the award-winning films Manon des Sources and Jean de Florette, bought his first work, a gouache by René Magritte, in 1970 and began collecting contemporary art in 1986. The movie pioneer, who died in 2009, opened a space in Paris’s Marais district in early 2008 to display a portion of his collection.
In 2011, we reported that nine works by artists such as Robert Ryman and Lucio Fontana from the Berri collection were promised to the Centre Pompidou in Paris, but the film director’s heirs decided to sell them instead to the state of Qatar for around €50m.