Christie's To Sell £24 Art

Bloomberg reports that Christie's International is preparing for its February sales by offering 12 million pounds ($24.2 million) of art from the late Maurice Wohl, a U.K. office developer who funneled his profits into cultural and educational buildings in Israel and London. Wohl, who died in June, commissioned works by artists such as Barbara Hepworth for his buildings, then with help from his 21 year-old wife added brightly colored paintings by Kees van Dongen and Alexej von Jawlensky. All proceeds from the auction of 35 works will go to the Maurice and Vivienne Philanthropic Foundation, said Olivier Camu, Christie's U.K. head of impressionist and modern art. The top two auction houses, Christie's and Sotheby's, are chasing customers for their February sales. Van Dongen's 1905 ``Anita aux Fleurs,'' showing a bare-breasted Parisian dancer who was the artist's model, has a top estimate of 1.8 million pounds. Two Jawlensky female portraits from 1911 have high valuations of 2.5 million pounds each. The collection will be sold in London at three impressionist auctions in February, and at British and 19th-century art auctions in June and July, Christie's said. The Wohl cultural center on the campus of Israel's Bar-Ilan University, designed by architect Daniel Libeskind, is shaped like an open book and covered with gold, according to the university Web site. King's College in London opened a dental practice bearing Wohl's name in 2005. Wohl took his real-estate company, United Real Property Trust, public in 1961, and received 60 million pounds for his shares when it was taken over in the 1980s by developer Mountleigh, according to the Telegraph newspaper's obituary earlier this year. Christie's and its smaller competitor Sotheby's sold 386.4 million pounds of impressionist and contemporary art in February 2007, up 49 percent from a year earlier. Together, they sold $1.7 billion of impressionist and contemporary art in New York in November. (For full source and full article click the Headline). Irish Art