Levy auction in Paris a blockbuster

Last fall, Paris's Tajan auction house held a three-day sale on Oct. 5, 6 and 7, of more than 850 items from the collection of the late New York dealer Julien Levy and his recently deceased wife, Jean. Executors of the U.S.-based Levy estate took a gamble by sending the works to Paris for auction, but the sale proved a success. It brought more than $9.1 million, just above the $6.88.1-million presale estimate.

Levy opened his influential New York gallery in 1931 During its 18-year run, the venue specialized in contemporary art, especially photography, and also presented the first U.S. exhibitions of members of the Paris-based Surrealist group. Before his death in 1981, Levy donated more his archives to the Art Institute of Chicago, and in 2001 than 2,000 photographs from the Levy collection entered the Philadelphia Museum of Art as part gift, part purchase. Organized by Paris dealers Marcel and David Fleiss, the Tajan sale included paintings, sculptures, works on paper and other objects that had a personal significance for the Levys, and many were pieces that they lived with for years. Among them were works by Man Ray, Duchamp, Ernst, Dali, Gorky, Tanguy, Victor Brauner, Erro, Eugene and Leonid Berman, Leonora Carrington and Chryssa.

Among the highlights of the auction, Gorky's 1943 painting The Pirate II sold for $1.5 million (est. $1.3-2 million), and a Joseph Cornell construction, Dovecote: Apparent Places of the Stars (1954-56), brought $120,000 (est. $50,000-60,000). Some of the more unusual objects on offer included a 1900 Frank Lloyd Wright stained-glass window, which brought $54,000 (est. $45,000-55,000). A prehistoric North American stone sculpture, Stone Bird (ca. 1000 B.C.), sold for $94,000, far above its $5,000-$6,000 estimate. Final prices include the buyer's premium, which is 17 percent of the first $125,000, and 12 percent of any amount above.

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