250 works of art belonging to the actor were auctioned from Monday to Wednesday in three rooms at the Hôtel Drouot. Sales brought in four million euros.
The auction of actor Gérard Depardieu’s art collection, which ended on the evening of Wednesday September 27 in Paris, brought in four million euros, announced the Ader auction house. “In front of a full house”, these are “more than 95% of the lots that were sold”, specifies the auction house in a press release. The actor, who was not present at the time of the sale, “preferred not to part with the masterful bronze by Germaine Richier”, details the Ader house.
“To lighten up a little”according to the auctioneer, the 74-year-old actor decided to disperse more than 250 works by great masters of the 20th century, such as Calder or Rodin, an artist he played in the cinema alongside Isabelle Adjani at the end from the 1980s. The whole thing had been estimated at more than 3 million euros.
An exceptional collection
Tuesday September 26, on the first day of the sale, a bronze with black patina by Auguste Rodin, Paolo and Francesca, printed in an edition of 12, was sold for 83,200 euros (with fees), above the high estimate. A sculpture by Zadkine from 1922, Kneeling woman, found a buyer after heated bidding at 104,960 euros including fees (high estimate at 80,000 euros). A gouache and ink by Alexander Calder, Sun Shine (1974), reached 92,160 euros with costs, shattering the estimate.
During the three days of exhibition to the public, several thousand people followed one another in the three rooms of the Hôtel Drouot, necessary to present all of the lots which decorated the actor’s Parisian mansion. “This collection is a great surprise due to the importance of the works collected by Gérard Depardieu over more than forty years. He collected in a very fine manner, often allowing us to discover a completely new facet of the character”, David Nordmann, auctioneer at Ader, told AFP.
Monument of cinema, Gérard Depardieu has been indicted since 2021 for suspicion of rape and sexual assault on actress Charlotte Arnould. The actor was removed in May for this reason from promoting the film Umami, and several performances of his singing show around Barbara were disrupted by feminist activists.