(Tokyo) Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa, who spent twelve days on the International Space Station in December, is to put a famous Basquiat painting up for sale for $70 million, hoping to pocket a $13 million capital gain.
Posted at 8:21 a.m.
In a statement released Monday in New York, the Phillips auction house announced that a work of art Untitled by Jean-Michel Basquiat dating from 1982 will be sold on May 18 for an estimated price of around 70 million dollars.
This would allow Mr. Maezawa to make a handsome profit on this gigantic painting he bought in 2016 for $57.3 million. The following year, he broke a record by buying another work by Basquiat for $110.5 million.
Maezawa, 46, is the founder of Zozotown, Japan’s largest online clothing and accessories store.
Quoted in Phillips’ statement, the billionaire explained that the six years of owning the painting he wants to sell has been “a great pleasure”, but that the art must “be shared to be part of everyone’s life”. .
Prior to its auction, Basquiat’s painting will tour internationally and be exhibited in London, Los Angeles and Taipei, the statement said.
Yusaku Maezawa made headlines in December when he became the first Japanese space tourist to board the ISS with the Russian space agency.
His odyssey is said to have cost around 10 billion yen ($87 million). Mr. Maezawa plans to follow up with a trip around the Moon organized by Elon Musk’s SpaceX company.
Also owning works by Pablo Picasso, Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol and Jeff Koons, Yusaku Maezawa says he is an “ordinary collector” of contemporary art who works “by instinct”.
“I just buy what I find beautiful. That’s all,” he told AFP in 2017.