A Well-Lived Shared Life Becomes a Historic Auction
The collection drawn from over four decades of acquisitions by Terry de Gunzburg; founder of the iconic ’90s colorful cosmetics brand By Terry, and her husband Jean de Gunzburg; a molecular biologist with an internationally respected career, will find new owners at a Sotheby’s auction on April 22.
Two figures at the top of their fields, Terry and Jean de Gunzburg describe the collection they have decided to bring to auction as “objects that have accompanied a life.” According to close friends, their Upper East Side home, shaped under the guidance of renowned decorator Jacques Grange “reflects New York on the outside and Paris on the inside.” Beneath Jean-Michel Frank designed armchairs, a Ruhlmann rug glows, while beside a Jean Royère chair stands a vase by Giacometti, seamlessly integrated into daily life. Nothing in this home is a display object, everything exists in dialogue with one another.
The de Gunzburg collection spans a wide timeline, from Art Deco to postwar modernism. Furniture and objects by predominantly French masters Claude and François-Xavier Lalanne, Jean Royère, Alberto Giacometti, Alexandre Noll, André Groult, Eugène Printz, Paul Dupré-Lafon, Jean Dunand, Émile-Jacques Ruhlmann and Armand-Albert Rateau meet artworks by Mark Rothko, Pablo Picasso, Agnes Martin, Paul Klee and Robert Ryman. According to Sotheby’s 20th Century Design Chairman Jodi Pollack, what makes the collection exceptional lies here: the de Gunzburgs began supporting figures such as Royère and Noll purely through instinct, long before the market had fully recognized them.
“Collecting was a journey guided by our instincts, our curiosity and the excitement of living with works that deeply moved us.”
— Jean and Terry de Gunzburg
RARE PIECES WITH STORIES
The most anticipated lot of the sale is Claude Lalanne’s installation of fifteen mirrors, created for Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé’s Salon de Musique in their Paris residence, with an estimated value of $10–15 million. These mirrors are not merely objects; they are fragments carrying the mythology of an era. Jean Royère’s iconic Ours Polaire sofa and armchairs are each estimated at $600,000–800,000; Alexandre Noll’s mahogany cabinets at $700,000–1 million; a Picasso portrait at $3–5 million; a work by Paul Klee at $2–3 million; and a rare Rothko at $10–15 million. The fact that a design auction can reach such figures speaks to the exceptional nature of the collection. The de Gunzburg sale signals a shift in which decorative arts are increasingly evaluated on equal footing with fine art; an approach the works in this collection emphatically justify. Among the speculations regarding the proceeds are that they will be donated to charities focused on education, culture and science or shared among the Gunzburgs’ seven children.
