(Paris) An auction of French actor Gérard Depardieu’s art collection is set to end Wednesday evening in Paris after bringing in 1.3 million euros ($1.8 million) on Tuesday, “in front of a sold-out crowd full of collectors and curious people,” the Ader auction house told AFP.
“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, the artist he played in the cinema at the alongside Isabelle Adjani. The whole thing was estimated at more than 3 million euros ($4.3 million).
On Tuesday, on the first day of the sale, a bronze with black patina by Auguste Rodin, Paolo et Francesca, produced in 12 copies, sold for 83,200 euros (with fees) ($118,000), above the high estimate.
A 1922 Zadkine sculpture, Kneeling Woman, found a buyer after heated bidding at 104,960 euros ($149,000) including fees (high estimate at 80,000 euros, or $114,000). A gouache and ink by Alexander Calder, Sun shine (1974), reached 92,160 euros ($131,000) with fees, 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 40 years. He collected very carefully, often allowing us to discover a completely new side of the character,” David Nordmann, auctioneer at Ader, told AFP.
Gérard Depardieu has been indicted since 2021 for suspicion of rape and sexual assault on actress Charlotte Arnould. The actor was excluded in May for this reason from the promotion of the last film in which he appears, Umami, and several performances of his singing show around Barbara, a famous French singer who died in 1997, were disrupted by feminists.
