Picasso friend $170 million collection in Christie’s sale

Art from the collection of the Geneva-based dealer Jan Krugier, who sold works for the family of Picasso, is estimated to raise at least $170 million when it is auctioned in New York in November.

More than 150 lots will be sold in evening and day events at Christie’s International on Nov. 4 and 5, the London-based auction house said today in an e-mailed statement. Impressionist and modern works by artists such as Picasso, Giacometti and Kandinsky dominate the sale, which also features contemporary pieces, Old Masters, Latin American and African art.

Krugier, who died in 2008, was for four decades one of the world’s foremost dealers in high-value 20th-century art. He ran galleries in Geneva and New York, and was a regular exhibitor at prestige events such as Art Basel in Switzerland, and Tefaf Maastricht, in the Netherlands. The Manhattan space closed in 2010 and the dealership no longer participates in art fairs.

“Jan was a great dealer,” the London-based gallerist Richard Nagy, who bought works from Krugier, said in an interview. “Because of his connection with the Picasso family, no one could compete with him in terms of the volume and breadth of works in different media he was able to sell.”

A survivor of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, Polish-born Krugier held the first commercial exhibition of Picasso’s works after the artist’s death in 1973. He subsequently sourced numerous pieces from Marina Picasso, the artist’s granddaughter, who used the proceeds to found an orphanage in Thu Duc, Vietnam, in 1990.