Teiger Collection Shoots for $100m at Sotheby’s Starting with October Sale

Peter Doig, Buffalo Station I (1997-8), Estimate in excess of £6million

Sotheby’s announced this morning a single-owner collection from David Teiger, a management consultant who died in 2014, that it is calling The History of Now. Teiger bought both Contemporary art and American folk art. His patronage of young artists like Peter Doig, Elizabeth Peyton, Glenn Brown, and John Currin has paid off over time for his foundation which will benefit from some very strong prices for works like Peter Doig’s Buffalo Station I (1997-8) (above, estimated £6m) and Buffalo Station II (1997-8) (also estimated at £6m.) Big prices are expected for Teiger’s Grotjahns along with strong competition for his work by Chris Ofili. Here’s Sotheby’s release on the collection:

Offered across Sotheby’s sale rooms in London, New York and Hong Kong over the course of 2018 and 2019, this series of sales, estimated in excess of $100 million, will provide an unprecedented look into one of the finest Contemporary Art collections of our time. The inaugural London Evening sale, comprising 27 lots, will offer the leading innovators of Contemporary Art as well as the frontrunners and outliers who equally significantly form part of the daring cultural spirit of the last 30 years.

Alex Branczik, Sotheby’s European Head of Contemporary Art, said: “A true visionary, David Teiger collected with an avant-garde spirit, often rejecting art world consensus to forge his own path. His collection reflects the early patronage he offered to young artists such as Mark Grotjahn, John Currin, and Glenn Brown, as well as to dealers such as Tim Blum, Andrea Rosen and Gavin Brown. A time capsule of collecting in the late 1990s and early 2000s, this is one of those rare groups of works that perfectly capture the essence of the art and the spirit of collecting of its time.”

Building on the foundation of his Contemporary collection, Teiger ventured into the arena of American Folk Art in the 1990s. He quickly amassed one of the finest, museum-quality collections of Americana in the world, which will now be offered in a dedicated sale in January 2019.

Highlights from the inaugural sale will be exhibited in Hong Kong (28-31 August), Singapore (8-9 September), Taipei (15-16 September) and New York (20-24 September).