© Estate of Roy Lichtenstein

Roy Lichtenstein's "Eddie Diptych" (1962) is rumored to have sold for as much as $80 million in the deal.

Bruce Nauman Robert Rauschenberg Andy Warhol Jasper Johns Roy Lichtenstein Jeff Koons The Appendix: A Dirt Painting, A Clay Painting, and a Pasta Sauna In Brief: Leslie Hindman

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For a look at five works believed to be a part of the April sale, click here.

In a move that left art market observers flabbergasted, the heirs of the dealer Ileana Sonnabend, who died last October at age 92, sold a portion of her postwar-art collection privately for $600 million. The early April transaction—the largest private sale in history—completely bypassed the major houses just ahead of their big spring evening auctions in New York.

Several factors led the Sonnabend estate executors—Antonio Homem, Sonnabend’s adopted son; and Nina Sundell, her daughter by first husband, Leo Castelli—to dispose of about 25 works by such artists as Jasper Johns, Bruce Nauman, Robert Rauschenberg and Andy Warhol in a deal handled by the powerhouse art world attorney Ralph Lerner, of the New York law firm Withers Bergman LLP.  The primary impetus was a looming deadline to pay an estimated $450 million to $500 million in taxes on the billion-dollar-plus estate. “It seemed to us easiest to work with people we knew who wanted to make purchases that would add up to the kind of figure required,” says Homem.

The fluctuating financial markets were also an issue. Christie’s and Sotheby’s already had more than $650 million worth of art lined up for their postwar and contemporary evening sales, and adding works valued at another $400 million to $600 million seemed risky. “In an uncertain economy, the executors felt that the prudent thing to do was to raise their cash needs as soon as possible, and that is what we did,” says Lerner.

Pressed to respond to criticism, notably from the auction houses, that the family left money on the table in the transaction, Lerner replies that, in proceeding in this manner, “we had no risk.” Homem says he is happy with the outcome, adding, “It’s very important that Nina and I are able to basically keep the collection.” But given the size of her assets, Sonnabend’s lack of estate planning shocked several observers. “This is a prime lesson on how not to handle an estate,” says one New York–based art adviser. “They had all the time in the world to designate trusts and deploy different vehicles to keep the collection intact.” The exact number of pieces owned by the family is not publicly known.

Although details are veiled by confidentiality agreements, it is understood that two sets of works were involved. One was a group of approximately 10 Warhol paintings that was split between two buyers in an approximately $200 million transaction brokered by the New York überdealer Larry Gagosian. The remaining $400 million or so was realized through the sale, handled by the private New York and Paris dealership Giraud Pissarro Ségalot (GPS Partners), of a second set of works, including Jeff Koons’s sculpture Rabbit, 1986; a Warhol Silver Disaster, 1963; and at least three paintings by Roy Lichtenstein, the priciest of which, Eddie Diptych, 1962, is estimated to have sold for $65 million to $80 million.

The purchasers in the Gagosian part of the deal are believed to have been the 44-year-old oligarch Mikhail Fridman, the founder of the Russian financial-industrial conglomerate Alfa Group, and the Greenwich, Connecticut–based hedge fund manager Steven Cohen. The GPS client or clients remain a mystery, but some speculate that the buyer was the Mexican telecommunications multibillionaire Carlos Slim Helú, who is building an addition to the Museo Soumaya, his family-owned museum in Mexico City. Several sources also claim that the collector François Pinault bought the Koons Rabbit, which the French tycoon has long coveted, for $65 million—more than double the artist’s auction record.

Indeed, some in the business doubt that the GPS deal involved just one buyer and suggest that both that dealership and Gagosian recruited minicartels of top clients to scoop up the trove. “The day Ileana died,” says a prominent New York art adviser, “we started getting calls from dealers who wanted to round up a posse and go after the whole thing.”