NEW YORK, NY.- Sotheby’s auction of The Collection of Edward Albee totaled $12.5 million today in New York. Every work on offer was sold, denoting rare ‘white glove’ auction status, with three-quarters of all lots outstripping their high estimates. The full proceeds of the sale will benefit The Edward F. Albee Foundation, which provides residencies for writers and visual artists in Montauk, Long Island.

Amy Cappellazzo, Chairman of Sotheby’s Fine Art Division, noted: “Edward's canny eye and thoughtful understanding of the artistic process translated to a broad collecting audience today. Collectors were voracious for a slice of New York intellectual history, and we were thrilled to achieve such strong results on behalf of the artist’s namesake foundation.”

Acquired across decades, the 100+ works on offer surrounded Albee in the Tribeca loft he lived in for over 30 years. Together, they demonstrate the artist's great passion for collecting and provide unique insight into his creative vision. The highly-personal group spans the 20th century with a focus on – in Albee's words – “art that is about art”, featuring American, Modern and Contemporary art alongside a selection of African & Oceanic sculpture (Edward Albee, A Playwright’s Adventure in the Visual Arts).*

The sale was led by Milton Avery’s Meditation, a luminous balance of color and form that held court in the middle of the Tribeca loft. Three bidders vied for the canvas from 1960, before it sold on the telephone for $3.7 million – the second-highest auction price for the American artist (estimate $2/3 million).

An impressive 16 new auction records were established throughout the sale for many of the artists championed by Albee personally and in his writing. Those records were highlighted by: John McLaughlin’s V-1957, which initiated a bidding battle between six collectors before fetching $516,500 (estimate $80/120,000); Ella Bergmann-Michel’s Spektrafall: B234, sold for $68,750, a price nearly ten times its high estimate and over six times her previous record; and Albee’s beloved Lee Krasner, whose Untitled set a new auction record for a work on paper by the artist.

16 NEW AUCTION RECORDS: Ronald Gustin Ahlstrom • Ella Bergmann-Michel • Ilya Bolotowsky (Match) • John Cage (Work on Paper) • Jorge Fick (Auction Debut) • Albert Eugene Gallatin • Robert Giard (Auction Debut) • Sidney Gordon (Wood Relief) • Lee Krasner (Work on Paper) • John McLaughlin • Maud Morgan • Tony Rosenthal • John Sennhauser • Charles Green Shaw • Frank Vavruska • John von Wicht