With an initial appraisal of more than 150 million euros, the jeweler of the Austrian patron Heidi Horten (1941-2022) may become the most valuable that has ever been sold publicly; only two more collections, those of the actress Elizabeth Taylor (2011) and the one entitled Maharajas
Heidi Horten (née Jelinek) came into the world in Vienna. From a very young age, she was surrounded by objects of significant value, first thanks to her father, who was an engraver, and later to her first husband, the German magnate Helmut Horten, who owned the department store chain of the same name whom he had met in a bar in 1959 when she was 18 years old.
His estate was then valued at 3,000 million euros and there was a time when his wife was considered the richest woman in Austria. It was from then on that he began to be interested in jewelry and works of art by the most renowned authors.
In the 1990s, he began to avidly collect modern and contemporary art. He still remembers how, in 1996, she spent 22 million dollars in the same auction acquiring paintings by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Paul Klee and Francis Bacon, among others. In his artistic collection there are pieces by Picasso, Chagall, Basquiat, Dan Flavin or Warhol, which gives an idea of ​​the eclecticism of his tastes. These funds, valued at more than one billion euros, were presented to the public for the first time in 2018 at the WOW! held at the Leopold Museum.
The tremendous success achieved encouraged him to open his own museum in the Austrian capital. The inauguration was held in June 2022, although his creator could not attend because she was in poor health and died just ten days later.
“The Bulgarian Van Cleefs
Among the 700 pieces on offer we find a three-strand pearl necklace with an 11-carat pink diamond from Harry Winston (7 to 10 million euros); the Sunrise Ruby de Cartier ring with a formidable 25-carat “pigeon’s blood†ruby ​​(15 to 20 million euros), a Bulgari bracelet with a cushion-cut diamond, square-shaped emeralds, round and baguette-cut diamonds as well as round diamonds set in yellow gold a Bulgari jewelry set, another Bulgari diamond brooch studded with colored diamonds.
Given the scale of the collection, two face-to-face auctions will be held at the Hotel Four Seasons des Bergues in Geneva on May 10 and 12, and another online next November.
