'The greatest collection of Surrealism to emerge in recent history’: The contents of iconic art collector Pauline Karpidas’s London home are heading to auction

Salvador Dalí, Pablo Picasso and Andy Warhol — the best and most brilliant artists adorned the walls of Pauline Karpidas’s Hyde Park apartment in London and, this September, Sotheby's will be selling the paintings and its contents. With some 250 lots, the auction house is calling it ‘the greatest collection of Surrealism to emerge in recent history’. The sale is expected to fetch in excess of £60 million — the highest estimate ever placed on a single collection in the European branch of the auction house.

Highlights include the ethereal beauty of René Magritte’s ‘La Statue volante’ (estimated to be the bestseller of the collection, and to sell for between £9 million and £12 million); Andy Warhol’s pop-art reimagining of ‘The Scream (After Munch)’ (estimated to sell from between £2 million and £3 million) and Salvador Dalí’s portrait of his wife and lifelong muse, Gala.

Now 81, Pauline has been acquiring works and nurturing contemporary talent for the past 50 years. She is a patron of Damien Hirst, Sarah Lucas and Tracey Emin and has been the benefactor of the Tate in London for many years.

Out of this frankly delicious and often bizarre collection, plenty catches the eye. I admire Francis Picabia’s ‘Deux amies’ — a tangled embrace of flesh and fabric set on a deep-red sofa — and Jeff Koons’s ‘Poodle’, which is a statue of exactly what you’d imagine it would be (and a rather distinguished fellow he is too). The hauntingly isolated quartet of body parts set on a grey background of Magritte’s painting ‘La Race blanche’ also impresses (it would go well above my coffee machine), and it’s hard to imagine a world where I’d say no to being the proud owner of Claude Lalanne’s ‘Choupatte’ — who wouldn’t want a sculpture of a chicken with the head of a lettuce?

Dorothe Tanning's piece ‘Katchina and Her Soul’ (Katchina, I assume, is the adorably hesitant looking lhasa apso terrier in the bottom left of the painting) is the one I covet the most, however, with François-Xavier Lalanne’s monkey table, which has a glass top, coming in at a close second.

Pauline’s apartment itself is the real marvel, though. Thomas Boyd-Bowman of Sotheby’s has said: ‘I will never forget the moment I first entered Pauline’s London home — the captivating works of art that filled the rooms in every direction.’ A cacophony of colours and a celebration of art and the joy of creativity, it isn’t just the art in her home that transfixes the viewer; her bespoke furniture include two multicoloured Rouleaux sofas, designed by Jacques Grange and set on an animal print carpet, and a low brown coffee table by Mattia Bonetti. Behind this scene hangs a collection of evocative works, all united in their dedication to storytelling, which frame an understated dark wood fireplace. On the other side of the same room stand sculptures of various likenesses on a bookshelf, also designed by Bonetti — and which is a work of art in itself. In another room, a desk designed by André Dubreuil is resplendent in hues of gold and orange, with a collection of treasures displayed proudly on its surface. The pieces were arranged by the Grange and David Gill, the gallerist.

An elusive figure when it comes to the media despite her prominence in the art world, Pauline does not give interviews, but she has said: ‘Ever since my journey into the arts began, I have had the great honour of meeting a world of wonderful individuals who have made this collection possible.’

‘I have always seen myself as a temporary custodian for their creations, and it feels like the right moment for the pieces that make up my London home to find their next generation of custodians.’

Born Pauline Parry and raised in Manchester by a working-class family, she worked as a model and as a secretary before she moved to Athens in the 1960s. Here she opened a fashion boutique called My Fair Lady. It was in Athens where she met her shipping magnate husband Constantinos Karpidas, who introduced her to art, as well as Alexander Iolas, the legendary art dealer often credited with discovering Andy Warhol. Iolas helped her to curate her collection, after Pauline had charmed him out of early retirement. The Karpidas’s then relocated to Hydra, a Greek island. Constantinos died in 2005 and Pauline is now based in the USA, which is where her son lives. She is well known in the art world for her 2009 sale of the Warhol painting ‘200 One Dollar Bills’ in New York for $43.8 million (she had bought it 23 years prior for $383,000). This sale of the contents of her London home comes just two years after that of the contents of their home in Hydra, which sold for £35 million.

Oliver Barker, The Chairman of Sotheby’s in Europe, said of the sale: ‘There is simply no other collection like that of Pauline Karpidas’, calling her apartment a ‘special world of boldness, conviction and insatiable curiosity’ and a ‘tangible reflection of Pauline’s whimsical mind’.

The art historian and Country Life's art market correspondent Huon Mallalieu said that a sale of this level of surrealist art is ‘pretty rare’ and perfectly timed. ‘My own theory is that the market is beginning to turn, as it does… and the people who’ve been so big in the late-20th century are due for a period of decline,’ he explained. ‘So this may just be the time to do it, actually, before that really gets underway.’

The fine art consultant Robin Hereford called the items featured in the sale ‘fascinating to look at’, adding: ‘It's always nice to see a collection like this come onto the market, which has this sort of history behind it. It's been assembled over a long period of time with a good degree of what seems like consideration. You do see many collections that appear that have been put together slightly more hurriedly, and they don't always hang together as well as this one does.’

If he could take one item home with him from the sale it would be Yves Tanguy’s ‘Titre inconnu’. He explained: ‘I just love Yves Tanguy’s because you can make of it what you want. It's so wonderfully mysterious.’

And it is wonderful mystery, I think, that is what makes the spectacle of Pauline’s apartment such a triumph.

The collection will be offered on September 17-18 by Sotheby’s and there will be a public exhibition that will open on September 8