Five years ago, Empire builder Pierre Bergé sold his ultimate art collection which he assembled together with his longtime companion, designer Yves Saint Laurent. Now he’s auctioning off his personal library collection in a series of sales to be organized by SVV Pierre Bergé & Associés in conjunction with Sotheby’s. The collection, boasting over a thousand precious manuscripts and books from the 15th to the 20th centuries, will be the subject of seven thematic sales at the Hôtel Drouot, starting early December 2015.
The first sale will include a hundred outstanding literary works spanning six hundred years, from the editio princeps of St Augustine’s Confessions, printed in Strasbourg in 1476, down to the autograph manuscript of André Breton’s Nadja (1928), via countless items of rare significance.
A selection of lots from this first sale will be exhibited in autumn 2015 in New York, London, Geneva and Moscow.
This secret library – the most intimate and personal part of the various collections Pierre Bergé built up – had been the subject of only a few discreet exhibitions prior to its partial unveiling at the Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal in Paris in 2013.
