Mystery couple set to bank £25m by selling their 'extraordinary' art collection featuring Picasso and Dali paintings

 
It is a collection which gives an incredible insight into art through the ages.
Featuring 200 masterpieces, it includes works by some of the most famous names of the art world.
And over the next two days the entire collection is expected to be sold during a special sale in London - netting a mystery European couple who own the art works a huge £25million.

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Making a fortune: A mystery European couple are set to pocket a cool £25million when their art collection is sold in London. It includes this 'Femme au Fauteuil' by Pablo Picasso

The astonishing works include a cubist painting by Pablo Picasso that has an estimate of six million pounds alone.
It is one of three works by the Spanish master, the others being a pencil drawing of two nobles staring at a nude woman and a pastel and crayon picture of a man's head.
The sale - which includes other famous names of the art world including Joan Miro, Rene Magritte, Salvador Dali and Damien Hirst - has collectors salivating.

 

The European couple, who want to remain anonymous, are selling the masterpieces, which include sculptures, at the Christie's sale in London this evening and Friday.
The couple collected items from antiquity right through to contemporary art and it was bought with a focus on aesthetic quality only.
The pieces were carefully placed in their apartment to show the collection off.

Vast: The collection features 200 masterpieces by some of the most famous names of the art world. This Bamana Figure, Jonyeleni, is

expected to be sold

Orlando Rock, from Christie's, said: 'This fascinating private collection is a celebration of a couple's deeply sophisticated connoisseurship, embracing contrasting cultures and mediums from Antiquity to the new millennia.
'Confident and brave, the couple was not afraid to juxtapose works of art from all periods, as long as the key criteria of quality, condition and aesthetic value were met.
'As the interior photographs of their apartment show so clearly, each and every work was carefully placed to ensure a provocative conversation between different periods in time.
'Baroque picture frames with modern works on paper, antiquity side by side with contemporary, forms and colours picked out between Leger, tribal heads and specially woven wall-coverings.

Greats: Pieces of art by Salvador Dali, left, and Pablo Picasso, right, will be sold at the auction in London

'In my favourite corner of the hall, a tribal sculpture and Calder mobile stand proudly before a canvas by Joan Miro in which their compositions are perfectly echoed.
'To collect is a deeply personal passion, to display and juxtapose contrasting but sublime works of art side by side so inventively is an art form.
'Such a concentrated focus on quality echoes the trend driving the global art market and so we are extremely excited to be offering this magnificent collection during one of the busiest weeks in the global art collecting calendar.'
The sale starts at 7pm this evening and continues tomorrow.