'IT'S A SENSORY OVERLOAD'

The extraordinary story behind a landmark Sotheby's auction, as the renowned collector Pauline Karpidas puts surrealist art worth £60m up for sale

- INTERVIEW: ROSALIND POWELL

Modern works of art jostle for attention on the walls, the shelves are adorned with books and curated treasures, and the opulent sofas, arranged on a leopard-skin rug, bring a kaleidoscope of colour to a room that invites visitors to sit down and take it all in.

The London apartment of the renowned art collector Pauline Karpidas feels like a shrine to surrealist and contemporary art one that is, according to Oliver Barker, the chairman of Sotheby’s Europe, “overwhelming to the senses”.

“When you walk into the salon, you are bedazzled by so many wonderful objects. One can ordinarily walk into a collector's home and love a number of different things, and be slightly less impressed by one or two others. But with Pauline’s, it’s a complete sensory overload.”

This week, the extraordinary contents of the apartment are set to go up for sale in a landmark auction at Sotheby's. The 250 lots include masterpieces by 20th-century artists from René Magritte and Salvador Dalí to Pablo Picasso and Max Ernst, plus Andy Warhol, Yves Tanguy and Leonora Carrington, as well as pieces of furniture and jewellery.

The pre-sale estimate is £60m - the auction house’s highest ever estimate for a single-owner collection in Europe with Magritte’s La statue volante estimated to fetch between £9m and £12m.

ONCE IN A LIFETIME

It is, he says, an “outward demonstration” of Pauline’s philosophy and passion; she immersed and educated herself in the art world with “an infectious enthusiasm and one of the best eyes in the business”.