NEW YORK, NY.- Christie’s will present Property from the Collection of A. Jerrold Perenchio, which will be sold across its November auctions of Impressionist and Modern Art, Design and Latin American Art. The grouping encompasses 44 lots from Mr. Perenchio’s renowned collection, and is highlighted by seminal sculptures by Henry Moore and Auguste Rodin, significant work on paper by Diego Rivera, and consummate Diego Giacometti design. The collection also encompasses important examples from artists including Camille Pissarro, Edvard Munch, Pablo Picasso and George Grosz.

Sharon Kim, International Director, Impressionist and Modern Art, Christie’s, remarked: “We are deeply honored to have been entrusted with Property from the Collection of A. Jerrold Perenchio. Mr. Perenchio was a beloved figure within the art world and a giant in global media. As a brilliant person and an impassioned collector, Mr. Perenchio focused on acquiring only the most decisive examples from art history’s utmost virtuosos, and as a result, he assembled one of the most extraordinary collections of his time – one which defies period and medium. The grouping that we will present in November is a vivid representation of Mr. Perenchio’s eye for creativity and quality, from Modern works of art to brilliant examples of design.

With determination, verve, and an exceptional creative spark, Jerrold “Jerry” Perenchio became one of the world’s most successful media figures. In the latter decades of the twentieth century, Mr. Perenchio rose from the ranks of Hollywood talent agents to achieve one stunning industry success after another. “For a long time, I thought he was lucky,” said friend Andy Williams. “But how could somebody sustain a lucky streak for that long? Finally, I realized that he wasn’t lucky. He was just smart.” For all his many successes, Mr. Perenchio shunned publicity and refused to give interviews.

John Perenchio, Mr. Perenchio’s son, remarked: “From an early age my father encouraged me to follow my passions and instincts. He believed that trusting his ‘gut’ was a key ingredient in his success. The works presented by Christie’s were part of a collection that reflected my father’s passion for fine art and his remarkable intuition as a collector.”

Mr. Perenchio first discovered his love for fine art during his early days as a junior talent agent at MCA, when he was assigned to travel with British actor Charles Laughton during a U.S. theatrical tour. The pair often visited local museums, and Mr. Perenchio became fascinated with the beauty and vibrancy of fine art from across the centuries. As his industry success grew, Mr. Perenchio was able to build his own striking assemblage of masterworks, with a strong focus on painting, works on paper, and sculpture of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The collection was a source of constant inspiration and joy. “Next to my family and friends,” Perenchio said of his works, “they are the most important things to me.”

Mr. Perenchio made headlines in 2014 when, in a rare press announcement, he made a promised gift of nearly fifty European masterworks to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. “I never put my name on anything,” the collector said at the time. “In this case, I’ve decided that it’s worth a temporary step into the spotlight to encourage other collectors to give to LACMA and support the fundraising.” The bequest, which included some of the most significant works from Mr. Perenchio’s collection, will anchor LACMA’s new permanent building, slated for completion in 2023. “Los Angeles helped make my career possible.” Perenchio said, “My family and I are proud to be able to give something back.”

In 2011, Mr. Perenchio received an honorary doctorate from the California State University at Fresno. In his acceptance speech, Mr. Perenchio encouraged graduates to dream big, and promised that success would come with “lots of hard work, perseverance, mentoring, faith, ambition, and a good dose of luck.” It was a winning combination that served as the bedrock of Mr. Perenchio’s tremendous personal success. Whether in business or philanthropy, he possessed a true dedication to bold thinking and challenging conventions. His generous spirit will continue to resonate through the auction of his private collection of fine and decorative art. All net proceeds will go to the Perenchio Foundation, whose principal mission is to support visual and performing arts programs and institutions located in Los Angeles County.

Mr. Perenchio’s fine art collection was among the many highlights of Chartwell, the collector’s elegant estate in Bel-Air. Built in the 1930s, the French-style residence was originally designed by celebrated architect, Sumner Spaulding. The estate was later redesigned for Mr. Perenchio by French designer Henri Samuel – known for his work on homes owned by the Vanderbilts, Rothchilds and Valentino.

Leading the group is Henry Moore’s Reclining Figure, conceived and cast in 1982 (estimate: $8-12million), which graced the enclosed rose garden on the grounds of Chartwell. Responding to a sound nearby, a person entering the room perhaps, this young woman has turned her head to gaze upon her visitor, while beginning to raise her arm in greeting. Reclining Figure of 1982 is Henry Moore’s definitive, culminating statement of this recumbent pose, restful but animated with anticipation, which had fascinated him for nearly sixty years. In 1923, while a student in London, Moore purchased a recently published German book on Mexican art and was immediately drawn to an illustration of the Chacmool, a thousand-year-old sandstone carving of the Toltec-Mayan rain spirit, displayed today in the Museo Nacional de Antropología in Mexico City.

The Chacmool, Moore told art historian and biographer, Alan Wilkinson, was “undoubtedly the one sculpture which most influenced me in my early work” (ibid.). Indeed, the power of this pre-Columbian carving guided Moore throughout his career, with the result that the female figure in various states of repose became this sculptor’s primary, signature theme. The present Reclining Figure, together with Reclining Woman: Elbow, 1981, and Draped Reclining Mother and Baby, 1983 are Moore’s final, monumental representations of his lifelong dedication to this idea.

For Moore, woman is landscape, landscape is woman—his forms in his reclining figures evoke the rolling hills, fields, and vales of the sculptor's native Hertfordshire. “One of Moore’s greatest contributions to the language of twentieth century sculpture,” Alan Wilkinson claimed, “has been the use of the human figure as metaphor for landscape.”

Also highlighting the Impressionist and Modern Evening Sale is Auguste Rodin’s Eve, grand modèle - version sans rocher à la base rectangulaire, conceived in 1881 and cast between 1925-1935 (estimate: $5-8million). Rodin began work on Eve in 1881, shortly after receiving a coveted commission from the French government a monumental gateway representing Dante’s Inferno. His first version of Eve was life-sized—the scale of the present bronze—and early sketches for the gates show that he originally considered placing the statue either between the two doors or on top of them. By October 1881, however, he had come to view Eve as a pendant to the sculpture now known as Adam, which had been exhibited at the Salon that spring with the title La Création. Rodin successfully petitioned the Ministry of Fine Arts to award him an additional 10,000 francs for the two figures, announcing that he intended to place them on either side of La porte de l’enfer. There, they would represent the tragic predecessors of suffering humanity—Adam, the first man, slowly roused to life, and Eve, in her shame, the source of mankind’s fall from grace.

To pose for the figure of Eve, Rodin enlisted a sensuous, young Italian woman, possibly Adèle Abbruzzesi or her sister Maria. Midway through Rodin’s work on Eve, however, the young woman became pregnant and stopped coming to pose; the sculptor was forced to suspend his labors on the life-sized statue with parts of the surface—the abdomen, in particular—still rough and uneven. Rather than abandoning the figure entirely, Rodin decided to re-conceive his Eve at half-scale. The Petite Eve proved extremely popular with contemporary collectors, who found it hard to resist the statue’s seductive power, and by the end of the century Rodin had authorized the creation of as many as eight bronzes and fifteen marbles.

The life-sized version of the figure, meanwhile, stood abandoned in the corner of Rodin’s studio until 1897, by which time his views on sculptural completeness had changed profoundly. Now, he realized, the unevenly finished surface lent the sculpture a far greater expressive force than he could originally have imagined, heightening the penitential remorse of the pose and dramatizing the successive stages of Eve’s temptation. Without re-touching the plaster at all, Rodin had the statue cast in bronze and exhibited at the 1899 Paris Salon, where it occupied a privileged position in the middle of the rotunda. In 1901, he commissioned Bourdelle to carve the life-sized Eve in smooth marble, but found that he preferred the more rugged surface of original sculpture, as seen in the present bronze cast. “I could give you another version of the large Eve, a finished version after the stone,” he wrote to a collector in 1907, “but it is, in my view, less expressive than the other, which is less finished but more vigorous.

Included in Mr. Perenchio’s collection of decorative works by Diego Giacometti, are beautiful examples that capture the unique personality and playful spirit of their creator. The ‘Arbre au Hibou’ table, conceived circa 1980 ($200,000-300,000), is a captivating design drawn directly from nature. With a glass top balanced on a nest of leaves, the table also features one of Diego’s favorite characters, the owl, perched gingerly on the table’s foot. Coming originally from the collection of legendary New York decorator, Jay Spectre, 'Grecque' table, conceived 1965 (estimate: $250,000-350,000), with its nuanced decoration and elegance, is a testament to Diego Giacometti’s enduring and timeless aesthetic. The ‘Caryatid’ table, conceived circa 1976 ($180,000-240,000), was purchased from the estate of Henri Samuel, the celebrated French designer who was enlisted by Mr. Perenchio to restore Chartwell. The iconic design was originally imagined for Mr. Samuel’s own apartment in Paris. Another highlight of the collection is a rare and charming mirror, conceived circa 1982, framed with shadowy leaves and a crouching mouse, finished with a soft green patina ($150,000-200,000).