Christie’s announced the sale of the Collection of Max Palevsky, a superb group of over 250 works ranging from antiquities to those by the most significant artists from the Impressionist and Modern and Post-War and Contemporary periods. The collection will be offered throughout multiple auctions starting this month at Christie’s New York and is expected to realise from $53 million to $78 million.

Born in Chicago, Palevsky (1924-2010) was an innovator and forerunner in computers and systems technology. His work continues to influence computing technology today. After serving in World War II, he travelled to New York and became fascinated with an exhibition on modern architecture at the Museum of Modern Art.

It was then that he began to envision what a modern utopia could be. Palevsky was trained in mathematics and engineering and had a love for the literature of Balzac and Proust. In 1951 Palevsky leapt from a job as a philosophy professor at the University of California, Los Angeles to pursue computers technology, a fledgling field.

“We saw a class of problems that should be solved by computers, but for which no computers were being built” – Max Palevsky, 1967

In the early 1960s he was a proponent of small and medium-size business computers – a market he intuited was neglected by IBM and other leading firms at the time – and co-founded Scientific Data Systems, which he eventually sold to Xerox in 1969 for close to $1 billion.

“Max Palevsky’s keen intellect, passion for mathematics, computer systems and philosophy is acutely reflected in the works he collected,” said Marc Porter, chairman of Christie’s America.