According to the Times, an anonymous Italian art collector has emerged victorious over the American artist. The buyer, a 74-year-old insurance broker from Genoa, purchased Serpents 2/3 in 1991 for just a few hundred pounds, after stumbling across it at a lost property auction in Milan.
The collector told Italian newspaper the Corriere della Sera: ‘The box was closed, without sender details, and a small inscription: Jeff Koons, Serpents. He wasn’t famous then but his name was beginning to circulate.’
The small porcelain statue is 34 inches long, and depicts two cartoon-like snakes wearing jaunty green bow-ties. The collector added that his wife took against the work, telling him: ‘It’s them or me.’ He kept the statue nonetheless, and history doesn’t relate whether his wife was eventually won over.
He then attempted to sell the piece at a Christie’s New York auction in 1997, when he reached out to the artist to obtain a certificate of authenticity. Koons refused, arguing the statue was not genuine.
Jeff Koons
Jared Siskin
