Sotheby’s will offer a dozen works from the holdings of Miami hedge funder and art collector George Allen Weiss in the wake of his firm, Weiss, filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy last year.
The proceeds will go toward satisfying a $123 million debt to Bank of America that was secured by his artwork, Bloomberg reports. The auction house will sell 16 of Weiss’s works during its marquee November sales, Weiss’s lawyer, Paul Battista, said at a court hearing Wednesday, according to Bloomberg. Court papers indicate that Weiss collects works by artists including Francis Bacon, Paul Cézanne, Pablo Picasso, and Andy Warhol.
Lawyers at the court hearing said that Sotheby’s has guaranteed a minimum price for six of the 16 works. His collection includes at least 25 additional pieces, according to Bloomberg.
Weiss’s attorney did not immediately respond to ARTnews’s request for comment. Sotheby’s declined to comment.
A year ago, Weiss sought to sell a Claude Monet Nymphéas (1914–17) for $36.5 million to help pay down the Bank of America debt, ARTnews reported at the time. In June, he was preparing to sell a 1972 Bacon self-portrait via Gagosian Gallery, reported Bloomberg Law, which noted that he had earlier agreed to consign works by Picasso and Paul Signac.
Bankruptcy papers filed in 2025 indicated that Weiss owed $180 million to the IRS; $121.4 million to Bank of America; and $113.5 million to Jeffreries Strategic Investments. Proceeds from the sale “could go to Jeffries and other creditors once the Bank of America loan is repaid,” notes Bloomberg.
A 2022 biography of Weiss, published on the occasion of his receiving an award from the Horatio Alger Association, notes that his Jewish parents fled Vienna just two weeks before Hitler invaded Austria. Weiss began working in a restaurant at age 11 and later attended the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. He founded Weiss Multi-Strategy Advisers in 1978; at the time the biography was published, the firm managed $2.7 billion in assets.
