
Olivier Camu
Deputy Chairman
London, King Street
Olivier joined the London Impressionist and Modern Department in 1994, leaving a career in investment banking, and became an International Director of the Department in 1999.
In 2007 Olivier was appointed Head of the London Department until 2009. He enjoyed considerable success in this role. In June 2008 the Impressionist Evening sale reached new heights, achieving £144,440,500 ($285 million) thanks to the Miller Collection, the highest total for any Impressionist and Modern Art sale in European auction history. In that sale Monet's Nympheas were sold for £40,921,250, ($82 million) a world record not only for Monet but for any Impressionist painting at auction.
He also played a key role in the consignment of single major paintings such as Gauguin's 'L'homme a la hache', which sold for a world record price of $40,336,000 in New York in November 2006 and Degas' pastel 'Danseuses a la barre' which sold for £13,481,250 ($26.5 million) in London in June 2008.
Throughout the years he was also responsible for overseeing the sale of several private collections, notably the Q Collection in 1999, the Rene Magritte family collection in 2003, the Maurice and Vivienne Wohl collection in February 2008 and more recently, the Hubertus Wald Charitable Foundation collection which was a backbone of the London February 2012 evening sales and witnessed several world record prices.
Olivier has also been responsible for helping Christie's achieve a dominant position in the Surrealist and Italian 20th Century Art yearly sales in London from their inception in 2000.
In 2012 his Surrealist sales achieved a highpoint when we registered 70% market share against our competitors. That sale at 37 million pounds ($59 million) achieved the highest sold total for any Surrealist sale in world auction history. In that sale Joan Miro's poem-painting 'Le corps de ma brune...’ 1925, achieved a new world record price for the artist as well as for any Surrealist artist at auction when it sold for 17 million pounds ($27 million).
As a result of this focus, the International Impressionist team now holds artists' records for paintings by Miro, Ernst, Magritte, de Chirico, Tanguy, Dominguez, Carrington and Tanning.
In 2012 Olivier was appointed Deputy Chairman of the Impressionist and Modern Art department.