How Picasso, Van Gogh And Cézanne Helped Finance Epstein Client Leon Black’s Billionaire Lifestyle \
By John Hyatt, Forbes Staff.
John Hyatt is a NYC-based Forbes staff writer covering Wall Street.
Feb 07, 2026, 06:30am EST
The Epstein files detail private equity tycoon Leon Black’s massive, multi-billion-dollar art collection—and how he leveraged it to grow his wealth.
For decades, Leon Black cultivated a reputation as one of the world’s most formidable art collectors, scooping up truckloads of museum-worthy masterpieces. But ongoing revelations of Black’s yearslong affiliation with Jeffrey Epstein—most notably, paying the convicted sex offender the vastly above-market rate sum of $170 million for financial and tax advice over a six-year period—have tarnished his reputation. In March 2021 Black resigned as CEO of Apollo Global Management, the private equity firm he founded, and a few days later he stepped down as chair of the Museum of Modern Art’s board of trustees.
Now, the latest batch of Epstein files show how Epstein helped Black turn his art collection into a sophisticated financial asset. Far from functioning solely as a personal passion, Black’s trove of Picassos, Cézannes and Monets was systematically structured, valued and leveraged so that Black could borrow against them on a massive scale. Epstein helped manage and organize the collection, transforming illiquid paintings into bankable collateral that could be pledged for large loans—allowing Black to unlock hundreds of millions of dollars in cash.
Entities controlled by Black put up $1 billion worth of art as collateral for a loan from Bank of America as of 2014, according to an Epstein files document titled “Art Partnership Inventory.” The value of Black’s collateralized art (works he had borrowed against) had grown to $1.4 billion by 2017, according to a second document titled “Collateral,” which contains many of the same works of art. Some of the most valuable works of art that Black collateralized for loans included Paul Cézanne’s Le Château Noir (appraised at $50 million in 2016), Piet Mondrian’s Composition C with Grey and Red ($40 million), Constantin Brâncu?i’s sculpture La Muse ($40 million) and Claude Monet’s Nympheas ($45 million).
Black had over half a billion dollars in loans taken out against his art collection as of 2016, the Epstein files show. One document detailing Black’s personal portfolio (dated Dec. 31 2015), shows that entities controlled by Black had borrowed $631 million in total, and that one entity called Narrows LLC accounted for $565 million of those loans. Narrows is listed as the owner of Black’s collateralized art in additional Epstein documents dated July 2016 and March 2017. Those files, titled “All Art,” appear to catalogue Black’s entire troveof art at that time, including each piece’s acquisition cost, appraised value by auction house Christie’s, and unrealized gains on investment. Black’s art collection, as of 2016, was worth $3 billion, with unrealized gains on his investments totaling $1 billion.
A decade later, Black’s art trove is surely worth even more today. New York-based fine art appraiser Sylvia Leonard Wolf estimates that his 2017 collection would have increased in value by roughly 50% since then.
“Bluechip works like his don't lose value,” adds Bonnie Kagan, another New York-based fine art appraiser. “It's the best of the best, every high-end collector wants them."
It is unclear how much Black is still borrowing against his art, or which specific pieces of his collateralized collection have been sold over the last decade. A spokesperson for Black declined to comment.
By borrowing against his multi-billion-dollar art portfolio, Black was able to access enormous sums of money while at the same time avoiding any capital gains tax payments to the IRS— a common strategy among billionaires and the ultra-wealthy known as Buy, Borrow, Die.
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How Picasso, Van Gogh And Cézanne Helped Finance Epstein Client Leon Black’s Billionaire Lifestyle
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