METALLICA's LARS ULRICH To Sell More Paintings

Several paintings from the private collection of METALLICA drummer Lars Ulrich will be auctioned off by Christie's in Amsterdam on Tuesday, Dec. 3.

Ulrich, who pocketed nearly $20 million from previous Christie's auctions in London and New York, will be offering "a fine group of works by Karel Appel, Asger Jorn, Egill Jacobsen and Mogens Balle," according to the auction house's official web site.

Back in May, one of the paintings from Ulrich's collection, Jean-Michel Basquiat's aptly named "Profit I", sold for $5,509,500, easily eclipsing the old mark for a work by the late artist of $3,302,500 set in November 1998 by "Self-portrait", as well as its high pre-sale estimate of $5 million.

"It was the last great Basquiat that he had," Ulrich said of the Swiss dealer Bruno Bischofberger that sold him the painting, "and he had not intended to part with it. It took years to convince him to sell. Even if I had not ended up buying 'Profit I', the time spent pursuing it would still have been worthwhile. Collecting is not about the trophy on the wall, it is about the journey."

Altogether three quarters of the collection assembled by Ulrich over the past decade, will have been sold before the year is over.

Lars, now married with two young children, claims he is selling because he plans to build a huge new home on a 200-acre mountaintop site that he has bought near San Francisco. All the energy that the 38-year-old rock star previously poured into his art collection is now being redirected into studying architecture.

"Right now I am at a crossroads where I want to shed some of the things that I have amassed in my present home, mostly before I was married," Ulrich told Britain's Telegraph.co.uk. "I want to start over again."