Picasso painting fetches world record $106.5M
May 05, 2010
NEW YORK—A painting that Picasso created in a single day in March 1932 became the most expensive work of art ever sold at auction on Tuesday night.
In an overflowing salesroom at Christie’s, six bidders vied for Nude, Green Leaves and Bust, which depicts the artist’s mistress Marie-Thérèse Walter, reclining naked. The last time the canvas changed hands, in 1951, it sold for $19,800 (U.S.). But this time Nude, Green Leaves and Bust brought $106.5 million.
For eight minutes and six seconds, bidding rose steadily, with five people still competing at $80 million. Nicholas Hall of Christie’s old master paintings department in New York took the winning bid for an unidentified buyer.
Nude, Green Leaves and Bust broke the record set just a few months ago by Walking Man I, one of Alberto Giacometti’s signature bronze sculptures. It brought $104.3 million at Sotheby’s in London in February. Picasso had reigned before that when Boy With a Pipe (The Young Apprentice), a 1905 canvas from the artist’s Rose Period, sold for $104.1 million at Sotheby’s in New York in 2004.
Nude, Green Leaves and Bust is considered a seminal work from a high point of Picasso’s career. Before the auction, experts at Christie’s cautiously talked about a price around $80 million.
The painting was being sold from the estate of the Los Angeles philanthropist Frances Lasker Brody. Brody, who died in November, was the wife of Sidney F. Brody, a real estate developer who died in 1983. The Brodys’ modernist house in the Holmby Hills neighbourhood of Los Angeles was a showcase for their collection.
In addition to Picasso, the Brodys loved Giacometti. Two of his works from their collection also sold high on Tuesday, thanks in large part to Walking Man I.
Christie’s won the Brody estate over its archrival Sotheby’s by offering the heirs a guarantee — an undisclosed sum promised the seller regardless of the outcome of the sale. And with that property, the auction house was able to convince other collectors that now was the season to sell.
Before the sale, dealers said several prominent collectors were thought to be bidding on it, including Kenneth C. Griffin, chief executive of the Citadel Investment Group in Chicago; Leslie H. Wexner, the Columbus, Ohio, collector; Steven A. Cohen, the Connecticut hedge-fund billionaire; Joseph Lau, a Hong Kong collector; and Roman Abramovich, the Russian financier. But who took home the painting is a mystery, at least for now.
Leo- Wednesday, May 5, 2010
A certain situation is causing you a great deal of discomfort. In essence, though, there is nothing inherently wrong with what is transpiring. You’re actually doing fine. Progress, albeit a little slow, is taking place. The biggest problem now stems from you thinking and worrying that things will take a bad turn. Stop that. There is no reason to think that anything of the sort will happen. You’re in the midst of a most fortuitous astrological configuration that is set to continue for a while.
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