10 RECORD-BREAKER

The most expensive sculpture ever sold is Alberto Giacometti’s L’homme au

Doigt or Man Pointing, which made $141.3m (about £109m) at Christie’s New York in 2015. Considered his greatest sculpture, the Swiss artist executed the work in one night in October 1947 for Pierre Matisse’s gallery in New York. ‘I did that piece in one night between midnight and nine,’ Giacometti said. ‘That is, I’d already done it, but I demolished it and did it all over again because the men from the foundry were coming to take it away. And when they got here, the plaster was still wet.’ This elongated, stick-man figure in typical Giacometti style, which points to a brighter future in the aftermath of the Second World War, is believed to be the only bronze version (he made six casts and one artist’s proof) that Giacometti handpainted.