Picasso portrait to be auctioned

CHRISTIES: PAINTING EXPECTED TO FETCH ABOUT R800M Artist’s works from the 1952 period particularly popular with collectors.

The year 2020 was particularly tough for the art market. While online sales may have saved the day, auction houses are now looking to prestigious lots to boost their activity.

Christie’s will offer a portrait by Pablo Picasso during its next New York sale. Its estimate? $55 million dollars (about R800 million).

Femme assise près d’une fenêtre (Woman sitting near a window) pays tribute to one of the Spanish artist’s most emblematic mistresses and muses, Marie-Thérèse Walter.

It belongs to a series of about a hundred paintings of the young woman that Pablo Picasso painted in 1932, a pivotal year in the work of the painter, according to William Rubin.

“There is no doubt that 1932 marks the peak of fever-pitch intensity and achievement [of Picasso], a year of rapturous masterpieces that reach a new and unfamiliar summit in both his painting and sculpture,” the late historian of art once wrote.

Picasso’s paintings from this period are particularly popular with collectors, often reaching auction highs.

Le rêve went for $155 million in 2013, while Femme nue couchée au collie more recently sold for £14.6 million pounds (about R290 million) at Christie’s.

Femme assise près d’une fenêtre could follow in the path of those paintings. Christie’s estimates that it could fetch nearly $55 million dollars during its 20th Century Art Evening Sale, to be held on 11 May in New York. That’s $10 million more than the last time it appeared on the market in 2013.

At the time, Sotheby’s estimated it more modestly at $25 million.

This portrait of Marie-Thérèse Walter will be offered at auction a few months after Christie’s redesigned its sales categories.

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