Picasso painting of his nude muse fetches R1bn

THE 1932 Pablo Picasso painting Femme nue couchée sold for $67.5 million (about R1 billion) this week at its auction debut at Sotheby’s in New York, the most recent large sale at auction for bluechip art.

The sale price comes a week after Andy Warhol’s 1964 silk-screen portrait of Marilyn Monroe fetched $195m at Christie’s, setting a record for a work by an American artist sold at auction.

Sotheby’s had predicted the Picasso painting, a surrealistic depiction of his muse Marie-Thérèse Walter, to sell in excess of $60m. Tuesday’s price falls short of other portraits of Marie-Thérèse, one of which fetched $103.4m at Christie’s last year.

Femme nue couchée, which translates from French to “Nude Reclining Woman”, shows Marie-Thérèse as a many-limbed sea creature with her head tilted back in profile. Her love of swimming and her grace in the water inspired the allusion to the sea, as Picasso himself could not swim, according to Sotheby’s.

Marie-Thérèse was 17 years old when she met the 45-year-old Picasso in Paris. They began a secret relationship while he was married. She became his model for many artworks.

Amy Cappellazzo, the former head of Sotheby’s global fine art division, purchased the painting. The seller, hedge fund billionaire Steve Cohen, acquired the work in 2008 from Picasso’s heirs.

A Claude Monet oil painting from 1908, showing a view of Venice, Italy, sold for $56.6m this week.