Picasso canvas fetches $63.5M
Artist holds title for most expensive work ever sold at auction
Pablo Picasso’s 1909 Cubist painting “Femme Assise” fetched $63.5 million at Sotheby’s in London, the highest auction price in the U.K. capital since 2010.
Estimated in excess of $44 million, the painting was part of Sotheby’s evening sale of Impressionist and modern art on Tuesday. The sale price includes buyer’s fees; the estimate doesn’t.
Moments later, Amedeo Modigliani’s portrait of his lover fetched $56.6 million, exceeding the targeted estimate of more than 28 million pounds.
The works were featured as the two-week London auction season began amid uncertainty over Britain’s referendum on whether to stay or exit from the European Union.
The seller of Modigliani’s 1919 “Jeanne Hebuterne (au Foulard)” is Syrian-born billionaire philanthropist Wafic Said, according to two people familiar with the matter who asked not to be named because the information is private.
The work last appeared at auction in 1986, when it went for $2.8 million at Christie’s. Officials for Sotheby’s and Said declined to comment.
The painting has remained in the same collection for 30 years, according to Sotheby’s, which provided the seller an undisclosed guaranteed price.
The Modigliani auction record was set in November at Christie’s in New York, when Chinese billionaire Liu Yiqian bought his painting of a reclining nude woman for $170.4 million, the second-highest price for an artwork at auction.
The Picasso canvas depicts the Spanish artist’s then-lover Fernande Olivier as a compilation of geometric shapes.
Painted during the period when Picasso was revolutionizing art by experimenting with Cubism, it has been in the same collection for more than 40 years, Sotheby’s said.
The anonymous consignor purchased it for $499,000 in 1973 at Sotheby’s.
Picasso holds the crown as the most expensive artist at auction, as his painting “Les Femmes d’Alger (Version O)” fetched $179.4 million at Christie’s in May 2015.