WORLD SCULPTURE PRICE RECORDS
WORLD SCULPTURE PRICE RECORDS
Alberto Giacometti – L’homme au doigt (Pointing Man). Courtesy of Christie’s Images Ltd. 2015/© 2015 Alberto Giacometti Estate/Licensed by VAGA and ARS, New York sold for $141,285,000 at Christie’s in New York on May 11, 2015.
Alberto Giacometti’s life-size bronze cast, L’Homme Qui Marche I, was sold by Sotheby’s in February 2010 for 65 million pounds sterling or $104,327,006, nearly five times its estimated price. It became for a short while the most expensive artwork ever sold at auction. The sculpture, which is also known as the “Walking Man,” took the world record from Pablo Picasso’s Rose Period Garçon à la Pipe, 1905, which sold in 2004 for for $104.1. In turn this picture broke the record set by Vincent van Gogh’s 1890 “Portrait of Doctor Gachet,” which made $82.5 million in 1990 at Christie’s. In May 2010 Picasso’s Nude, Green Leaves and Bust sold at Christie’s in New York for a new auction record of $106,482,500. In May 2012 Edvard Munch’s The Scream made a new world art auction record of $119,922,500 at Sotheby’s in New York.
Prior to the February 2010 auction, a sculpture by Constantine Brancusi’s, Madame L.R. (Portrait de Mme L.R.), circa 1914–17, held the record for the highest price paid for a sculpture sold at auction. It sold for $37.7 million at the Yves Saint Laurent/Pierre Bergé sale in February 2009.
Walking Man was bought by Lily Safra, widow of the billionaire banker Edmond J. Safra. She donated it to the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.